. @TNCProject IT's OFFICIAL! UEFA confirm Chelsea are 2nd place NOT 1st. Shakhtar remain 1st with Head to Head coming before goal difference
What a wonderful, beautiful, gutwrenching, awesome, agonizing, thrilling game this football can be. As proved by us and others today.
Shahktar is a really bad matchup for us, it looks to me. They swarm, are quick, and so disruptive. They make teams look bad. Juve was nothing like Shahktar when at the Bridge. That said, we can play better.
Moses GW gif... <a href="http://twitpic.com/bb7hi9" title="Moses winning goal #CFC #Moses on Twitpic"><img src="http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/bb7hi9.gif" width="150" height="150" alt="Moses winning goal #CFC #Moses on Twitpic"></a>
this was quite apparent in our game that Shakhtar set out to attack down our left flank by driving a player through the middle and drawing the DMs/CDs and then laying the ball off to the overlapping player, Srna most of the time who was not being tracked we had almost a perfect storm of struggles down our left side with Ryan appearing to be niave in his space by dropping inside far too often and getting his body angle wrong, Ramires struggling to find his space on the defensive end on several occasions, and Luiz going on walk about and overcompensating for his mistakes this is why I do not subscribe to the "we have Ryan so Ash can go" thought process. I dont mean to be harsh on Ryan who is still learning the challenges of playing at a high level but we saw tonight how much we miss a player like Ash who imo would have been quick to shut down the pass and take away the attacking angle from Srna and most likely win the majority of the 1vs1 instead of leaving Srna alone on the flank with acres of space I have also never been a huge fan of Ramires in the pivot as for me he seems to struggle with the spacing as the majority of our DMs have between the gap between the CDs and DMs but he seems to be catching on a lot quicker than I expected and Luiz as many has pointed out seems to be struggling over the past few weeks- interesting that timeline coincides with a certain defender who is very good at organising the defence being out of the team. Just my opinon but Luiz seems to be the type who wants to compensate for making a mistake which is very admirable but concerning at this level where a player has to remain focused on his role instead of going on solo missions. I think this is something which Luiz will finally kick as he has gotten a lot better in not trying to win every tackle (with a few exceptions tonight) but he still has a way to go on the defensive priority side imo.
If we get rid of Cole we won't win jack shit this year. How many goals do we concede on average a game already!? Do any of you really think we can afford that?
I am. I thought the match was fantastic. If all matches were played with such spirit. Shakhtar were excellent; a well-oiled machine that can really play. They're a settled squad full of confidence with some outstanding players. We were also excellent to match their intensity and what a winner. I'll take this match over the twin 0-0 draw Chelsea had with Liverpool in the group stages in 2005. The fans who came to this match got their money's worth for sure.
While the match was exciting, our back 4 were terrible. There is no way we can go on like this and expect to win trophies. Yes, Shakhtar is a very good team, but to have them score identical goals on us is unacceptable.
Oh yeah, we got issues to take care of, but it's good to get exposed sooner rather than later. Once the match was in motion I was enthralled.
Somewhat disagree. Bertrand was awful and Luiz was all over the place, but both goals were because the midfielders did not pick up runners. Our team defending needs to improve. Cahill was maybe our MOTM and Ivanovic was quite good.