This is the first game I have seen live for a while in full. Ninja and Strootman look shadows of their former selves.
The value of Pjanic's ability to split open a press has never been more evident. Our midfield is pretty poor off of the ball.
leaving the burden on the 2nd leg home match.......since that has worked out so well for us in the past
Direct intentional elbow to the face and he didn't get a red card? wow these officials get worse and worse each year. Hilarious.
Had chances to put it out of sight in the first half. The 2nd half was just horrible. I'd have taken 2-1 pre match.
Everything good about the first half was shambolic in the second, except Alisson. What in the world were those subs? 4-2-4 when we're getting railed? Fred is a beast tho.
Your GK was the best player, second goal was unstoppable but he made some crucial saves, offer him higher wages asap
this. First half was close to perfect, second half was as bad as all the games in the last two months. Peres was ok. Only stupidly lost the ball once but besides that he had that monster save at the end and Shakhtar's left wing was much less dangerous than before.
Hot takes: Ukraine is a tough place to play, both Man City and Napoli lost there Florenzi isn’t good enough to be our RB DDR isn’t good enough to be our DM Nainngolan hasn’t played to his level Under is fire
Shakhtar should have scored at least four times. Ninja was terrible, never seen him play that bad. I am not that optimistic for the 2nd leg.
Neither Florenzi nor Peres can defend. Florenzi isn't as stupid in possession. Karsdorp can't be healthy soon enough.
Shakhtar destroyed us in the second half. We didn't know what the hell was happening. If it weren't for Alisson and Peres, this would have been 5-1, done and dusted for the Ukrainians. Florenzi was the worst player on the pitch by far. It was a very ugly second half. I hope to see a very different game on Olimpico, but all bets are off. Knowing Roma, we could well crash out.
Eh, where was Radja tonight? Abysmal second half. We've done ok to get away with a 2-1. But seeing as though Taison should have been off it would have been robbery if they got the 3rd there. I've been saying RB is my concern and sure enough, destroyed on that side tonight. All said and done, it's not a bad result. 50/50 to progress I would say right now.
After all of the hysteria about Peres starting over Florenzi leading up to this game, it was only natural for Alessandro to shit the bed and Bruno to save our butts. The equaliser destroyed our momentum, if not for Alisson this could have been embarrassing. I hope its just the cold, but Ninja was non existent today, he wasn't even pressing anyone. He foolishly lost the ball that lead to the 2nd goal.