CL Final, The Season & The Future - my view

CL Final

First of all, congratulations to Liverpool. I feel that we were probably overall the better team on the day, but they scored two, and we didn’t, and were therefore deserved winners.

I got back from Madrid last night and despite the result it was so much fun. I hope that now the players and fans have the taste of a CL final vibe and atmosphere that it makes us hungry for more.

On to the game itself….. what facks me off, is that in both the quarter final and the semi final we conceded a goal in the first 5 minutes, so the rhetoric must have been to keep it tight early with the inevitable fast Liverpool start. We conceded a penalty after 20 seconds for fack sake. Team talk out the window yet again. Absolute joke really, talk about shooting ourselves in the foot.

Much discussion about whether or not Kane should have started, and I think he should have, but I would have named Moura ahead of Alli… who was simple dreadful, and seems to be at a bit of a crossroads… he has had a poor year, and I hope its just fatigue, but there are shades of an “Instagram footballer" in there, like Lingard and a few others.
Moura and Son either side of Kane would have helped pin their fullbacks back. Winks impressed me for the hour he played, and Eriksen was poor.


The Season As A Whole

Two ways of looking at this. The huge number of defeats suffered points to a poor campaign, masked by our run to the CL final, against all the odds. The other view is that to get to the CL Final and top 4, spending no money, and with the nonsense stadium debacle, was actually a job well done.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. It hasn’t been a good domestic campaign, and we were very lucky to scrape into top 4, but our CL campaign took the club to a new level, and we can hopefully build from here.

Levy has got to spend this summer, and Poch has areas to work on too…. Favouritism for certain players is counterproductive I think, there seems to be too little selection on merit.


The Future

Its bright. State of the art stadium to go along with our training ground, long term deal with Nike, deal with the NFL, and other good partners sets us up off the pitch for steady growth in revenue and probably global fanbase.

This is a huge summer for the club. I think Poch will stay, but I am not 100% on that, and Levy has got to make substantial money available. We all know the areas we need to improve so no point going over them, but we need to clear out a lot of deadwood taking up squad space, and with the inevitable loss of a couple of first team players it is imperative that we recruit a number of first team ready, top class players, and compliment this with some young, hungry home grown up and coming players.

I think that we will finally have a substantial net spend, and bring in some real quality. 8 out, 6 in is my gut feel.

As we are now an established champions league club, we really must now make the priority bringing in silverware (didn’t seem to be the club’s priority for the last few years due to off the field activity), but now it’s all about trophies. What’s the point of all the off the field investment if we don’t then invest in the team itself and bring home the biggest trophies.

Overall, we should all be proud of the club... at the start of the season we had no home and we were a club happy to be in the CL.... its now the end of the season and we are in one of the best stadiums on the continent, and reached the CL final for the first time.