UCL: Chelsea v Barcelona

billionmillion wrote:I dont know about you guys but Cesc is important player, and Guardiola agrees with me. he will start Cesc again in second leg

and giggity are you serious? Kaka in el clasicos >>>>>>>>>> Ozil by far. When Ozil had a good game against barcelona? Kaka lost the balls? so? messi also loses the balls. because they love dribbling

At least messi actually dribbles someone kaka was pretty average in most el clasicos. Ozil was great and earlier in the season he was playing in a deeper role and still did good.

Loving to dribble is not an excuse for kaka, hes not messi

Ozil did good in clasicos. i forgot about Chelsea loss now, thank you for changing my mood

Whatever bro, I'm gonna know more about my teams players then you know about ours.

Cesc might agree with you, but he also thinks that Keita should play many games, Iniesta should play on the wing sometimes and 3 at the back vs Valencia is a good idea.

He isnt perfect, he is wrong sometimes just like everyone else.

Using the, Pep agrees with me therefore im right doesnt really work.

I agree BC, Alexis cannot get off because of relative youth or inexperience..that doesnt explain missing easy chance.

However, I agree with gigg in that, at least, you can say for Alexis..he is young, he hasnt been here before, he should learn and do better in the future.

But Cesc has a wealth of experience, and performances like that at this stage of the competition cannot happen if he is so important and such a experienced guy. To be honest, performances like this one was exactly the reason he failed at Arsenal, in terms of carrying them to titles.

He im sure felt he didnt have a good enough team around him, and he is correct, but performances like this show he needs to look in the mirror (im sure he already does) and think about it. Because this wasnt the first big game he was sucked in.

Frustated atm. Fabregas needs to improve. Time he may need but we are heading into important games now and well we can't afford stuff ups. I think I missed the open goal chance from him but what I herard it sounded like it was a clear miss. Pep may love him but he will have to bench him soon. Anyway, hasn't anyone seen what he does off the bench? Bench him, try to pick up his game and hopefully see more great games from him. He does well off the bench (World Cup final, SuperCopa, Euro 08) so if we bench him maybe we may see some magic from him.

Just gonna say let's not turn this into a Cesc hate thread. You can never blame a loss on one player. Almost nobody was any good today.

Despite criticism, Iniesta was quite good on the wing first half. Xavi played deep and brought the ball up well, when there are 4 more attacking players ahead of him we can't blame the general for failing to unlock the bus today. As I said before, Adriano was good, and one of the rare positive players when faced with the Great Wall of London. Valdes can't be blamed either All the others ranged from ordinary to bad.

My trip to Stamford Bridge (photos):













And now my favourite:

How was the game Dany?

Great photos btw. Thanks for posting them here.

Nice pictures dany, shame you couldn't see the team win.

BarcaKizz wrote: Almost nobody was any good today.

Disagree, the problem was not taking chances, Barca had 5 or 6 clear cut chances and 2 or 3 half chances if they just took half of them you would all be praising how brilliant they are once again.

Sanchez and Cesc were crap tho, also someone tell Pep to stop playing Iniesta outwide

I've said it so many times....I am not a fan of Sanchez. Save him for the mid-lower level Liga teams.

I am not happy right now but feel good knowing that we were the superior team and created ALLOT of chances that at home will probably go in. So, as long as the same thing happens again we will likely at least level up early on and take it from there. If they manage to score on us first then things will get horrible for us real fast. We needed an away goal

Damn , all that chances missed . I'm really concerned because on the paper fabregas in the middle and iniesta on the wing could work
Sanchez , as you guys said is still learning. But can we take the risk to start the next season with pedro, villa , and sanchez only ?

Drogba, still a monster. He draws 3 defenders to himself and still manages to do something, who else other than Messi does that. As a person or sportsman, he gets zero respect from me but he is still, at the age of 34 - one of the best strikers around and tonight Chelsea would have not scored without him.

Mascherano, did well and has been a pillar in Barcelona's defence recently but for me he was at fault for the goal. He passed the ball to Messi in a dangerous situation, in the middle of the field, as a CB, passing to a team-mate with his back to two opposition players surrounding him. And then 4 Barcelona defenders fail to close 2 Chelsea attackers and completely left Drogba unmarked for the goal. Fantastic counter-attack by Chelsea, however. Have to give credit when it's due.

People talk about Alexis and Cesc, both which for me had an okay game. But no one is talking about Messi. Tried to do too much by himself. Also I'm going to say something none of you want to hear. He is becoming lazy. Having seen Ronaldinho go from hero to zero in the same team, If I was Guardiola, I would have acted straight away. I know he is the best player in the world but Pep must bench him for a few matches and the sooner the better. No one, not even Messi should take anything for granted.

And finally Barcelona missing chance after chance, game after game. That's the difference between the team that won the sextuple and this team. All credit to Chelsea though, they had luck on their side but did not lose concentration or flop unlike 99% of other teams who come up against Barça and achieved a great result. No goals conceded at home and a win means Barcelona will need to score 2 to qualify. And if Chelsea score a goal in Camp Nou it will be game over in my opinion. I personally will not bet against The Blues qualifying, knowing Barcelona have an extremely tough encounter against Madrid in a few days as well. Will there be any energy left in them to hurt Chelsea more than once in Camp Nou?

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/04/19/chelsea-1-0-barcelona-drogba-tactics/

Zonal marking analysis.

Fantastic analysis!

Even after this result I still don't see us losing this tie. Game reminds me of Arsenal where we missed so many chances etc, even though we didnt score. I feel we will win 3-1 or 2-0 in the return leg.

