That was a funny comment: The entire population of Bodo could fit comfortably inside our stadium. Meanwhile, uh-oh Viera got stompted on so let's hope no more metatarsal injuries. Edit: I guess he's OK b/c a few mins later he manufactures a beautiful piece of control and then grazes the crossbar with a quick shot.
Eddie makes in 1-0 at 22'. He's been our liveliest player perhaps. Edit: I was just in the process of writing about how he showed a slightly nasty side after he had a bit of afters on Lode. Hopefully he's got a lot more facets to reveal to the faithful.
Holdinho! 2-0 Edit: Looks like it might get called back for a shove before the header... NOPE! Wow, leniency.
Getting ahead of myself for sure, but if we have this in the bag and want to bring in the reserves, here's the prime part of our bench, minus Hein probably b/c there's no reason Turner isn't planned for 90...
it'd be nice if we can get a 3rd to put the game to sleep so arteta would be comfortable giving nelson the full 2nd half. and maybe smith somewhere in the 55-60. i'm assuming cedric is finishing out the last 30 in place of tomi at right-back. i don't know who would replace tierney on the left unless that's where tomi moves to after cedric comes in.
oof. that should have at least been on target for vieira. he's too technically proficient to miss like that wide open from there. hopefully, with more minutes, he'll get his rhythm and timing down and that'll become a goal.
Gabriel, Xhaka are the highest priorities to be subbed IMHO. Followed by Marinelli. So I was imagining Tomi moving to CB, and Cedric coming into RB. Then maybe one of the young MF's coming in and someone on the pitch now taking Xhaka's role. And Nelson straight swap for Martinelli. However, none of that is likely to happen soon if it stays as is... HT 2-0
LOL at Paramount's highlights... they're some sort of AI algorithm, which just showed the Vieira near-miss not once, twice but a full 9 times! (obviously they want to utilize every single camera/angle they've got) And Holding's goal was shown >10X. Which left no time for any other key moments in the match, including the shot/save that I missed live. And wait for their match recap highlights on Google... they will include literally every substitution, even if that uses up 2-3 valuable minutes in the highlights overall. I think they need to hire more humans to work on their production & editing.
in theory, yes but i'm not sure i see gabriel coming out. arteta is unlikely to play tierney the full 90 which means he's coming out and i'm not certain he's comfortable with the full 90 for tomiyasu yet either so those are minutes. xhaka needing to be off is why i mentioned smith coming on in the 55-60. martinelli does a lot of running and is one year off being handled with kid gloves so i'd really love to see him off for nelson at the half. i'm guessing eddie would be the 5th sub which is probably jesus even though i'd prefer to see cirjan, if only for sentimental reasons.
The best Paramount production decision at HT was to show the Bodo fans boogieing to MJ. Enjoyed that.
Bodo now pinning us back, and had their first SOG (at least the first I've seen), with Turner's first save... quite easy. Still we're playing with fire if we let them do more of that.
OK so here's Mikel's answer... Odegaard & Jesus coming on. If it was 3-0 or 4-0 maybe he wouldn't feel compelled to do that. Ok Odegaard I can sort of see. But Jesus?????????
59' Jesus on for Martinelli. Odegaard on for Xhaka. Saka on for Marquenos. Sigh. All I can give him is that this is important for player rhythm, leading up to Pool in 3 days?