The civil war thing and the language thing is complete nonsense and bears no effect at all. They are not in the country long enough for that to be a problem. The distance of trip can be an issue and the pitch was certainly a problem but overall it is not an excuse. We bottle things literally every season and it doesn't coincide with Europa league games all the time. And what about th games at home where no travel is involved?
These are highly paid and supposedly highly motivated professionals. They do nothing else other than prepare themselves for games and playing 90 minutes so even if a couple of players are off the pace, the other 8-9 shouldn't be as equally off the pace as they were today. Players who didn't go to Ukraine were poor as well.
This problem is bigger than the Europa League. It is about mentality and desire. These are things that you don't teach. You are complacent by nature or you aren't. And if it is nutured then you should be able to have learnt from previous complacent performances. That performance today was complacent, arrogant and totally unacceptable. Yes, Sherwood got tactics wrong and looked slow to change things but the players have to take most of the blame.
They have more than enough quality about them if they approach it properly to go out there to be able at least perform in a manner that could get a result. That didn't happen so collectively and individually they should ask why that is. How much more motivation do you need? Liverpool go 6 points clear and you can put the pressure on them again and ask them another question but instead they play with an arrogance that suggests they feel that just turning up against Norwich should secure 3 points.
That is the real problem, not this crap being spouted about a 36 hour trip causing one of the biggest squads in this division a problem.
