We’re up against it for sure and a lot would have to go in our favour, but not impossible.
City will be through and may as you say rotate their squad and we could nick a shock win and Copenhagen are actually strong at home as they’ve shown against us and City so could do us a favour against Dortmund. We’d also need City to win away in Dortmund tonight which won’t be easy.
So yes there’s still hope there and I’m sure Sampaoli will be telling the team that. At least they can play with relative freedom knowing the EL is in the bag and they would have nothing to lose.
Just imagine if we’d got a win in Dortmund which I felt we deserved. We’d really have a chance now!
I believe so, since we win the head-to-head with Copenhagen if they were to end up winning next week and drawing level with Sevilla on points. So yeah, let’s keep dreaming for a bit.
What the hell do we take away from today’s match in terms of strikers? That they all sorta suck? Just getting so tired to see our strikers not doing anything. And there’s some enjoyable irony in the fact that YEN’s goal was literally scored based on what he DIDN’T do rather that what he DID do…
Do we want to qualify for Champions? Are we likely to earn more in CL or EL, obviously I’d prefer us to be playing Champions but we need money, it’s a tough call without a crystal ball.
ManCity completed like 850 passes in tonight’s game. Just wild to imagine a team making close to 1,000 passes in a game. No wonder the English announcers are used to only commenting once every 10-15 passes…saving their voices…
reaching the round of 16 in CL (requiring another group stage win) would give us 12.4M euros. we’d need to reach the EL finals to even get close, 10.9M (0.5 + 1.2 + 1.8 + 2.8 +4.6), and could only surpass that if we won the whole thing (19.5M).
The EL money could still add up and soften the blow of the CL failure but… we left a lot of money on the table, even just in failing to beat copenhagen in the first match and putting up such a feable fight against Dortmund at home.
Final thought is this shows why CL v EL qualification is so critical.
group stage in CL where you win 2 draw 1 lose 3 = 23.3M (15.6+.9+2.8+2.8)
group stage in EL where you win 4 draw 1 lose 1 = 6.3M (3.6+.6 + .6 + .6 + .6 + .2)
In both cases you likely land in EL knock out stage anyway.
To be fair, we did draw one of the hardest or possibly the hardest group for a team starting from Pot 2 in the group stage draw. Dortmund for a Pot 3 team was quite a killer draw, And obviously Pot 1 was tough teams no matter what, but ManCity was the hardest among them.
Anyhow, water under the bridge, but I feel like no matter what form we were in, taking 2nd place in this group was always a coin flip at best, even in the best of times. A big disappointment, but I think far less disappointing than last year’s UCL campaign where we really should have won that group and could barely manage to make Europa League in the end.
Last year we should have been calling for Lopetegui’s firing, but obviously hindsight is 20/20. And I, of course, was among the folks who would have thought the idea of firing him last winter was crazy.
Before we move on from this match, in rewatching the highlights, two things stuck out.
First, Suso took nearly the same exact shot three times in the first half. It’s that typical Suso shot from slightly too far out with slightly too many defenders in front of him… Unsurprisingly 0/3.
Second, this kid Haraldsson… Is 19 years old and really gave us some trouble. He could really be an exciting European signing in coming years. Iceland is a country of <400k people, so I don’t suspect they’ll be able to build too much around him for their national team, but I always love their Thunderclap and just love seeing the underdogs perform well in international football.
That’s the thing with him. If his shot isn’t working, nothing else does. He can’t fake it to create an opening & he won’t have the confidence to create something else. So he stays stuck at level 1 looking worse than the average La Liga winger. Januzaj anyone?
They should find chances if the team’s balance is right. I’m not sure if Suso - Isco - Papu provides enough variety for that. Things were different w/ Lamela & YEN on the pitch. As for the Moroccan, he can be active and keep the defenders busy, which is why it works in certain matches. I’m still not convinced he got the touch for the goal, but at least he made the run. As for ya boy Rafa Mir, he’s still my preferred striker, but needs to learn to keep it simple in the buildup. He’s trying to get rid of old habits, but he’ll still only look for his shot, or pass only for it to become a 1-2 for his own shot once more.
Also, Jordan & Rakitic didn’t look too bad did they?
We were very lucky in this match, because the score remained at 1:0 and they did not score at the time. The static of the players in our team and the lack of speed showed. In the end, it was extremely nice to see the score 3:0, I don’t remember the last time we won witht this kind of result.
What I noticed is that Papu in particular is below par this year, he takes way too many touches and slows down the game. The combination of Papu&Isco on the field does not work best for me, because their styles of play are too similar. Lamela should statrt every game, because he is only fast player in offense and really makes difference on the wing.
For the striker position isn’t much hope anymore. Sampaoli gave chance to all three strikers none of then showed up. Let’s wait for winter transfer market.
Very lucky to get away with the win, they hit both the post and crossbar, Dimi made a great save with his legs to prevent another sure goal.
Observations
What is the point of playing Suso on the wing when he spends most of the game in loads of space waiting for the pass that never comes? I really felt sorry for him at times.
Never thought I would say this but we have a striker in Dolberg who is worse than Yen.
Did anyone see what the banner the Biris unfurled at the start say? I couldn’t read it from my seat. They announced that there would not be any support from them for the 1st 5 minutes and all sat down.
