Football - City Bid the Wrong Type of Sterling

[ljkeane]

11 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Firmino has been poor in four out of the six games he's played so far this season, Moreno could have been sent off a few times in the second half, and was partially at fault for the first goal

Dude, other than missing the penalty, which admittedly isn't ideal, Firmino had a decent game. I don't know why you've got such a chip on your shoulder about him. He's not a 20 goal a season striker but that's clearly not his job in the team, they want him to play as a false 9 and he largely did it well tonight.

Moreno had nothing to do with the first goal.

Not a good second half from Liverpool but I suppose on the plus side Sevilla are the main team they have to worry about and they didn't look that good. Still a disappointing result though.

[Consigliere]

Spurs managed the game well and always looked dangerous on the counter. Dortmund will feel they did enough to get a point at least. The perfectly legitimate disallowed goal was a big turning point.

Surprises of the night: Napoli going down to Shakhtar and Porto getting done at home by Besiktas. Haven't seen Shakhtar play in a while but they used to be a tough proposition at home so maybe not that big of a surprise. Besiktas have a pretty good side but Porto are usually very strong at home.

[Mark Antony]

I mean yeah Firmino needs to bag the penalty but he was pretty good otherwise imo. Not his fault the defense is awful. 

[ljkeane]

17 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Moreno stood and watched as their player waited to score. Anyone with half a brain (i.e. someone other than Moreno) would have gotten between the player and the goal.

Lovren stepped over a clearance you'd be disappointed with an under 11s second team defender messing up. There's probably not one left back in a hundred who would have read that and reacted in time, and even if he had he still wouldn't have gotten in front of the Sevilla player. As the game went on he demonstrated more of the problems he's always had in his game but you're reaching big time to blame him for the first goal.

23 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Firmino whiffed a few feeble shots, and was slow to pass the ball sometimes, but scored a tap-in. He was basically a bit crap. Not dreadful mostly, but a bit crap. Which would be fine, except he's playing for a team that would like to be considered quite good. We need him to score goals and play well.

I've genuinely got no idea what you're talking about. He's scored a goal, admittedly a tap in but whatever, had a couple of reasonable efforts and generally brought the players around him into the game well. Bar the penalty miss he was good.

[polishgenius]

I wasn't watching the game so I can't comment on Firmino but there's no way Moreno has any fault for that Sevilla goal, no chance. He's done exactly what a fullback's supposed to do in that situation - tracked his man back until the CBs are positioned to cover him then turned to make himself an option on what should be an inevitable break once the two defenders between the poor cross and the attacker clean it up. If you want your FBs covering for that kind of contingency you're basically never going to get them involved in fast breaks at all, they're only ever going to be following the play.

[Mark Antony]

I mean Lovren wiffed on a clearance people in this thread could have made. It's completely on him. 

Just watched the Dortmund/Spurs highlights. So many great goals. 

[Iskaral Pust]

It's hard to take Liverpool seriously.  Entertaining to watch but more brittle even than Arsenal.  Missed chances and avoidable goals conceded -- you could write the summary before the game even started.  The only uncertainty is the final scoreline, which is almost a random process at the moment. 

[Jordan La Cabra]

Northern Ireland up to 20th in the new FIFA rankings, our highest ever position.

I'll ignore the potential problems with how the rankings work and whether or not they are a true representation of the order of the best teams. But putting it into perspective from a Northern Irish point of view, seven months after Michael O'Neill took over, we were as low as 129th on the list. So to jump up over 100 places in the five years since that lowly ranking shows the impressive work he has done with a squad that would be considered Championship level, at best.

[Calibandar]

15 hours ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Not watching the game, but Man City are roasting Feyenoord.

No surprises there. If qualification hadn't been automatic, Feyenoord wouldn't have made it to the group stage ( nor any other Dutch team for that matter). That is the state of Dutch club football. About on par with Belgium.