Missed this one due to work but I feel that winning 1-0 against a stubborn opponent would have been a draw last year.
Last year this Espanyol would have beaten us, they play very well, the fact that we’ve managed to dominate them for 70 minutes speaks of how well we’re playing.
Lopetegui needs to have a chat with Ramos, we can't have him go all YOLO forward whenever he feels like it.
We dominated but the opponent had good chances. This seemed to be the worst game from us so far. I just feel we were toothless in the first half. Too many cooks.
He literally passed the ball to their striker leading to a one on one hitting the woodwork. His problem was more than rushing forward. He was totally unfocused.
I have no issue with Ramos charging forward. He gets on the end of more headers than any of our attackers do. And don’t think for a second that isn’t Lopetegui giving Ramos the greenlight
I know I’ve been harping on this repeatedly but I cannot help but notice it and I think it was especially problematic today... team is waaaaay too reliant on [predictable] crossing from the flanks to create attacking opportunities. There simply is not enough happening down the center channel IMHO. Thought we deserved the 3 points today. Casemiro continues to impress. Modric was better to my eyes, and Ceballos had a strong game. Great debut from Odriozola. Mariano had a brilliant pass that should have made it 2-0.
Other teams are studying Ramos movements right now, I have no doubt they will exploit that space on the back when Ramos plays like a striker.
I'd love to see Theo succeed, but José Gayá would be great. It's a shame he plays for Valencia, so never gonna sell to us.
I think he was probably our worst player yesterday, although Lucas has a case. A win is a win of course so no big deal. But hopefully he doesn't stay cold for long
Outside of the turnover that led to their shot that hit the crossbar, I thought he played well. That was definitely an awful turnover, but it was also a very poor, slow pass back to him leaving him for dead. Outside of that, I thought he was spraying the ball around as well as he always does. Not to mention, he was probably one of our greater goal scoring threats lol Nonetheless, for Benz not to have a shot on target in his last 211 minutes is quite remarkable from a #9. He better get something against Sevilla
You're not going to dominate every match. You have to learn when you're not playing well, and so far, that's the difference between this year and last year. I'm not too much of a fan of Ramos going up and staying up, I think better teams would exploit that. That said, Espanyol had no plan to get out of their tactics of parking the bus. A worrying pattern is JL's subs. Again, very odd subs. Modric was done by around the 65th minute mark, yet you take out Isco and Ceballos who both had more in the tank left? His subs aren't making an impact on games so far.