Excellent final 20 minutes of the game. More of that please. Who predicted Sandro to give away a penalty?
What a ****ing absolute arsehole of a ref. Totally bottled it. Clear goalscoring opportunity and we'd have been facing 10 men in extra time. Prick.
To be fair, Benfica deserved that penalty. But I still don't see why the earlier pen against them was denied. The only reasons were that the contact wasn't enough. I think it was more than enough. And that there was then simulation. Watching as closely as possible, it didn't look like there was.
Refs bottled it on the Kane barge. Sad to say, but you don't actually win penalties when your body obeys the laws of physics.
Credit to the players they stuck at it and should really have had the chance to level the tie from the spot. That said, in both legs Benfica looked pretty average, especially compared to the EL final last season when they outplayed Chelsea. They were there for the taking but Sherwood took 170 mins to get us playing. Hopefully he's learnt a few things and we can take on Southampton with a bit of the spirit that got us 3 points against them earlier in the season.
To be fair to Sandro we were in the fourth minute of three minutes injury time. He had to win the ball and then hoof it. I doubt if Sandro would of been so rash if it had been in the 90 minutes. I was proud of them all tonight. Good match, better than I was expecting. and as for the offside goad, Benfica owe us a few of them from 62.
Pleased for chadli... Thought fryers played well and sandro too...pen excepted... Soldado looks a shell of a footballer, townsend looks over rated, siggy looks like he aint had enough match practice, bentaleb looked very good imo...a bit inexperienced at times...kane and eriksen changed our shape for the better ... if only they had started...naughton was good too
For the 'ditch the Europa' mob, some good news for you. Spurs are on 76 odd UEFA ranking points. Spurs could opt out, and non-participation next season will cost them a massive loss of .. 1 UEFA ranking pt,
Exact same thing happened against Dnipro, really, except we got off our collective sofas at half time instead of with fifteen minutes left. Both times the moment Eiriksen came on, I think. They don't use that two-handed shove PL players use to keep him from being effective in open play in the EL. The one piece of good news I take out of this is that there's more than enough talent on this team to be better than last year's team, if someone can get it firing on all cylinders. The rare moments when we've played with a will, belief, desperation, you name it, we've looked excellent.
Really pleased with the performance...scored 2, played positively, tried for 90 mins, some good football...all against a good team Not winning dont bother me...playing **** and not trying does...and tonight they did well
"I'm bit disappointed we didn't end their unbeaten home record" Indeed. The commentators were saying Barcelona were the last team to beat them in a UEFA game at their place.
Good effort and ultimately a 'home' decision prevented at least extra time. Defence looked pretty good considering - although Benfica were pretty poor and lacked much ambition. Best not let the positivity of last 20 minutes overshadow what had up to then been another 'toiling in the dark' performance however. Chadli the new Bale.........
We'll see who still wants to play for us when we sort a new manager out but yeah, I've always said this is a very talented squad but the managers just haven't been up to it.
