Partey's yellow was both unfortunate and stupid. In my opinion it's Partey's fate to be a "shit magnet" whose supporters will end up regretting he was never available when he was needed.
Mind you, he's also let us down ball-watching in matches of this magnitude when he's actually been on the pitch. For instance, Partey put in a terrible performance at Anfield for the 2–2 in 2023. He hasn't tended to excel for us in difficult moments, but in longer runs of league dominance.
We had our fair share of passengers and underperformers last night anyway.
As it happens Rice and Merino, the two players who were actually available to play and were most responsible for Dembele being unmarked on that chance, are also the two players most responsible for us being in this semi-final. Swings and roundabouts.
The thing that frustrates me about the goal we gave up is not the specific players you could blame one way or another, but the re-appearance of a type of "moment" I hoped we'd cut out of our football. It had me revisiting the multi-player fuckup that gave Bayern the advantage to put us out of Europe last season.
