DMAA

Morelos has been really good. Shows what he can do, hopefully gets him going again this season.

Fantastic. We are playing really well. Don’t let the red card take away from that. These are good and very expensive players we are playing against.

Great play

Bunch of divers

Rob MacLean and Alex Rae.

So close from Aribo. That would have been a great goal.

My word, you’d think they were commentating on a goalless Stranraer vs Arbroath game.

As someone who criticised Morelos quite a bit, he has been really good. Really pleased to see how well he has used the ball.

We are looking good here

What a goal Kamara

Bad luck for the goal we lost and good luck with that one. Great pass from Davis.

Fantastic vision and pass from Davis as usual. Kent shows his value to the team in these games again with his pace.

YESSS. Red card.

We’ll have plenty opportunities to win this. Just need to take our chances for a change.

This mob will go down with the slightest touch, professional divers

1-1 Morelos

Strong side from Benfica, but not their strongest. No Waldschmidt who is currently their top goalscorer on 5 in 8 games, with 2 assists. No Darwin Nunez either who is their second top goalscorer on 4 goals in 8 games, and has an impressive 5 assists. If anything they have maybe gone slightly more defensive as Pizzi is more of an attacking midfielder I think.

I was right about Aribo and Kent but Morelos starts ahead of Roofe. Arfield drops out for Jack. Strong team and I am a bit more confident with Aribo starting, he has real quality.

The league is the priority for them, no different to us, and with 6 points on the board they won't be too worried about EL. I still expect them to put out a strong side, probably their strongest.

It's going to be very interesting. Against Willem II and Standard Liege it was Kent & Hagi. But against stronger opposition, Leverkusen, it was Kent & Barker. Benfica are strong but not in Leverkusen's league. I hope Aribo gets the nod. There just isn't enough technical ability in the Morelos, Kent, Barker trio in my opinion. Aribo gives you a target for bringing down long balls and holding the ball up really well, as well as more ability to pick a pass and create chances. I wouldn't be surprised to see Roofe play too. Rested at the weekend and he has much more pace than Morelos. I would be more confident in our ability to create chances and score goals with a trio of Roofe, Aribo, Kent.

I think this is highly unlikely. Even if we are able to do it without legal issues, the fact is that they are assets and you have to worry about precedent. There is always a risk that one of our £10m+ players will try to get off with what they see as a minor breach and we couldn't treat them any differently, and we just aren't going to throw money away like that. Maybe loans are the next move. Very disappointed about Edmundsons in particular, I think he has a lot of potential.

It’s quite incredible how much a pitch can negatively impact a game but many players didn’t play that well and the pitch has to have played quite a big part. Helander in particular seemed to struggle. He was his usual reliable self aside from I think 3 separate incidents where he just seemed to slip/lose his footing. Really uncharacteristic for him. Barisic definitely had issues with his crossing due to the pitch. I would add Kent to that list, that is all I will say about that. I think Aribo was generally very good. Hopefully it won’t be long until he is fully fit, he is such a good player. Pleased with Itten and still confused why he hasn’t been given more opportunities. Tavernier was very good. No big standout for me on this occasion.

I heard it was Kent, JJ asked to take the hit

Seems this was caught quickly, party was last night. So it looks like we are in the clear, there won’t be any postponements.

Yeh I agree with that. I said on this forum during the Bolognoli thing that Jones was going to be a risk for this kind of thing. Very predictable unfortunately.