that's the other thing i meant to mention! on TV (and I had the english soundtrack, french TV often gives you multiple choices these days) the lyon fans were making about 80% of the noise.
Yea much respect to the traveling supporter, loud and in great number. Lyon deserved at least a 1-1 in this match. But I'm pleased on how the played and I haven't nothing to fear when Spurs come to Lyon in the return leg. I think we still got this boys.
Starting XI for the match; Vercoutre - Umtiti, Lovren, Bisevac, Reveillère - Fofana, Grenier, Gonalons - Lisandro, Gomis, Lacazette Remplaçants: Lopes, Koné, Dabo, Ferri, Malbranque, Ghezzal, Briand Friedel - Walker, Gallas, Vertonghen, Assou-Ekotto - Lennon, Parker, Dembélé, Holtby - Bale - Adebayor Remplaçants: Lloris, Naughton, Dawson, Caulker, Dempsey, Sigurdsson, Livermore. Grenier gets the start for this big match, probably on the back of his performance against Bordeaux. Fridel preferred over Lloris lol.
Malbranque on the bench ? That looks like a more defensive lineup. Fridel over Lloris makes sense since its the Europa League and he's good and you want him to play some games. If OL had a backup keeper who was #1 quality like Fridel then he'd start too.
This is what I heard from the color guy's mouth right after Spurs scored the goal: "justice is done, tottenham are the better footballing outfit." Yeah please remind to never watch a match with English commnentators ever again.
And in the end, they scored a goal, didn't do anything else for seventy minutes, and they're out. The international irrelevance of Lyon is complete. Awful.
After Spurs scored there was really nothing to be done. Lyon had been sitting their on their arses and Garde took off the only two players who could regularly score a goal.
From being in the final 8 of Europe to not being able to get out of the 32s of the second-rate tourney and mewling about a top-3 league finish. The mighty have certainly fallen.
I hate football sometimes. But Lyon deserve this. Parking the bus for 45 minutes with only a 1 goal lead? WTF? And BTW this does kind of vindicate what Barton was saying about French football. UGH.
It has to do with the contrast in coaching. One team has the budget to hire the best manager available and the other one hires the cheap local guy. Heck even if OL had more money they still wouldnt sign a guy like Villa Boas and would go with the French guy like all French teams do.
I dont blame OL for signing Garde since he's done wonders integrating the youth players into the squad. In the long term I think it was the right decision. But today he showed some real inexperience in his coaching. And a real lack of nerve.
Yup it looks like they are going through but they are a boring team to watch and I have no hope they are going further.
This sucks, this fucking sucks! I can not express the rage I'm feeling right now, it's hard to type with my hand hurting from punching my refridgerator. Unacceptable. What the ******** was that second half, Garde? You're going to try to sit on a 1-0 lead, knowing 1 single Spurs goal can kill us?? I saw what they were doing in the second and didn't feel good about it, then Bale missed a really dangerous chance, and I thought the lads would try to bag a second. If only Laca would have stayed strong on that chance instead of going down for a peno....We threw this away this tie with conservatism and lack of a killer instinct. We were the better team in the first leg and the first half of the second. And we don't try to take them to the sword. Fucking lucky Scum cunts. ARRRG
another heartbreaker but no reason to hand our heads. it was a damned close-run thing. and once again the ref didn't give us a penalty that looked pretty ironclad. so there are shades of both milan and PSV; sigh... i think the tactics were fine and they nearly worked. spurs weren't great. OL was collected and in control and that shot wasn't even that great and could have gone wide just as well as in. only my opinion but nothing will convince me to change it.
You're wrong Guinol. Lyon were playing at home and were the better side but they played like scared girls. Its unacceptable. Garde is a young coach and he will learn from this....hopefully. P.S. That MIGHT have been the right tactic if Lyon were a team that is used to playing defensively and had the defensive unit to pull it off. But that's not OL's style. Plus over the past few season's defense has NOT been Lyon's strong suit. Why bet the house on your weakest hand???
I may have reacted too poorly right after the final whistle. I had a whole bottle of cotes du rhone in me, and I lost my cool. But even after a good night's sleep, I still have to side with Lefutur on this one. The tactics were wrong in the second half. Lyon is not a bunker team, and Tottenham can attack to well to just sit back and invite them on to us. It nearly worked, but for that entire half, I felt like it would blow up in our faces, and it did. We have the quality to have won this tournament, and I still feel we threw all away to tactical naivety.