CynicalGooner wrote:Lots of praise for Gervinho but I don't think he had a particularly good game. He scored, yes. Albeit because of awful goalkeeping. But he spent most of the rest of the game being pretty ineffective and frustrating. I can't remember a CL group game at home when we have created so little and had so few shots on goal before.
He was offside for a large portion of the first half, kept getting called for dopey fouls (although that was mainly the ref being a t**t) and IMO we looked like a much more balanced team when we put a proper CF up front.
I'd say our offensive players were more the victim of high intensity, very well organised defensive work in the majority of the first half.
The amount of times i saw Pod or Gerv getting closed down by 3 players on the wing with the middle covered was unreal. Granted, our passing game wasnt the sharpest and we did turnover the ball a lot, but you could see that Olympiacos worked their socks off to keep us frustrated and at bay.
By the time Giroud came on, they had to open up a bit because of the early goal by Pod, they were chasing the result and couldnt keep that solid defensive 2 x banks of 4 going. The fact that they had 11 men in their own half from kick off showed as much.
Look at the job they did on Cazorla first half. He was mute, always moving backwards. Compare it to the second half, he was popping up everywhere because they didnt have the defenders on the pitch in those positions to keep him shackled.
Gerv came to life with a little space and out of all our players, i recon he caused the most damage overall.
