Football: Just Slaven Away

[Consigliere]

Biggest surprise is Feyenoord beating Napoli. Shaktar go through together with City. The Europa League looks seriously strong this season.

[Iskaral Pust]

3-0 up at halftime was a slightly nervy score for us  but we managed to close it out.

I remember that we absolutely roasted them in the first game in Moscow, but our finishing was tragicomic to the point of parody and somehow we let them off with a draw.  With better finishing lately I wasn't worried about this one.  But still a pity that we couldn't let Mane or Salah sub out for some rest ahead of the shit-house clogging we'll get from Everton on Sunday.

We generally outplayed Sevilla too until Moreno gifted them soft goals, and both times they secured very late equalizers.  I know our results in the CL haven't looked great, aside from two 7-0 thumpings, but our performances were better than our results.  We don't look out of our depth like Rodgers' lone campaign in CL.  This Spartak team beat Sevilla.  I think we've made Sevilla look better than they are.  If we met them again later in the competition I'd expect us to handle them just fine.

 

[Philokles]

Some interesting permutations for Chelsea. With United, City, Spurs and Liverpool all off the cards as fellow English clubs and Roma as they came from the same group - they are only left with Besiktas, PSG and Barcelona. As Barca are in a similar but less extreme situation (no Real Madrid, Sevilla or Juve), they have over a 40% chance of being drawn against Chelsea. The only other two ties with a 20%+ likelihood are Chelsea vs PSG or Besiktas.

[Iskaral Pust]

30 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

Some interesting permutations for Chelsea. With United, City, Spurs and Liverpool all off the cards as fellow English clubs and Roma as they came from the same group - they are only left with Besiktas, PSG and Barcelona. As Barca are in a similar but less extreme situation (no Real Madrid, Sevilla or Juve), they have over a 40% chance of being drawn against Chelsea. The only other two ties with a 20%+ likelihood are Chelsea vs PSG or Besiktas.

That's the math I was doing yesterday for Liverpool.  But the prospects in the draw aren't much different for second place vs. winners.  Barca aren't quite what they were (and drew with both Juve and Olympiakos away from home) and PSG are beatable despite racking up lots of goals in the CL group.  Considering Real Madrid, Juve and Bayern represent half of the possible opponents for Liverpool, there wasn't a huge difference between first or second place.