PSV Eindhoven take a one goal advantage against us after we dominated play and became frustrated.
We definitely had the better of play, with Rosicky again playing out of his skin forcing the PSV keeper to make some fine saves. But after a first half where we easily controlled the game, our motivation seemed to plummet and after 61 minutes Mendez beat Lehmann with a low effort from 25 yards.
During the second half, all the flowing football and the one-touch passing seemed lost, and I can’t remember a recent performance of ours where we have lost possession through such ragged passing.
Rosicky and Henry both came quite close to getting an opener but after some sloppy play, PSV committed more players to attack and punished us for our loss of focus. Our attention was all off after PSV took the lead and the incident that most summed this up was the big cheese (Senderos) rather amusingly committing probably the most obvious (and unnecessary) handball ever.
The match headed towards a clear loss after Baptista seemed to steal a free kick (and waste it, shooting straight at the keeper) after Thierry was fouled and looked to be aligning himself for the shot. This left Thierry shaking his head, but whether this was disbelief at the stolen free kick or generally be annoyed by the wasted chance is unclear.
Let’s hope with only a one goal deficit, in the second leg at home we can produce a better full-match performance and break what is likely to be a heavily defensive strategy from PSV.
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