Thursday Night Lights: The 2014/15 Europa League thread

Xp lol

Disappointing that Sevilla's supporters have nowt in their repertoire other than singing the name of their club to the tune of Hava Naquila though

I wasn't joking about Allen. Should have done it earlier, strange game, two nervy teams, one with a much worse defence

klopp is bad at cup finals

Xp they could do a rendition of wu tang's sevilla punishment

Liverpool were too casual from the off. Goal was an anomaly. Looked p lethargic all night.

Crying Liverpool fan just ensured his immortality in gif form

lol yes

will he not have realised that would be all over twitter in 4 3 2

I like the Sevilla player time-wasting after the final whistle.

Moreno is a remarkably stupid player

If Lawro is to be believed, it's not so much that he's stupid but that he's Spanish, "You can find 15 full backs like him in La Liga, they look great, and they come to the Premiership and they're not, they're just not".

liverpool were just useless, they had one good chance with exquisite goal but there was no coherence at all, it looked exactly like a crap performance from rodgers' first season, nothing egregiously terrible from midfield onwards but no purposive intelligence and a crap defence

@Carra23

Jurgen, transfer committee, anyone sign a fucking left back.

The front four are generally excellent but Can, Milner, Henderson are so bad at keeping the ball and providing cover they could sign an entirely new back five and they'd still be fragile.

nakh otm. was a very very Rodgers performance.

http://i.imgur.com/Hcxrv5m.jpg

if only we'd had Rooney in midfield

Probably take Hendo's place at the Euros tbf

can wasn't good tonight but he can play as a dmid to a reasonable level, milner too but he was breaking forward far too often so it suggested crap coaching/tactics more than anything else

either manage their limitations and play them as a deep double pivot (like krychowiak/nzonzi for sevilla in the first half) or play a third two-way midfielder rather than lallana to make up for their crap possession game

At least one penalty for Liverpool in the first half but the way they keeled over in the second half was truly abysmal

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjI5G81qfciHaDjG/giphy.gif

Beautiful

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/05/18/20/345949D200000578-3597450-image-a-38_1463598252661.jpg

'A goal to win a million games'

Liverpool 1-0 Sevilla

Mark Lawrenson

Former Liverpool defender on BBC Radio 5 live
Posted at 20:37

"Liverpool fully deserve to be in front. There is no doubt Liverpool should have had a penalty - you could argue two penalties. They scored a goal that would win a million games - it was that good. Kevin Gameiro has scored lots of goals - he couldn't have scored a goal like that. Liverpool need a second goal. They also need to play with their heads and their hearts together."

Well they did deserve that goal

https://twitter.com/ThePLZone/status/733037176137654274

no animus against Liverpool but quite a satisfying result after the hubris from the likes of the bastard sounness and lawro in the run up to this game.

yeah i would have preferred them to win, but at least they were chivalrous enough to lose badly and provide some content in the process

i felt p dubious that they could perform away from anfield, and so it proved. they lost away to villareal too. equally i reckon sevilla would prob have found anfield difficult. all the more reason why champions league is the tournament this team need to be in.

i agree klopp possibly got it wrong tactically. there was no aggression or pressing until liverpool scored the goal. that worked very well at that point. maybe that was to do with how seville reacted, but i thought liverpool were in that ponderous/probing mode that we've seen in most of their capitulations of recent years. besides that spell just after the goal.

it was a strange game - i'd say seville had no shots on goal first half and liverpool had none second. the referee was pretty poor overall. but seville deserved it, liverpool didn't hurt them when they were in control first half in anything like the way that seville tore liverpool apart second half.

it's a bad setback but tbh if you believe klopp is the real deal then a one-off loss like this isn't going to stop that. i'm still a bit 50/50. they are incredibly inconsistent, but let's see how he does next season.

also like, seville are exactly the kind of team that beat liverpool. would have been better off with dortmund or some other hot favourite in the final.

kolo toure was brilliant btw

equally i reckon sevilla would prob have found anfield difficult

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 22:34 (2 minutes ago)

maybe more that liverpool need the psychological advantage of anfield whoever they play, and it depends largely on being drawn there in the second leg

something similar with atletico, in a two leg tie with real madrid they would probably be favourites, in a single game maybe less so

though in their case as well as the intimidating/euphoric home ground, they have a tactically brilliant manager who can manage small details and play the long game over two legs

klopp idk, could be great but could just sort of drift through a season without ever really getting into that relentless attritional mode that dortmund had; seems as if he could get rid some flaky players but the team will always somehow still be a bit flaky

Sevilla had one once away from home all season iirc.

