Taking points home and away from a team with numerous players worth tens of millions.

You will not see a better footballing tika taka goal than Benfica’s second it was phenomenal passing and a finish.

It was a good goal but wouldn’t be one we’d normally concede. We looked out on our arses after they got one back which led to dropping too deep and failing to get a foot on the ball.

For what it’s worth I think Gerrard would have liked to freshen it up but it was a CM we needed on. Without Jack, Zungu and Aribo we had nobody that would seamlessly fit in there.
 
I thought we made them look very ordinary a lot of the time over two spells.

It's easy to retrospectively talk about how good they are - and they are - but it doesn't at all deal with the disappointment of a self-inflicted draw. The look-how-great-their-second-goal-was is a weird kind of deference that identifies the reason for the goal as how good they were, instead of how shattered we were at that point and what we could have done better.
 
Benfica are a Champions League Team, who spent over £100m in the summer.

We more than held our own against them over 2 games, beat them in the head to head and were unlucky not to beat them home and away.

The fact that we lost 2 poor goals late in each game suggests to me that our players were tired mentally, as well as physically and switched off a bit, which you can't do against quality players.

Let's face it, Benfica are several levels above what we play week in week out is Scotland, where we have been strolling through games.

The more games we play against better opposition, the more our players will learn and improve.
100% only positives for me.
 
Too much negativity after two draws with Benfica. Pretty much every stat says that we are just as good as them. Not better, but not really worse. The teams they play against domestically include Porto, and Braga, who we are also unbeaten against.

Porto are currently ranked 16th and Benfica are ranked 23rd. Braga are ranked 48 at present, but were around 37th when we played them.

Let that sink in. That is the level that we are AT.

I watched Rangers in Europe under Jock Wallace and we were frankly pish by comparison to today. And I loved watching that Rangers team winning trebles.

Enjoy this time, Bears.
 
It was a good goal but wouldn’t be one we’d normally concede. We looked out on our arses after they got one back which led to dropping too deep and failing to get a foot on the ball.

For what it’s worth I think Gerrard would have liked to freshen it up but it was a CM we needed on. Without Jack, Zungu and Aribo we had nobody that would seamlessly fit in there.

Your last paragraph sums it up for me Rick.

We had the worst of luck in only 3 of our midfield 6 being unavailable for such a vital match.
 
4th highest spending team in world football, an annual turnover of €300 mil. Whilst the manner of both draws were frustrating the fact that we drew with them and have a better head to head speaks volumes for us. They gave us the runaround last night so it's only natural that we tired both physically and mentally towards the end. Add that with having 3 CMs out that hampered us from making changes later on to freshen things up
 
I thought we made them look very ordinary a lot of the time over two spells.

It's easy to retrospectively talk about how good they are - and they are - but it doesn't at all deal with the disappointment of a self-inflicted draw. The look-how-great-their-second-goal-was is a weird kind of deference that identifies the reason for the goal as how good they were, instead of how shattered we were at that point and what we could have done better.
Agreed.
 
Our squad was valued at 70 million just last week.


Twice we have been 2 goals ahead and twice we have failed to see the game out. Yes we are in a very good place but we still have plenty of room for improvement

It is game management but we can't expect that as well as all the other improvements we've made!!
 
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