When you play against teams in Europe, you don’t play against them for years apart sometimes. So to be able to play against Barcelona a few months ago and take the learnings from that game into a knockout game, it can only be a good thing for us.
This is why you play football, to play in big nights like these. At our home, we feel like we’ll have a good chance to put in a performance that gives us the opportunity to progress further in the competition. We’re confident, we’ve had some good results and performances in the UEFA Champions League already this season, and we need to bring that into tonight.
At the weekend, we were disappointed to exit the FA Cup against Manchester City. For the first 30-40 minutes we can be really pleased with the performance we gave and the chances we created and lots of different aspects of the game. It got wrestled away from us a little bit and we couldn’t quite get ourselves back into the game. But they’re a top outfit and we can take things to improve on moving forward with tonight’s game in mind.
And what better way to bounce back than a Champions League knockout game. We feel like we have gained a lot of good experience from a couple of years ago in the Champions League that we’ve brought into this season. And this season we’ve learned from the opposition we’ve played against. Obviously playing Barcelona already on matchday one is a good thing for us when it comes to playing them again.
We know what threats they will bring and we will have to be ready for it. However, since that first meeting, we are also a different team. It’s very early on in the season when you play your first Champions League game. We’ve developed well as a team since then. It’s a game we can really look forward to.
When you think of big European home games, like Paris Saint-Germain a couple of years ago, the atmosphere you created in the stands gave us a platform for the result and it played a massive part in the performance on the night, and getting such a positive result. I’m sure everyone on the pitch will be bang up for it tonight and so will everyone off it.
We’ve had some thin moments this season, thick moments and difficult moments. Your support means everything to us and it really gives us a chance on these big nights and in big games. It can really tip the balance in our favour.
Every press, every duel, every big moment in the game – as an opposition player it’s horrible to be on the negative side of that. The nastier we can make it, the better.
Nick Pope.
