So I stayed up until 1 AM to watch us get Dos a Cero’d. Largely poor effort and I am hoping the only reason to ever discuss it is to see who is called back for the Nations League next window. It was 90 minutes of bullying our B team last night and even though it was in Mexico where we have only two draws all time, and that Mexico has been poor as of late, was a bit concerning seeing how overmatched we were B team vs. B team.
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Read a bit and listened to Scuffed and seems like we just played really timid despite everybody on the field auditioning for playing time with Poch? Really strange effort, no?
I don’t know of timid is the right word, just got overran. We couldn’t possess the ball at all and there was 0 connection between the lines.
My main takeaway was there’s a huge wide gulf of a gap between the A team and the B/C team and if Poch didn’t know it before this week, he certainly does now.
Call up list will tell a lot if this was just a nothing type window in a “Let’s see what we have here” type of way or if a lot of bubble players failed their audition.
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I mean a decent number of A guys played unless we are saying Antonee Robinson, Musah, Ream, Scally, and Aaronsen (who were all on the WC squad and Miles Robinson would have been without an injury) are B/C teamers, Sargent is closer to a washed A teamer than an up and comer.
I think the main thing is that our talent peaks at “makes the knockout round 65% of the time”
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Josh Sargent being washed at 24 years old is crazy
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I’d say our starting lineup only had 3.5 normal starters when fully healthy
Robinson
Musah (0.5)
Ream
Turner
Well he was first team and fell off it and plays a level below most of these guys
And even if half of the main XI played, the back half of the main XI without the front half is not really a good setup.
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Visca el Barça!
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So does everyone agree the new UCL group stage format kind of sucks?
No. (Characters)
What do you like about it? The idea is supposed to be more interesting matchups, but it feels really difficult to follow the stakes without groups to me.
With the groups (for the most part) you had 1-2 powers 1-2 mid level teams, and 1 minnow. Many times groups were decided before the final match day. And we rarely saw two powers play against each other until the quarterfinals at the earliest.
My counterargument would be that at least there was sometimes some jeopardy, and a decent team would have a chance to be knocked out. The giant table is just going to guarantee that the power teams advance and the minnows don’t.
I get the point about late-stage group games meaning less, but I think the early stage group games meant more than whatever this is. Maybe I’m wrong though.
Obviously it’s early, but currently Milan, Atletico Madrid and PSV wouldn’t make the knockout stage, and Brest is in the top 8 (direct to 16)
Yeah, maybe it is actually the opposite now and the second half of the group stage will be riveting because the stakes will rise. Maybe I’m just old and grumpy.
Maybe I’m wrong here too, but with the general imbalance of the group stage opponents in the past a lot of games were either complete blowouts or teams parking the bus and trying to grind out a point.
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This is the first time I have skipped most of the early CL matches until we get through to the back half. I’ll have to see it as a whole before making a judgment, but I haven’t really been enticed to set aside time in the middle of the week to watch anything but highlights.
Honestly, I kind of agree with the players. It feels like we it’s been a 12 month calendar where you hardly have time to miss it before it’s back. I am a little footy fatigued this year, but that is an entirely different issue.
I will be 100% skipping the Club World Cup next summer, I can confidently say that.
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Visca el Barça EVEN MORE!
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