1-1 FT. Meh. I'm very disappointed with that. Took the lead and were well on top. Lucky deflected goal after Astori should've been off and we ended up hanging on a bit. Now we've got a tricky task in the return leg.
Shame we didn't get the win but a draw's a good result and it was fair too. That ref loved the sound of his own whistle, gave a lot of really soft decisions. Vorm man of the match for me, there wasn't a whole lot of competition but he made some good saves. United
That was in every sense a game of two halves. As much as we were in control in the first half, we totally lost all rhythm and composure after the break. Definitely not helped by the ref blowing twice a second for nothing fouls. He honestly should've just gone round the whole team at kick off giving everyone a yellow card. Would've saved loads of time and needless stoppages. My worry about both halves was the almost complete lack of clear cut chances we managed to create. It's a recurring theme in Europe, Monaco aside, and I cannot fathom an explanation for it. Lamela, if available, needs to start every single game in Europe as the tempo suits him down to the ground. He's been deadly for us in Europe since more or less the day he arrived. Decent result to take away with us to the return leg. I know many on here were hoping to get the job done and dusted now but in all honesty, Fiorentina are one of the better sides left in the competition and as soon as I saw our line-up I thought 'a draw would be fine'. In other news, Man United
We got four yellows to their one. Ridiculous. Soon after they scored Alli was running through and got blocked off, it only got replayed once but enough to make it look like a sure penalty for me. Would have liked to see it replayed again, but it was a bit like Vardy's pen last Sunday - except that Alli didn't go out of his way to run into the defender!
If 'taking your studs off the ground' constitutes a booking when 'climbing all over Kane whilst trying to stick your cock up his arse' is acceptable, it's very difficult to have a competitive game of football.
News In brief... Spurs: did what we needed to do to take an away goal back to the Lane. Not pretty at times but effective. Settle for that Man Utd: did what they needed to do to make a greater case for sacking Van Gaal. Pretty dreadful most of the time. Fans will settle for Mourinho any time soon
United fans who were strongly anti-Mourinho but a short time ago are now desperate to appoint him as 'Captain' despite his last 'crew' committing the dressing room equivalent of mutiny and casting him adrift without oars or water. How the 'mighty' are fallen.
Good result, though a number of players showed why they're second choice.We had all sorts of trouble with 50/50s. It seemed like we managed to lose almost all of then through poor decisions. Flashes of good football at the end. Awful officiating. Really, it's about as good as I could have expected from the team on the field. There was far too much dribbling into clumps of players, with Son, as usual, being perhaps the worst offender. At one point he managed to dribble four players in the box without ever having the chance of doing anything much. Much better when the players pushed and moved. I still don't understand why Lamela didn't start. Tbf, considering we were starting a mostly second choice team against what just might be the strongest team left in the Europa, we did well. Wimmer made a couple of blunders, but overall I think he's done very well since Vertonghen was injured. This was another Europa game where we played at about 3/4 pace, I thought. They're lightweight and they're hopeless at aerial duals, yet Mason and Carroll did a creditable job, getting back well and not conceding many good chances. Davies was pretty superb, for the second game in a row. Trippier was a little disappointing. He does have to shoot when he's in a great position to. The strangest moment for me was when Eriksen was unmarked ten yards from the goal and didn't shoot. I'm just thankful he did that against FIorentina and not City.
So Fiorentina are still unbeaten against English clubs but it took a deflection to do it. Spurs win in the return leg by two or three goals.
My main umbrage was with how many occasions their players bizarrely avoided going into the book. I think a full strength side will comfortably beat them in the second leg. If we see another 5-6 changes then I agree with OS...we really struggled to create any chances of note tonight and almost completely collapsed in the second half in terms of our grasp on the game. I didn't see anything to suggest that the return leg won't be tough. In other news, we are now undefeated in 13 away games in all competitions. Our last defeat was the 2-1 reverse at Anderlecht back in October.