Ratings & Reactions: UECL16: Ajax v Villa

[numbersix]

chose Emi as man of the match due to the outfield players to a man being meh (apart from Zaniolo when he came on looked quite bright - has he just got one of them faces? cos he's carded a lot for nothing much...)

If I could have chosen Kaplan as MOTM I would have done, he was impressive

[ben1505]

 

This guy played well for them today

[Adam2003]

23 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

if we don’t beat Spurs on Sunday after the players all took the evening off then we have no excuses 

I came on here to post this the other way around - if we don’t lose to Spurs (as a draw in that game suits us fine) then taking tonight a little easy feels fine. If we lose to Spurs it’ll feel disappointing. But it tends to be how Emery goes first leg so it wasn’t surprising either way.

[Marka Ragnos]

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

That was appalling.

I mean, it weren't that bad, was it? Appalling might have been more interesting. 

[Rugeley Villa]

We do need to try and get ourselves up for these games in Europe. Imagine us in champions league next season playing to this level .

[VILLAMARV]

23 minutes ago, AndyM3000 said:

One of the worst games I've ever seen.

You're not wrong but I;m still laughing. That tickled me. cheers, I needed cheering up

[mikeyjavfc]

Turgid shite but a lot of the ECL performances have been like this. Emery clearly sets them up to conserve energy and do no more than strictly necessary in the ECL as we prioritise the league. A draw is a decent result, I expect we will start quickly in the next leg and try to kill the tie. 

[Xela]

8 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Given that we will need our strongest XI for the games against Spurs and West Ham, is there a case for 'Moscow-ing' this second leg and playing the kids?

Absolutely not. 

Winning this, or going a long way, will help with getting the 5th CL position for England (i think!)

 

[brummybloke]

9 minutes ago, AJ said:

After watching the game, I couldn't give edam.

After emmental performance by the ref, we escaped with a draw, so I'm pleased.

[Django_Zooms]

As soon as the commentator mentioned that the match officials were from Albania, their naivety & ineptitude were predictable. Everyone deserves career progression, but not the huge leap to a knockout match between two former European Cup winners...!

[The Fun Factory]

Well we haven't done a Brighton in the first leg and Emery must have thought  a draw was on the cards given the line up.  We should be strong favourites for the home tie. It would have been nice to blow them away in the first leg but football isn't as simple as that. We got to dig deep now for the next two games.

[randy_69]

Looked like a 45yr old Yakubu up front for them

[BleedClaretAndBlue]

Pau was always getting 45, confirmed by Unai

[The_Rev]

2 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

We do need to try and get ourselves up for these games in Europe. Imagine us in champions league next season playing to this level .

Huge caveat tonight is we are 60 hours away from a potentially season defining game against a Spurs team who have only played once in the past three weeks.  They’ll have a huge advantage in being fully rested for the fixture and tonight was just about getting through the 90 minutes unscathed. 

[stewiek2]

The Don says it was a plan to only give Pau 45 minutes. Panic over.

[wishywashy]

Emery said that "referees can make mistakes" after viewing back the Konsa cards. By the standards of his press conferences that's practically asking for the ref to be sacked.

[nick76]

27 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Really poor - the wrong attitude to the game right from the off - we looked like we wanted to keep a clean sheet and win it 1-0, like we were playing Milan or something - we then carried out that plan poorly, we were sloppy and we played some awful stuff in possession. A terrible ref didn't help us either. 

We should have gone for these from the opening whistle and looked to score three or four - we've shown them far, far too much respect and ended up creating a second leg where we have to turn up, pick a strong side and work hard if we want to win it.

Spurs is a big game, and we did the right thing in weakening for this game, but losing Konsa makes it more difficult for us to do that in the second leg and West Ham is a game that's very, very difficult. Torres doesn't seem to have 90 minutes in him, let alone twice in a week, so if he plays against Spurs it'll be Lenglet/Carlos or Lenglet/Chambers for the second leg of this one - we really could have done with a cushion here.

Lose at West Ham and drop out of Champions league qualification and you can pin it on this performance, the approach and the attitude tonight - I'm really disappointed with it.

 

 

This says it all for me

24 minutes ago, MWARLEY2 said:

Thats why we are lucky to have Unai . A slow boring 0 0 . Just what we needed with Spurs at the weekend. 

Look at Eddie Howe and De Zerbi. Gone for it and lost badly. Nothing better than a manager with over 100 eurpoean games under his belt. 

Its how he is. He knows you need to manage the players over the next 7 days. Nothing to be gained from going all out tomight and then burning out for the next 2..

 

[Rugeley Villa]

3 minutes ago, The_Rev said:

Huge caveat tonight is we are 60 hours away from a potentially season defining game against a Spurs team who have only played once in the past three weeks.  They’ll have a huge advantage in being fully rested for the fixture and tonight was just about getting through the 90 minutes unscathed. 

Part and parcel of being the club we  are trying to be . Big games come thick and fast even more so next season if we get top 4. My big positive from tonight is that we didn’t get beat and we didn’t use a lot of energy up so we should be ok for spurs . 

Edited March 7 by Rugeley Villa

[Stevo985]

Dreadful game of football. 
 

But a fine result. We’ll beat them comfortably next week

[Giro]

30 minutes ago, AJ said:

Disagree.

I prefer Westlife.

Lol