Your team v Real Madrid (Champion's League Last-16, Second Leg)

**dicko1969** · 12th March 2023, 09:06 PM

Liverpool need a huge miracle.
This is totally different to v Barcelona 4-0.

Only expect a draw or small loss.

**Steveo** · 12th March 2023, 09:50 PM

Agreed, we need a huge miracle.

But for me Barcelona was a huge miracle too, we were at Anfield so maybe a little less but nobody knows how they failed to score a goal that night. They had great opportunities, better than ours and they squandered them.

**Insidious** · 12th March 2023, 10:27 PM

Originally Posted by Steveo

Agreed, we need a huge miracle.

But for me Barcelona was a huge miracle too, we were at Anfield so maybe a little less but nobody knows how they failed to score a goal that night. They had great opportunities, better than ours and they squandered them.

Barcelona were still mentally scarred from that time against Roma.

We have seen the footage of the Barca lads in the dressing room at half-time. Utterly shell-shocked despite still having a huge edge in the tir at that moment - 3-1 up on aggregate.

Real Madrid, much as I dislike crediting them, are far more resilient than that. Their PSG and Man City ties in last season's competition had them dead and buried and then like Lazarus they came back.

That breeds a capacity to avoid panicking. We could be 3-0 up at half-time and I would still back Carlo, Benzema etc to say "lads, calm down, slow it a bit, we'll get a goal" etc rather than having their heads in their hands.

**Steveo** · 12th March 2023, 10:57 PM

Good points Sid. Forgot about Roma, the season before. You are right, despite their obvious talents they had a vulnerability that you don’t sense in Real.

Obviously you never know… but it looks a done deal sadly.

**Insidious** · 12th March 2023, 11:11 PM

Yeah it's done as far as I'm concerned.

What would make that less miserable is a respectable fight-back.

In 08/09 we weren't a million miles off overturning a 3-1 defeat to Chelsea in the first leg of the Champion's League as we went 2-0 up in the second leg - just needed one more without reply but we ended up getting a chaotic 4-4 on the night resulting in 7-5 on aggregate.

I'd probably take something like that at this stage. Real have a lot of maturity in the game management stakes and although they could potentially spank us again I could actually see them passing it around a Hell of a lot and having a frustrating 0-0 for 60-odd minutes of the game before they cruelly kill us off with one goal after we put a bunch of admirable-yet-ultimately-fruitless effort in.

The joys eh?

**Kev0909** · 12th March 2023, 11:51 PM

I'm only watching it because it's the last before international shit break.......

to be fair amount i've been getting pissed off it's probably a good thing there's a break

**Nineteenx** · 13th March 2023, 12:51 AM

Originally Posted by Kev0909

I'm only watching it because it's the last before international shit break.......

to be fair amount i've been getting pissed off it's probably a good thing there's a break

That's what pissed me off v Bournemouth, we'd had a week to prepare and more rest, had that game Saturday morning and then Real on Wednesday evening and then no game until 1st April, changing the line up from the 7-0 to rest a player on the pretense they were in somehow not quite fit, when they than ran more than all the other mids put together had prior to that event so clearly weren't, well that just fucked me right off, just absolutely fucking stupid and needless

Had we beat Bournemouth, building even greater momentum, sitting just 3 points behind Spurs with a game in hand, still ahead of Newcastle and just 5 behind the filthy in third as we should be, I'd be pretty confident that we could give an unexpected turn around a really damned good go, had we built on our best pressing and counter pressing display since 19-20 before Fab's coming back in, but no, we had to tinker and fuck about, which is a principal reason for our shocking season to date

I still 'hope' we can give it a really good go, but we blew a golden chance to set ourselves up for the showdown in the best possible way on Saturday

**Insidious** · 13th March 2023, 08:24 AM

Originally Posted by Nineteenx

Had we beat Bournemouth, building even greater momentum, sitting just 3 points behind Spurs with a game in hand, still ahead of Newcastle and just 5 behind the filthy in third as we should be, I'd be pretty confident that we could give an unexpected turn around a really damned good go, had we built on our best pressing and counter pressing display since 19-20 before Fab's coming back in, but no, we had to tinker and fuck about, which is a principal reason for our shocking season to date

I still 'hope' we can give it a really good go, but we blew a golden chance to set ourselves up for the showdown in the best possible way on Saturday

Sticking by my prediction prior to Palace, Wolves, Man United and Bournemouth. Felt we needed 9 of the available 12 points and we have unfortunately ended up with 7 of them in the end.

As messy and ever-twisting as the "races" for Champion's League places are, you start to reach a stage where you are simply running out of fixtures within which to correct the misdemeanours that have placed you in a poor position to begin with and we have now heaped needlessly massive amounts of pressure on our Chelsea and Man City ties.

The Europa or the Europa Conference League are looming large. I have absolutely no interest in being in the Europa Conference League at all - think it's a waste of time for a club of our stature.

The Europa, whilst inferior to the Champion's League, does have certain upsides. The trophy itself is an aesthetically gorgeous one to win and outside of the financial might of the Premier League and the likes of Bayern, PSG, Real and Barcelona it's a tournament that a Hell of a lot of continental players take massive pride in playing in which makes your club an attractive destination to a lot of players, even if it's not those from the very top shelf.

Also an alternate route to Champion's League qualification should your League campaign go awry and matches against certain sides earlier in the competition are an excellent way to give youth prospects and fringe players valuable minutes.

All fingers and toes crossed for finishing in the Champion's League places of course but whilst Tottenham and Newcastle will certainly drop plenty of points, we need to capitalise upon them - finishing with 6 points more (from 12 games) than what Tottenham do from their remaining 11 games when we have the harder fixtures and highly questionable away from is not something I expect we'll do.