I'll be brutally honest, I thought it was a shocking performance.
I thought Brendan got his team selection completely wrong and we paid for it from the first minute. Joe Allen and Henderson should never share the same team sheet, I've said it before about those two that they simply do not have the necessary minerals to operate together.
Gerrard cannot cover for 2 people and Joe Allen put in an absolute stinker of a performance throughout the match, the only thing he managed was one cross for almost the entire 90 minutes. The number of times he landed our defence in trouble was alarming to be complimentary. Henderson didn't have a clue what position he was playing and was equally none productive in all of them.
Add to that Luis having a mare in front of goal and we've left ourselves with an absolute mountain to climb in the return leg. The reason I think it's such a massive task is there is no way I can see us keeping a clean sheet, which means we'll have to score 4. While I think their defence is bloody awful, scoring 4 past them is I feel going to be a step too far.
Like Si though I'm an eternal optimist, so I'm going to hope by some miracle we manage to pull it off, but we just faced them on the back of them having 2 months without football, surely they'd of all not been match fit. Bitterly disappointed in the lads, a lot of them just looked like they couldn't handle the bloody weather and some of the day dreaming Henderson did at the start of the second half would of had him screamed at by a P.E. teacher let alone a premiership manager.
If Brendan did come out and say "near perfect away performance" that's a joke of a statement, it was a stinker. Lucas had to play, the amount of space our midfield gave them and lack of ability to make a telling challenge was clear for all to see and Brendan made another poor choice there. Same with Raheem, didn't offer enough going forward or backwards, Borini should of been played, at least he'd of occupied someone.
Poor, very poor lads.
Logged