Something tells me Alisson will be playing on Monday
We have two keepers injured atm. The other two are free transfers. They're not meant to be playing at this level, but circumstances mean they must. We've apparently gone from the best back up in the league, to Arphexad standard in a couple of weeks. Knee jerk stuff.
We had 3 hours to win this tie beforehand, and it should have been won long before the main talking point. But if people want to blame someone, blame those who missed open goals beforehand and tried overheard kicks 6 yards out. Twice. Blame the centre backs for falling asleep from that corner in the first leg that created this situation, before you start blaming the reserve keeper.
As for the game, I'm not going to blame him or any other player for the outcome. I voiced my concerns about this tie when it was drawn out, I said I wasn't confident of progressing after the first leg, and we haven't. The European, Super, and World Club Cup titles have all vanished in an instant. I literally bent over backwards and fell over after Robbo missed that open goal, so unbelievable was the miss. We battered them on the night, just didn't get the breaks as usual against Atletico Madrid, with or without reserve keepers on the field.
That's a good point, I actually think backup GK's should get more games, why do we rotate all other positions but not GK. Obviously you'd have a main GK, Alisson, but give the reserve one every 3rd or 4th game, except for key games of course.
WTF is this? Do you know anything about what happens at this club on a daily basis, or is everything based on 90 minutes on the pitch, or 2 hours in this case?
Our designated back up keeper has played 17 first team games this season, 17, including 30% of league games, of which we've won every single one. He was signed as a reserve keeper to play domestic cup games against Milton Keynes and Shrewsbury Town, not Atletico Madrid and Napoli in the European Cup. But circumstances dictated otherwise. No gk is going to challenge Alisson here in the foreseeable future. If he's available, he plays. End of.
Apart from holding him responsible for 1 incident in 8 games, we haven't played very well in the competition in general. We won just 4 games and kept 1 clean sheet. What should have been a smooth passage through the group went down to the wire. Whether we didn't take it seriously enough, took our eye off the ball or whatever, we haven't gone about it the way we should have, and now the tournament will have to go on without us. But we've had a lot worse nights in Europe than this. Genoa 92, Brondby 95, PSG 97, Celta 98, Fiorentina 2009, and Atletico 2010 to name a few. We took it on the chin, regrouped, and moved on. As we will now. The road to St. Petersburg begins in September.