Quote Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico View Post
Barcelona at home disagrees with that though.

I don't blame Kos for the penalty too much. The challenge was very instinctive and not one of his previous moronic challenges where's he had time to weigh up the options (see Villa at home last year). The majority of blame lies with Flamini and Santi (I believe?) for letting Hazard easily skip pass them at that pace and manage a run on Kos in the box. Bundle him over and take the FK but you don't let a player with the skill of Hazard having a free run on our CB's in the area.

Also. Szechesny got done very easily for the penalty itself. When was the last time he saved a penalty or won us a game the same way De Gea did for United over the weekend?

The second goal on the other hand ....... that was one which should have been handled. No way should our CB's be allowing a long ball over the top to result in a goal. Though mind you the deliverer was Cesc and the receipant was Costa, two world class players and difficult for any defence to deal with. All in all though, I thought our defence played alright, better than most games this season and wasn't the reason why we lost that match.
Yeah to be fair he did perform well against Barca at home.

The problem is most definitely Central Midfield, the lack of defensive awareness and cover is killing us, you have pretty much alluded to this with your Flamini/Santi comment. Central Defence isn't really a big problem though I have not felt that comfortable with Central Defence in the big games for quite a while now..

Yeah Chesney has been dodgy for me this season, he doesn't seem to have that commanding presence that he had last season and his distribution is awful. He also gives me the jitters when he messes about with the ball after receiving a backpass!

If you watch the replay for Costa's goal you will realise how bad our defending was, they were both caught square, it was schoolboy stuff.