Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
I'm more inclined to get upset about games like Blackburn where we had 11 players out there who were clearly better than the Blackburn players and thought they could coast through the game and somehow win. That's not good enough. Last night I think we were doing our best, we were just playing a much better side.

All season we've been lamenting how poor our squad is, we get dicked on by one of the best teams in Europe and suddenly it's because we weren't making enough effort.
We lacked quality, not effort. There were patches of the game where we put pressure on them but in truth Bayern never got out of 2nd gear and easily stepped it up to restore their 2 goal cushion.
‘effort’ isn’t just running about chasing shadows – as we saw a dfferent us in the second half. Our best player last night admitted we started the game nervous, which meant our normal tepid approach going forward. If we were so amazingly outclassed, we would not have managed to push forward in the second half. It follows the same pattern we have seen again and again all season long. Bayern’s class had nothing to do with us not closing down the cross or blocking the shot for their first goal, or for our defenders standing and watching them score their second. We may have expected a hard game where we lost but to hand it to them after 20 minutes? It stinks to high fucking heaven. That annoys me far more than just losing a game to Bayern.

the pattern of being scared to play, conceding sloppy goals and losing a game before it has even started goes back for as long as we can remember now and last night was no different in that regard.