Re: Champions League/Europa League Campaign 2014-2015 Thread

[flameas]

Darmian is a must in January. Holebas and Cole have been awful. Yanga manga can only play against shitty teams like Cesena. Against all bigger teams he has failed. hopefully Castan will return and beat some sense into that defense.

[McLewis]

Holebas has been out of his depth and Cole has been just average. Harsh to call him bad overall because of 1 bad game.

Speaks volumes we're not even trying to play Urby, who must be wondering whether it was wise to join Roma in the first place

[dostoevsky]

I still don't understand why you guys got Urby. I can only assume it's because he played the game of his life against you guys last season and you did no other scouting of him.

All the best against Bayern though. I'm still confident in your ability to get through the group.

[McLewis]

Thanks Dosto.

Just hoping we acquit ourselves much better this time around. We know what Bayern can do now so there shouldn't be much of an excuse for another mauling. Rudi is quite inflexible tactically, but I don't believe he's completely unreasonable.

[Lupi]

Rudi Garcia:

idk what to make of it, The first time i cant say if its good or bad. Encouraging for players and relieve some stress by warning " Roma have “little chance of getting a result against Bayern Munich, but we can restore pride.” then "“When we have an approach that we believe in, then we must stick to it. We won’t change our style of football, our philosophy or our identity. That doesn’t mean we should be stupid when playing clearly stronger sides."
I mean the approach is admirable but Rudi's strong suit is possession football and we cant win the battle of possession against pep

[McLewis]

Sounds very similar to what he said before that calamitous loss to Catania late last season. Trying to take some pressure off the players so they can play unburdened.

It doesn't appear to work well for us considering our mentality.

[Lupi]

finally 4-4-2 double up the sides to avoid bayern dominating the both flanks, and worked to some extent. not bad at all

[McLewis]

Yeah we did what he had to do to get a better result.

No team should be happy with losing and I don't think we are, but that was a loss we needed.

hindsight is always 20/20 though.

[Lupi]

well the loss is bad and not positive but the good news came from cska as they beat City, its still hard for us to survive the group but at the end of the day we were in pot4 and still having chance to go through. Also just good to know Garcia is reasonable manager and not as stubborn as i thought he is.

[Lupi]

cska Moscow it is, i dont think there will be snow but its cold (- and the important match without maicon or torosidis. florenzi might be used as right back. hopefully we can get out of there with positive result

[flameas]

im sure that city will lose to bayern - so our task is simple - win and get into the last 16

[Lupi]

i have the weird feeling we either battered or win with numbers. their usual formation is 4-2-3-1 but they used 4-4-1-1 against city. you can tell i'm pretty nervous about it

[flameas]

they also lost two last matches in Russian Premier league. We just have to survive first 20 minutes, we are most vulnerable then. (Like against Atalanta and Napoli)

[McLewis]

Ehh can't go by league form in games like this. They'll be up for it and they'll want revenge for what we did to them back in September.

Ahmed Musa's a pretty good player so I worry for our backline as his pace has caused quite a bit of problems to some decent teams when playing for both CSKA and Nigeria.

[McLewis]

Well that was an interesting ending to the game today.

Players like Iturbe and Strootman are getting a lot of blame because of their roles in the build up to that CSKA goal, but I blame our overall mentality in that 2nd half.

Garcia continues to perplex me. Obviously we don't need him to be Zeman, but come on....I'm not understanding why we shut up shop so early. Continue to attack them and we would've gotten our 2nd goal (albeit after missing a raft of chances).

[flameas]

I know what you mean . Against Atalanta we also saw this - we stopped playing after going ahead. We dont have a super solid defense to do that. Astori is no Benatia and our fullbacks are not CL leve. We cant stop playing when we are ahead.

I hope against City we will give our maximum, not just hope that the result will do.

[Lupi]

The level of performance this year decreased as a team, partly duo to injuries and using the same players pretty much for all games. This happens to the teams who get into CL after some years par Atletico Madrid and i know good teams can win games even on bad days but the number of that in Roma is increasing and that is a bit alarming.
That being said i am actually happy with draw as i thought we are going to lose but we hold on to the game and even had chances to finish the game by 3 points. the game against Man city is important now and if we are want to survive the group we should be able to beat city because even if we go through somehow by magic wound the next opponent will be tougher or at least same as CITY.

[DeviAngel]

Now kick some EPL asses

[Lupi]

i think we are going to miss out in the most Romantic way possible, Romeo drinks the poison, and then Juliet wakes up if you will.

[gb]

Idk Lupi, City are missing a lot with Aguero being out. He's accounted for nearly all of city's goals in the champions league (all but one I believe). I think we will come out inspired and take it to city. 3-1 scoreline in our favor

[McLewis]

We could be playing City's D team and I'd still worry tbh. The CL is a different monster for many reasons.

That said and I've said it from the beginning.....this is the most vulnerable City have been a long time. This game is ripe for the taking.

It's the Coppa final all over again in terms of importance and even the shirt color of the opponents

[Lupi]

i actually think city is much stronger with milner and navas and one of silva/nasri in midfield even fernandinho-lampard give them more balance than toure-fernandinho. even in the first leg milner helped them a lot and kinda prevented us from winning the game.

[DeviAngel]

Without Aguero they are really really weaker

[salmano9]

[gb]

Agreed. We needed to capitalize on our chances early on so that we could sit back composed and organized to finish the game but City pressed our MF all game long and disrupted our rhythm a la Bayern in the 7-1 thrashing

[elm_baraja_shaman]

Without Aguero they are really really weaker

A well deserved loss for the capital city of Italy tbh. A mouth full of rubbish is reflected on the field.

this is very unneeded, Roma hate us yes, but really I don't think we should mock them.....

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