Wow. Just finished the game now.

All I can say is that we didn't take our chances and more than anything, were simply unlucky.

Still confident of a win at the Camp Nou. Chelsea have been riding amazing luck recently (Wigan scandal, only in FA Cup due to luck and a fking retarded referee, and now today simply only going in with an advantage due to luck and Barca missing chances)

It can only last so long.

That pitch at Stamford Bridge is narrow like a bowling alley or English row house... it's gonna be a different game on the wide pitch of Camp Nou.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

BarcaKizz wrote: Almost nobody was any good today.

Disagree, the problem was not taking chances, Barca had 5 or 6 clear cut chances and 2 or 3 half chances if they just took half of them you would all be praising how brilliant they are once again.

Yes and no. The problem was clearly not taking chances. We performed well as an overall team in the first half, without being great. Second half they were able to sit, and we struggled to do anything of brilliance.

You're right that if we scored the performance would be hailed. However, thats only because Chelsea would have had to open up a bit and then we would play a lot better. Instead, the opposite happened and we were far from brilliant.

As I said before, only a few players for periods of the game were playing well, but still nowhere near their best. They let us dominate possession, it wasn't anything too special. Like I said, as a team, first half we played well. Second half, we just didn't have the answers.

All I was saying was nobody was that good today (bar Iniesta early, Xavi was alright and Iniesta), which is true.

Best chances were created by:
1. Iniesta ball to Alexis (off crossbar): He was playing well at this point, I said that.
2. Messi driving forward leading up to Cesc's ridiculous miss: Messi was alright first half, but his performance is blemished by the fact that he lost the ball which led to the goal. Like I said, he had to get a goal back. He didn't. Not a great game from him.
3. Messi got a rare chance to run between the lines and slipped the ball through to Cesc (chipped, cleared off line by Cole)
4. Cesc chips ball behind for Alexis (Alexis misses): Only good thing Cesc did in this whole game.
5. Adri's run. He was good
6. Pedro off post, +Busi. Can't remember buildup.

Alves was ordinary, Ramires closed down his wing.

Masch and Puyol were poor at times.

Busquets was quiet and missed a sitter.

Adri can hold his head high, though they didn't attack him at all.

Xavi was sitting deep because of the Messi-Cesc tandem. He was alright, nothing good, nothing bad. Played some nice balls.

Iniesta was good, he's not a bad winger, its merely the fact that he's better than Cesc as a mid. Second half he did nothing when he was crucial to unlocking their defence.

Cesc was shite. Didn't do much in midfield and missed his chances.

Alexis was unlucky to miss early and should have scored the second, but it looked a bit awkward. Disappointed he didn't take on defenders at all. Seemed a bit scared as some say. Was quite invisible.

Messi was far below his normal standards, which doesn't necessarily mean he was bad, but even for an average player he didn't have a great game. Dropped very deep, struggled to find space. Only made a couple of good runs. Committed a mortal sin for the goal. I can't blame our fullbacks for being out of position because they were preparing to attack. I'm a little annoyed Pep didn't tactically react to Messi being crowded. He just decided that Messi could sort it out.

In my opinion, this is a huge overreaction from everyone... All this nonsense of us going out next week, the slander against Cesc, Alexis and Pep as well as the talk of our demise this season is just grossly exaggerated.

On another day, Barca win 3-1...

Sanchez scores a brace and everyone says how clutch he is, how much hard work he puts in for us and if only he improved his dribbling a little he'd be a perfect player.

Cesc scores one and sets up 2 others and everyone says that even though he had quite a poor game in midfield, he gets the job done and impacts where it matters on the goal sheet.

It goes from all this rubbish of us being toothless and playing a horrible game to talk of how we were our vintage greatness.

The truth is we played fine, we had a winning calibre... we created a handful of CLEAR goal scoring opportunities and another handful of possible chances. Cesc had his chances (which is his role in our team), so did Alexis and Iniesta played better on the wing than in midfield - a scenario that Pep was trying to create.

The problem was we didn't take our chances; a goal line clearance, two bars and a post intervened and mishitting at the worst time came back to hurt us. These things happen due to the law of averages, it's unfortunate that they all occurred in the one game.

I feel like most of the team played well, yet our 3 most decisive players didn't impact the match on offence to the point we need. Messi, Alves and Xavi could of done more - I'd put the blame at their feet more so than at Iniesta, Cesc and Alexis' feet. Your best players win matches - Messi, Alves and Xavi did not tonight.

Also blame for our goal lies with Mascherano, didn't mark Drogba for what should of been an easy cut out.

Next week we will get our chances, 1 goal in the first half is all we need to open the match up. I believe we will... this team is too great to miss this many chances in consecutive important games.

The rest of you need to stop over reacting and grow up!

My biggest worry is our players legs. Clasico is 2 days before the 2nd leg.....that's not a good thing by any means

We will be fine... Fatigue isn't a worry when you are playing Real Madrid and the CL Semi Final - adrenaline and spirit will take over.

I guarantee, we can start the same team for the next 8 or so games and they will run until they injure themselves. This is the part of the season we have been working towards for 9 months, the players won't let this moment slip by! You don't give up now!!

Nothing wrong with being a little melodramatic, we're fans .

Come next week of course we'll be pumped and expecting a win. I will be. We're in a much more nervy position now though, no need to sprinkle sugar over it.

Goal.com...
Their player ratings are crap. How was Cesc better than Xavi and Messi?

I havnt visited that site since the forum went down

You don't want to. If they give ratings like those than they should no longer be a site...