Don't even need to take it with a grain of salt. Being better than this Roma in the 2nd half don't excuse much of what i saw. Any top team in Serie A without Roma's issues right now would have a party in that first half and put this game to bed by half time. Even exactly how it went we were pretty lucky not to go 2-0 in half time. Good game my ass . We got off lightly . I don't know what Mihajlovic imagines but it wasn't just the shaky first 10 minutes , it was the entire first half that had Roma written all over it . Had they been not better , just a little lucky with Rudiger , this game would be well and truly over by the first 20m , at 2-0. That's the reality , that was our game in the first half.

That said . And never forgetting any of it. My hopes did get up in the 2nd half , the goal changed the mood over and Boateng helped a lot .Almost everyone showed character in the 2nd half and i have only praise for that. I give them that , they stepped it up and we came close to turning it around . Yes , 2nd half was a lot better in comparison, once it became clear keep playing like little girls would have us lose , they really went for it , i'd say even unlucky not to win , putting aside what we actually played , it still counts in any case .

Watching the game now, about an hour in. First half was, as Dante says, absolute trash. Game should've been over after 20 minute. I think we created one chance in the entire half and it was from a Roma mistake.

So far we're better in the second half, the equalizer and Kucka's miss were two very good chances, but again it frustrates me that they came from Roma mistakes. We're unable to create chances ourselves because we can't put more than three passes together.

Just as I write this we actually put a nice counter attack together that ended with Bacca hitting the crossbar, but the point still stands. 3 of our 4 chances so far have come from Roma's poor play, not us doing anything particularly good.

Yes Boateng is playing well, but tbh I'm not very happy, probably because this will just tell the management that they've done enough in terms of reinforcements. Boateng is nice in the sense that he's a wildcard and can help us create chances out of nothing, but it doesn't solve our long standing problem of not being able to keep the ball for longer than five seconds.

This second half is much better though, I have to say. If we play the entire half like this I'll be happy that we dominated a team like Roma for 45 minutes.

ES wrote:Also, take this performance with a grain of salt. Roma have been horrendous since they played Barca. We might have a chance of topping them come season end, but don't expect us to go toe to toe with Napoli, Fio, Inter and Juve.

I agree, but considering we couldn't even dominate Carpi, I'm happy we're playing like this regardless of who the opponent is.