All right, here's my opinion:
It's a bad result, but at Barca the performance is always more important, and unfortunately today the performance was terrible, esp. in the 2nd half. And for this IMO the blame lies with Rijkaard:
1. Firstly, our overall style of play, even in the 1st half where we were quite decent and matched Chelsea, was not wide enough. The fullbacks should have taken a couple more risks attacking esp. since Chelsea were playing their narrow midfield. We really missed Belletti's penetration and overlapping today, because if we had him as a sub I'm sure he would have made a CL-final style impact.
2. This goes without saying but the substitutions were all wrong. Maybe Rijkaard watched the England-Croatia game too intently last week because he's suddenly become Steve McLaren, trying a new formation (3-4-3) when we've almost never played it before. It just didn't work, and the 2nd change was even worse, not for bringing Giuly on, but making Ronaldinho play through the middle - Ronaldinho drops way too deep to be a striker. Messi would have been a better bet because he's at least played through the middle towards the end of some games with some success. I remember a couple of crosses from the left where he wasn't in the 6 yard box to finish, whereas later on at least Messi got close with his header. And we would have seen Saviola at the end but the injury to Puyol was an unfortunate forced change with the clasico in mind...but here again, why Oleguer and not Thuram? It didn't cost us, but it so easily could have.
3. One thing that worries me, something I've noticed in quite a few games now...if we go behind or are playing poorly in a game, often the players are unable to adapt until the intervention of the coaching staff - either through a substitution or a halftime team talk. There are plenty of intelligent players out there, figuring out what's wrong and adapting your play is something they should have learned by now, esp. since the team knows each other quite well.
4. Of course Chelsea were very very good. The fact that the margin of defeat doesn't represent their superiority is all the more frustrating, because otherwise 1-0 away to Chelsea isn't exactly a bad result. They played us at our own midfield pressure game and won because of the more physical nature of their players. Especially Essien who was really awesome and everywhere on the pitch. My man of the match. To be honest though, and not to take any credit away, I do feel that rather than Mourinho winning the tactical battle, it was a case of Rijkaard (quite spectacularly) losing it, vice versa to the 2nd leg at Camp Nou last year.
5. Looking forward to the game against Real Madrid at the weekend, it's going to be tough to pick ourselves up. But hopefully the players can produce a backlash...Capello will no doubt have watched this game and will follow a similar tactic of stuffing his midfield, but Real Madrid are slower and less athletic than Chelsea, so as long as we play at a high pace and pass it well, that game is still winnable.
As for qualification from the group, it should still be achieved as long as we beat Werder at home. But hopefully Werder can somehow hold Chelsea to a draw also, and we beat Chelsea by more than 1 goal at Camp Nou (gaining the head to head advantage) and top the group. No disrespect to these teams, but I'd much rather pick from the likes of Lille, Porto, Celtic, Sporting Lisbon, etc. rather than Lyon, Bayern Munich, Milan, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Man. Utd. Yikes Not to mention the *huge* benefit of playing the 2nd leg at home.
All in all a shit day.
Home
) and hoofed it into the stand. It would be interesting to see how he copes with Portsmouth during the weekend. I daresay they'd give him a more torrid time than we managed tonight.
wrote:
I agree entirely 
