The centre to Bergwijn from Bale with the outside of his foot was the highlight of the game for me. Amazing skill.
It was stunning, but also indicative of how weak his right foot is. I suppose if you can do that with your left foot, it doesn't really matter.
Overall. not a great result. Thank god for Kane eh. The score line means a PL strong squad will have to be sent away to see the tie out, rather than the often-used EL starting XIs this season. Even more so IMHO given the ref yesterday (who would trust him to NOT indulge in Clattentw*t level incompetence in the next game ?? ) . Not what we want given the away game against Villa the following sunday.
Pass map time please log in to view this image Okay, does our midfield know there's parts of the pitch other than the six square feet that Dele, Ndombele and Sissoko are congregating in? Also, it's interesting to see passes out from the back to Sissoko, with Sanchez finding him with reasonable enough regularity for it to show up, as opposed to the complete dearth of passes to him from the back that was a recurring feature between December-February There's also something interesting about Dier's passing. On the one hand the lack of any traffic to Davies does stand out, but on the other hand not only is he finding Ndombele often enough that they had to break out the thicker pen, but he's also getting diagonals to Son reasonable enough and also managing to get some passes to Dele, so either he's remembered his boots are for things other than poorly-timed challenges or Dinamo weren't putting any pressure on us at all which allwoed our CBs to be bolder with their choices of pass
I don't think that it will be same ref for the 2nd leg, no way of telling if we will get anybody better, but they are unlikely to be much worse. As for the result, we didn't concede which is good and it means that 1 goal for us over there will leave them needing 4. Lets be honest Jose was unlikely to leave first team players behind anyway.
Kane and Son can start on the bench I would think. 2:0 is good enough for resting a few. Any doubt at half time, bring the big guns on. They will need to improve a lot on last night's game to cause us many problems.
The number of / specific players from the strongest PL starting XI that need to be taken, is now the issue.
Sonny's form is getting to be a real issue for me. He seems to be bereft of confidence and its affecting his decision-making all over the park. He's also getting too predictable. When he receives the ball he other a) cuts inside or b) passes back. He's a real talent and when on top form as good as it gets, but way off that right now.
That's not confidence, that's tiredness - hence he's flagging by the 60th minute in most games and isn't willing to run at defenders Bergwijn's a player short on confidence, for a myriad of reasons, and he's certainly playing like somebody who doubts himself - thank you very much, boneheads who racially abused him on Instagram
Think It's a bit of both. Totally agree he has played far too much, but he's still looking uncertain - particularly with longer range shooting opportunities.
Yeah I think Son's just ****ed to be honest. He has always suffered spells of inconsistency though which is what I think prevents him from being called "world class" like Kane (and Bale) but I do believe his form right now is primarily because he's more or less operating on empty. As HBIC said, Bergwijn is certainly someone suffering from confidence. Compare the guy that burst onto the scene against City to the guy that can barely hit a shot on target right now, it's chalk and cheese. I'm pretty sure someone on here did mention his weight a while back (PNP?) and I think that could also be a factor behind his poor form, he doesn't look as rapid he was and for a player who bases a lot of his game on speed and skill, that's a problem. As for the game, agree with TCM. The result was a good one, a two goal lead with no goals conceded means we realistically need just the one goal in Zagreb to kill off the tie as they'd then need four to beat us, which even with our defence is hard to imagine. I think a front four of Vinicius, Dele, Lamela and Bergwijn should be capable of finding a goal or two between them so I'd like to think that Son and Kane won't have to start yet another game.
Yeah, I did say that he looks a bit chunky. Also got sent home from international duty because of an injury. Mourinho mentioned he'd been carrying something and we played him through it for ages. Not sure if that's put him back or playing with it killed his confidence, but he looks well off the pace.
Really appreciating this sort of work from Lamela and Moura recently. If he doesn't put in that hard work, then it's an easy ball inside to Majer with Ndombele filling in at left-back. Any run down their right would put us in the ****.
As I've long said, if people realised that Lamela was an Aaron Lennon upgrade in his first season or two rather than assume he was a Bale replacement based on what we paid for him, most of the Narratives would've dried up by the 2015-16 season
I hope the refusal to give us that penalty does not come back to bite us, that would have been 3-0 and virtually tie over, at 2-0 it is still game on. although we are still big favourites. It is sickening how we continue to be robbed by the officials, both in the PL and Europe, maybe we need to change our kit and start wearing a red shirt.
