It’s a poorly worded title but Inzaghi is actually considering his future at Inter, reliable sources even went as far to say that CL final might have been his last match for them. Considering the level of investment there during his time there, you could hardly blame him for not achieving more than he has, especially in CL (ironically, he lost two finals to sportswashing projects).
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How that article fails at all to mention first place drawing the winners in the knock out first up while Arsenal played PSV and Villa played Brugge
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Asking a midfield of Mrky and Chalanoglu to compete with that PSG midfield was elder abuse.
I get the aversion to praising much about PSG, but from a purely football perspective they are a lovely team to watch.
He still thinks he made the right decision, because that all looks like hard work and no self respective goal scorer wants that
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How many CLs have they lost out on because of their penchant for playing Mbappe / Neymar / Messi ?
It is a lesson football teaches us over and over again, and yet clubs with lots of money spend routinely refuse to heed it, treating their money as a short cut to a winning side.
This is still a very expensively constructed side. If you look at the players who typically start, the goalie was a free, Doue is home grown, and Ruiz was a comparatively cheap, but the rest are all expensive enough that any other club would have to carefully weight up how to fit it into their budget, and its the sort of signing PSG make over and over again no matter how many times they’ve failed.
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I think that is very much the wrong lesson. The way our season is structured, that last 16 round is simply scheduled during a busy time for English sides. This season is was especially challenging for us with a run of run of Villa (a), City (a), Newcastle (h) in the league and then PSG(a) over a 2 week span. We simply had the awful luck of coming up against our biggest challenge of the season during a moment when out season was incredibly acutely busy with important games and I just dont see the argument that being willing to drop points in October and November CL games by playing weaker sides does anything to combat that,
If there is a lesson to be learned for us, it’s the luck of the draw can be a bitch. And maybe the PL can be dumb in how it reschedules games (see Matty’s point earlier)
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Two dead 500 arrested in Paris last night ?!? wtf?!?!
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Not to mention a fully in form Gakpo was out and Konate was just coming back from the injury inflicted by Madrid. And we lost Trent when we were about to make a breakthrough at Anfield
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Paris police blame Liverpool fans without tickets.
Realize they are using last year’s prewritten excus…talking points.
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One of the deaths was in Dax, which is a long way from Paris.
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Yeah, the acute toll of that stage of the season meant we tool MacAllister off for ET. A move we surely wouldn’t have made had that period not been so draining, and it means we went to pens without 1b penalty taker. Trent’s injury compounded that issue of penalties.
To a degree that is KO football. But it does feel like a climb English football has to make that is unique to us.
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We lacked bite in the attack vs PSG. Especially in the second half of the second leg.
PSG have a fine unit with incredible bench strength. Also well coached by a damn fine coach too.
As hard as it may be to digest , our bench strength doesn’t have that. And we have a good bench strength. But not on the PSG level.
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FSG out!!!
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You do realise that no other team in Europe has the bench strength that PSG has.
That coupled with their ability to sleep walk through the league.
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They have the liberty of playing Goncalo Ramos from the bench. He would be a starting CF for us.
The latter of those points is irrelevant: Celtic walk their league every year but do fuck all in Europe.
Success in the Champions League is all about the quality of the squad and the coaching staff, as well as the luck of the draw.
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That “liberty” comes from having spent 70 million to sign him and it not entirely working out. We have the same liberty with Darwin.
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Not quite so. PSG were made as a team with an objective to have the clearest route into UCL. That coupled with their funds.
Winning the French league is basic for them. Their main target is CL.
Hasn’t entirely worked out for him. But he’s been pretty good. Ekitike failed at PSG either and this was the guy they brought to replace him.
I do think we needed to take the attack to PSG more. Villa with emery gave them quite a fright.
Hopefully , adding a creative force in Wirtz allows us to do just this.