I don't get most of your folks here. When EV is bad by all means vilify him but we won 5-1 and he still gets the stick. The performance was good if we are being truthful and objective, during the first half we were in their half for most of it and I might be wrong but they didn't have a shot on target. We created chances and it's not like EV decides whether the team finishes those chances or not, that's on the players. His job is to choose a strategy with the right players that give us a high probability of winning and I think in the first half you have to give him credit for it as if our player's finishing was more clinical we would have buried the game in the first half(And it's not like only messi showed up in that half or even in the second half). Most might moan and give the usual "play messi as false 9 and bench Suarez" but Suarez in my opinion played his heart out today even if he didn't get a goal and coutinho actually looked good in the first half so those choices where the right choices by EV in retrospect. We had a dominant first half with some quick one-twos
reminiscent of Pep's barca and a bit of shaky play during some period in the second half. Now I've seen some here say he told the team to defend the lead but really that's just criticism that seems really biased as at no moment were we looking like a team that was instructed to sit back and absorb the pressure. In all fairness did we really expect to spend the whole of the 90 mins in Lyon's half as that seems the expectations of some judging from their reactions (yes we are stronger than Lyon but we have to consider this is a Lyon team that gave Pep's "exalted" man city team a run for their money over two legs). Likely chance Lyon employed new tactics during the early stage of the second or half and the team had to respond to it, which EV did with his subs(funnily most here are not crediting EV for this and are just putting it down to messi's brilliance but in reality the two played a part ). From what I've seen the post always gets moved with EV, first people were blaming him for lack of rotation in our last game and already predicting a loss with some here expressing their desire that we lose the match just so they'll be able to say EV is terrible, then when the line up for the match was released some were predicting a loss for us again. We win with a truly dominant first half display and a second half display that showed the teams ability to adapt to situations and yet people still are complaining. If we won 5-1 with a terrible display that can be understood but can anyone who wants to be objective call this match a terrible display apart from those 10-20mins where Lyon started fighting back( which in reality wasn't that terrible as Lyon didn't have that many clear cut chances).
Enjoy the game, give credit where and when it's due and wish for the best for team(No matter how we feel as fans the team is still in the run for the Cl and it's not like that struggled to pass this stage yet there are people who are predicting our loss again). If your bosses appraised you the way you do EV after delivering results like EV has done I'm sure most will be screaming that life's unfair.
Forca barca!
