It may not be evidence of a crisis, but the loss at Betis could be something of an inflection point in our season. A win would have given us a nine-point cushion over seventh and eighth, even a draw would have kept us six ahead of Betis. But now they are within three, and Granada are six back, so our Europa League place doesn’t look so safe (and never mind about fourth place and the Champions League).
Did Emery get it wrong against Betis, and has he been guilty of giving too much respect to some of the lower-placed sides (c.f. Huesca, Cadiz, Elche)? And do we have a goalkeeper controversy? Allen thinks maybe so.
We also spend some time looking ahead to Thursday’s clash with Jesse Marsch’s Red Bull Salzburg side, which has lost some oomph after selling a star player in the January window (as I recall, they also did this the last time we played them in the EL round of 32, in 2015). Zach is optimistic. Maybe we can recover our scoring power—it would be a good time.