Geez whiz, I wonder why is a pure strike like Ekitike dropping in midfield or rotating on the wings instead of SITTING IN THE BOX AND MAKING RUNS (tm)? Maybe due to the fact that he needs actual passes to be effective and Pools midfield is wonky and not able to find him enough

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Lmao, Benfica had a better xG than us (1.64 compared to 0.98) same number of BCC (2), 1 woodwork hit from Rafa Silva courtesy of Vinicius losing the ball in front of our box and another near miss again due to Vinicius losing the ball in our own half. Our goals were a result of mistakes from Benfica (at the first goal Benfica’s CB passes the ball directly to Tchouameni and puts us on a counter, at the second goal Benfica’s player decides to chest the ball into Valverde instead of booting it leaving them completely open), Courtois had double the amount of saves (4 to 2) than Benfica’s GK who had a -1.13 score in goals prevented compared to 0.34 from Tibo. Benfica won 55% of their duels, covered more ground, had more touches in our own box. We were lucky by any metric to get out of that game with only 1 goal conceded. We now either get Sporting or (my personal favourite) City and if, by some miracle, we go through the round of 16 we get either Bayern or Arsenal in the quarterfinals. If we don’t drastically improve (cuz another Benfica performance will get us trashed) it won’t be looking good.

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