It'll be worth watching the whole match on CTV tomorrow and see what sort of reaction our commentaters made! It looked just plain clumsy to me--nothing else--but Luiz , bless him is a bit like Miranda when it comes to falling over!
Makes me glad I was at the game rather than having the "ITV Experience". I was fuming at the tackle - unfortunately, it was far from clumsy, it was bad timed and he had no intention of playing the ball (even if he had got there a second earlier). What made me really angry, was that Ivanovic had got booked unnecessarily earlier in the match and Luiz could have been sent off when we were comfortable at 4:0. If you're going to "take one for the team", at least do it when it's necessary.
More worrying was the team's reation/understanding of Rafa's instructions. I was in the family section with my boy, really close to the dug-outs and you could see/hear Rafa shouting and giving instructions to the team. I noticed that when the players did bother looking over, they didn't seem to have a clue what he was going on about. It can't be a language barrier (Rafa does speak English and we've had a few different foreign managers over the years), but it appeared like there was a total mis-communication between the coaching staff & players.
I'm not sure whether Rafa is trying to over-complicate things, but there didn't look like there was any cohesion. I remember 1 particular instance where Brentford had a throw near the dug-outs (at half way line), when they were shooting towards their own fans, and Rafa was yelling across to Cole about where to stand for the throw-in. Cole and Terry were looking over, trying to work out what Rafa wanted, but there was nothing working between them. Benetiz was moving his hands faster than that twat John McCririck and two of our most experienced defenders didn't have a clue where he wanted them to be.
If they are confused when the opposition has a throw-in on the half-way line, what chance have we got on any other aspect of the game. Unfortunately, I normally only get to around 6-9 games a season, and this is the first one I've been to with Rafa in charge. Any season ticket holders / regulars noticed the same issues & confusion?