Champions League 2014/15

[MJB]

If Courtois was on his line, he'd have tipped that over. He came a long way during that corner and didn't get all the way back quickly enough.

[lanky316]

PSG can't sit and absorb this now. Chelsea will be pounding them and throwing themselves to the floor constantly. Going to be a great last 5 though.

[DavidMarrio]

Get in there PSG. Knock the rent boys out

[Gazz]

It's an interesting insight into the team mentalities, both Chelsea and Bayern have played against ten men tonight for the vast majority of their respective games. Chelsea sat back and lacked dynamism and are now paying the price whereas Bayern have been utterly ruthless and destroyed Shaktar.

[Baddar]

And that's it. Hopefully Zlatan gets his red card rescinded now.

[FLiam]

That is a mental performance from PSG.

English teams are way behind the others in Europe.

[The Lusophone]

Bayern are winning 7-0.

Bayern are scary as shit.

[Asuka's Gonna Kill You]

Really wish they would get rid of the shit away goals counting in extra time rule.

[FLiam]

I wish they got rid of the away goals rule full stop. It's shit. Just not when Chelsea are on the losing end of it.

[lanky316]

Really wish they would get rid of the shit away goals counting in extra time rule.

To be honest that makes games much better. You get an extra half hour in front of your fans as they roar you home so it gives another reason for an away team to play rather than just sit and try and snatch it on penalties. I'm probably in favour of it only counting for goals scored in extra time rather than a "carried over" style.

[Gazz]

EXTRA TIME MULTIBALL~!

[Matt]

Really wish they would get rid of the shit away goals counting in extra time rule.

To be honest that makes games much better. You get an extra half hour in front of your fans as they roar you home so it gives another reason for an away team to play rather than just sit and try and snatch it on penalties. I'm probably in favour of it only counting for goals scored in extra time rather than a "carried over" style.

How would that make any difference? Going into extra time both teams would have to be matched on away goals and only one team can score any more away goals at this point

[lanky316]

Why would they have to be matched on away goals to go into it when away goals don't exist at that point? After 180 minutes the scores are tied and you go into a further half hour, one side has home advantage - due to the luck of who happened to be drawn second in a draw - and an away goal rule that comes in to effect only in extra time goes some way towards counteracting that time rather than increasing the second leg home advantage any further.

[Matt]

Oh, ignore me, I completely misunderstood

[stokeriño]

So after that shit and crawling home at 1am and generally not getting much sleep, I now have my Annual Performance Review at work first thing this morning. IT JUST GETS BETTER AND BETTER~!

If I were to describe the match in one word, it would be 'diabolical'. Pick almost any isolated facet of said match and the word 'diabolical' would not be a half-bad way of describing it. Most of that goes with Chelsea's performance, naturally.

It seems to be a classic European referee thing to try and even a very wrong call out with another very wrong call (as opposed to British refs who, if they're going to fuck up, just carry on and do whatever they like). Incorrect red card (which I note that he had taken out of his pocket before being surrounded, so eh), followed by Costa penalty not given, not to mention David Luiz doing his usual thing of elbowing people in the head without rebuke (aka The Fellaini Technique). Amusing, or at least somewhat telling, how Luiz got a nice round of applause when the teams were read out, but within an hour his every touch was being booed...

Anyway, after all that mostly-first-half mess, Chelsea decide to play utter bollocks for the remainder of the match. It's funny, if I were presented with the choice of "Zlatan red card *or* Costa penalty", I would take the penalty IF ONLY BECAUSE there seems to be some fucked up psychological thing with our team at the moment wherein if we have an obvious advantage, e.g. of one man, we feel compelled to be as complacent and generally as shocking as possible. So weirdly, I imagine we would have played better if PSG had 11 men on the pitch. Bizarre, but whatever.

On the plus side, Zouma came on late and I continue to heart Zouma. It would be fun just to watch him doing his mega-leap headers all day. Drog did a decent job too. Azpi was a boss, as usual. Really the player who came out worst of the evening was Ramires, who seemed to personify all the most utterly shocking parts of our performance.

Other plusses...erm...I don't have to spend money on a quarter final ticket? Clutching at straws here.

[EddieG]

Didn't Blatter actually suggest getting rid of the extra time away goals?

[stokeriño]

Blatter suggests a lot of things...

[EddieG]

True, but it's one of the few things I agreed with him on.

[Cheeky Hughes]

Hang on... are City the last English team standing this year?

[Matt]

Arsenal are still in... Kind of