I would hope that Klopp would have more ambitious plans for that midfield than converting Milner into the new Gareth Barry fwiw.

they were fine in the knockout stages of the europa league, won away vs bilbao, 2-2 vs shakhtar and 0-0 in basel

xpost im pissed off cos CL placing would have made Liverpool a more attractive club for big talent but now its uncertain. i dunno if klopp got anything wrong tactically, liverpool came out strong in the first half which sevilla expected and soaked up (and sevilla did have one good chance in the 1st half with that bicycle kick) but liverpool are a bit soft and yes the capitulation was rodgers-esque. lots of rumours about behrami and gotze (who i think is a bit overrated tbh) to join next year but id say that defeat has taken the shine off

seems as if he could get rid some flaky players but the team will always somehow still be a bit flaky

this is what i believe. said it before on this board, there's a malaise at the club that is deeper than managers or maybe even personnel. i mean maybe that goes if you bring in a few leaders or big characters, but i'm not sure. the fevered anfield performances are as much a symptom of this as the limp capitulations, last-minute goals conceded, endless leads thrown away. it's not sustainable. and in the league they aren't necessarily like that at anfield.

I don't really believe in the innate characters of clubs - it's almost entirely about management and personnel at various levels. That's with the caveat that some Chairmen and some sets of fans make it harder for clubs to build sensibly, but Liverpool fans strike me as relatively patient compared to a lot of other clubs.

If anything reaching the final was an over-achievement and an amazing one. Player for player Liverpool aren't really that good and 8th in the league was about right. Klopp deserves a lot of credit for getting them this far. 99% of clubs are a bit flaky but very few are uniquely so.

yeah maybe - i mean i don't think it's a defining setback to lose last night, but the panic that set in after the seville goal has been a trait of this group for a disturbingly long time now.

whatever about the dull days of rafa/houllier, the team didn't shit itself in that manner. i guess the obvious cliche is "they need more leaders", it's probably true though.

clinging to the optimism of barney ronay's piece: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/18/sevilla-liverpool-europa-league-final-basel-party

GROUP A:

Manchester United

Fenerbahce

Feyenoord

Zorya Luhansk

GROUP K:

Inter Milan

Sparta Prague

Southampton

Hapoel Beer Sheva

Not particularly easy groups. United will be spared a trip to Lugansk given that it is currently a breakaway 'people's republic'.

Dundalk got Zenit

Zenit making friends and influencing people already:

https://twitter.com/zenit_spb/status/769141090809159680

lol it is a reply to some irish braggadocio tbf

Zenit were 3-0 down vs Maccabi Tel-Aviv with 13 minutes to go, currently 3-4 up.

Dundalk seem to have secured a point away in the Netherlands. Full-strength United team a minute away from failing to do the same.

Was posting in the PL thread already, ManU were woeful.

Can't see de Boer lasting more than a couple of weeks at this rate. Inter losing 2-0 to Hapoel Beer Sheva at home.

^ lol just came looking for this thread to say "christ but inter look desperate". this is the first time i've seen them play since last Autumn/Xmas when they were winning a ton of games and it seemed like they might've got their shit together at last. showing nothing tonight.

You can already see where Saints next batch of big money sales are gonna come from. Hojbjerg looks very dynamic

somehow Saints contriving to fuck this up

what a goal

https://www.balls.ie/football/watch-moussa-sow-goal-man-utd/350718

that's a peach

can't see this man u team scoring again this side of christmas at this rate, what the fuck is this constipated louisball they're playing at the moment

United are terrible. they havent even created one chance