A very strange game in Gent and I hate to say it, we were lucky.
The bold Belgians had 20 shots on goal compared to our meagre 4. Once we had scored it was like the Fulham game over again. We seemed to have no cohesive game plan and played to Gent`s strengths.
Yes, we had a goal disallowed (correctly) and then scored through Danny Ings, following Vladimir Coufal channelling his inner Tomas Repka grabbed the ball quickly and angrily and threw it in immediately fast and deep to Bowen, who was on the edge of the six-yard box. He simply squared it to Ings for a tap-in and the goal poacher was never going to miss that. Fair play to Ings ,his first strike in Europe.
So going in to half time it is 1-0 and we were somewhat flattered.
On the hour after trying to be clever and trying to play on the counter attack we deservedly conceded a 57 minute equaliser to Hugo Cuypers. As once again we switched off defensively. As the impressive Castro-Montes played a nice one-two with Gift Orban, and then found Cuypers with an incisive pass.The Belgian, top scorer in the Belgian Pro League, ignored by our leaden footed defence took it in his stride, took an extra touch past a static Johnson, and hammered it left footed past Areola.
There was drama late on as Gift Orban hit the crossbar and then Kamil Piatkowski was sent-off before the decision was overturned following a VAR review.
We’ll do it all again next Thursday at London Stadium, where any sort of win will take us through to the semi-finals.
I just cant sum up how bad of football we are playing, it is at an all time low, we have been watching dire football for 16 months now and its getting worse. It is very hard to look at and I firmly believe if we gave Moyes the 11 best players in their positions in the world he still somehow destroy them. The players have totally given up playing for him, it was so obvious again tonight, the simple things just give it away. I m sorry to have to say this but we will not win this competition with Moyes in charge there is no chance. I really urge the club to seriously consider sacking him, he has drained all the enthusiasm, enjoyment and excitement away from players, fans etc. Really desperate times and I really fear for us staying in the PL under his stewardship. It is 100% not too late to sack him. One final comment, what is it with Moyes and Bowen, has he not looked at the data, why does he have to play every single game and every single minute when we have better players like Fornals and Cornet on the bench. I simply do not get it with this fixation with Bowen.