We're unstoppable now! We can fail so hard with the same team, not only similarly, but the same way. Sign of a great team, brothers.
We need to go back to what worked: having zielinski unavailable He is too lazy, we look thin wherever he plays. We also lose more points when he starts, coincidence? Maybe, but still factual Cant we just play ruiz, anguissa and demme on a midfield? Our thing was defending well with utilizing high pressure, zielinski is not capable on that front
Anguissa is injured. I think Zielinski is the best player on the pitch. Most of the others are unwatchable.
Labotka is a hammer head Nice way to start the match This team will miss Anguissa in a bad way with these other dolts in his place
Of course when he can reserve energy for when he's on the ball while others try and get it for him... He is also terribly positioned almost all the time, like being too far forwards and delivering a half assed pressure
I by no means wish to defend Lobotka, but I do not like the mentality that we have shown. You can't just say that a goal in the first 5 minutes of the game made us lose. That is the very definition of a weak mentality, though I believe we really have improved in that respect, for which I am glad. However, our coach acted foolishly when not shaking hands with the Russian. I understand that coaches usually aren't spiritual people, but they should be able to calculate their choices soberly. Spaletti is a clear loser in the situation. First, he screamed: "Just wait and see in Russia!”, then he lost in Russia and refused to acknowledge his loss. He fell victim to cheap provocations, and nobody impartial will see him as the winner, no matter what he says. We need to start concentrating only on ourselves again and think about the unpleasant things, like pondering why K2 blocked a shot with his hand while in almost the same situation Skriniar moments later Skriniar skilfully put them behind his back and blocked it with his body. It seems to me like we have become too eager to prove ourselves and while this has improved our fighting spirit a lot, it has also made us prone to cheap errors. Osimhen was too eager to score asap and he almost blasted his head off, and now we must hope others will take his place.
Well, if we play like last game, we will lose, in fact, that way we would have lost to any team. We played one of the worst games ever against Empoli, indeed, I did not even feel like writing anything about it. We had zero decision-making, but I could bear that. What I could not bear was that it looked like nobody even cared, like there was no faith, no nothing. There was a lot of selfishness from everybody to supplant the aforementioned, but that makes it only twice as bad. Our coach needs to step in now and make the whole team understand the gravity of the facts, for if he does not, we will be lucky to at least walk lamely, and the thought of running, jumping, or soaring will become a dream of the past.
Is Osimhen mentally ill? How many times can one player be so much offside and still run after the ball? Why is he even offside so much? He is by far faster than both pique and garcia
How can you criticise Osi with our captain being either bad or invisible? Osi at least showed some real skill, two times already he did very well and there was nobody in the box. I agree about the offside positions, but he has been great overall. Our midfield is the cause of our plight, we lose too many balls and we absolutely cannot get the ball to the front. All Osimhen's runs were basically achieved with his turns and his velocity.
We had no answer for Dembele which is worrying. I still think we should have won even though Barca had 20 shots to our 4.
Good result in a tough place against a better team that can sub in quality players like they did. Osi had literally zero service and support. He was left on an island to fend for himself for most of the match. He was offside many times due to making a run when the ball should have been delivered already. Get someone who can read his runs and feed him properly, if he is your future. Simple.
He is the architect of his own service. Everytime he gets the ball he just runs to goal, leaving his teammates no time to join the attack. Plus he doesn't time his runs, he just stands still, yesterday mostly in offside. How we got away with a 1-1 is thanks to Ferran and no one else. It's not necessarily always osi's fault, but yesterday he offered almost nothing. Quite frankly the goal came from actual build up and passing between a midfielder and a winger, which for me isn't a surprise really. I have mentioned it before, osimhen needs to improve heavily. He is not a good forward at his current level. Maybe he would be better on a wing position like mbappe, otherwise he just runs away from his teammates, that start from a deeper position
It was not the best performance from him, but at least he, as a player with almost no experience, managed to be dangerous really all by himself. Young, can improve, and he was injured only a short while ago. Now our captain is the very opposite of that. The only time I remember him is when he held on to the ball while running away from the press towards our goal. He, of course, did not pass the ball, fell down, asked for a foul, and gave Barcelona a chance to attack. I do not agree completely with you about Osi running away, though. Did you watch the game? Honestly, our goal was not serendipity, but it certainly was a rare occurrence in the match. Barcelona showed a lot of their quality, we showed only very little, and we can only hope we can show more. This performance will be nowhere near enough in the return leg. I think Lobotka would have been great in the match, as he is extremely tactically aware, and we were often too impatient, giving away balls, error after error. (Pun intended) It is, of course, necessary to show courage in games like this, even a great deal of daring, but the brain has to remain active. Ours simply did not.
Nobody is saying Osi is a world beater, but the guy is still young and has room to grow. Yes, he plays further up to the pitch at times, but wouldn't that create more room for the others? I've seen space being opened up many of times since he tends to drag two defenders with him deep, yet barely anyone knows how to take advantage of it on this squad. That happened twice yesterday when he was all the way down to the touchline, and still nobody was bombing the empty space left behind. What you see on the pitch is not all his fault at all. Players need to attack the space which I see in almost every match due to defenders playing Osi deep.
Osimhen is a nightmare for centerbacks. They hate playing against him. Inter’s back trio were exhausted because of Victor but there was no support. Zeilinski and elmas were too far behind and Insigne is just not good enough physically. I think Osimhen is 4th best young attacker in the world after mbappe haaland and vlahovic. He is always causing big problems for opponents but our attacking midfielders are not like we had in 2017. I rate Politano much as well.I thought he would be a signşng like verdi etc but his direct play style is deadly. Zielinski needs to be more consistent and Elmas is growing. I do not wanna see Mario Rui for another season please buy someone ADL
He was offside 3 times which is on the higher side, but I also felt the delivery to him was lacking. It wasn't just a case of poorly timed runs. It's very easy to picture him replacing Bobby Firmino at Liverpool or DCL at Everton right now. In a couple of seasons, he could be a strong candidate to replace Lewandowski at Bayern. He has a lot of potential.