Despite how gutting the result is, and how undeserved their goal was - we can't be left too disheartened by tonight.
That was not our full strength team, at all tonight. No Johnson, Carra at right back. No Gerrard. May be argued that Aurelio would've started tonight instead of Insua based on current form also. Torres was there, but he wasn't really there due to his fitness.
Result aside, our performance was on the whole quite good. We dominated play, set the tone of the game and asked all the questions. Unlucky for us Lloris made some decent saves for Lyon tonight, he looks a very good goalkeeper actually. I thought Mascherano and Lucas, yes Lucas, were top tonight. The Lyon central midfielders hardly got a look in and considering they line-up with three players across the middle that's quite something.
I don't think we were going to get much luck against Cissokho - that lad is a player. Really liked him at Porto and he's looking just as good at Lyon. Great strength, pace and is able to both defend and be dangerous on the attack. Benayoun up against him in my opinion was a bit of a mismatch and we may have been better starting Yossi either on the right or through the middle, which brings me onto the largest negative.
Voronin. I'm sorry, but what on Earth was he doing on the field tonight. He is appaling, I really don't have anything good to say about the man. He's been given so many chances yet he's still to do anything. His chance - it was by no means a tap in, but it was a brilliant opportunity and top strikers would be burying that. It was strange that I was begging for Babel to be brought on for him despite having almost as little confidence in him. What a goal though. What a goal. Jumped out of my seat and shouted "It's about F***ing time!"... then he went back to his usual self like I've noticed others have mentioned.
Still trying to work out how we didn't get the 3 points, and I'm finding it extremely difficult, but what I would say is this - our finishing needs to improve. It's pretty poor when you only have confidence in a few players to finish their chances. We had some really decent chances tonight, and they just weren't taken. Babel's goal was just a moment of brilliance but you can look to Voronin, Lucas, Kuyt, Torres and Babel again - they all had half chances but just didn't take them.
The only thing we can do now is simply believe. We need to win these next two games in the group, preferably comfortably and see what happens. If we go through, then that's F***ing fantastic, but if not, to be honest we can't exactly complain. Poor results against Lyon and Fiorentina will be what have cost us. If we do go out, I would have no complaints if we went on and won the Europa League, hey I know it's not the CL but I'm not sure what's better if you were given the option: a very hypothetical question - would you prefer to go out in the knockout stages of the CL or win the Europa League?
Carra looked absolutely gutted in the post-match interview and who can blame him. However once again he was not himself tonight. I know he was playing at right-back, and the referee was a bit of a tosser, but I just feel slightly uncomfortable watching him nowadays. I hope that's going to change.
Anyway, let's take the positives, carry the performance into the next game against Birmingham and hopefully there we will finish our chances!
Keep positive all!
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