Champions League - Round of 16 - 2nd Legs 5/6/12/13 March
- Thread starter TheGame
- Start date
You missed my point
Ignore me, I'm pissed
If you watched this tie, this was far from a scrap. Porto were really good over both legs.
Man what a shame Porto couldn't finish it off in the penalties. Would've been a perfect night of a Portuguese team going to the quarters + Arsenal going out. Everyone likes seeing Arsenal going out of a competition.
Everyone can wait as that Arsenal side are unlikely to progress much further.
We could beat Dortmund/PSV, PSG or Inter. The rest would be a lot harder though.
You won't get close to beating any of those teams with a repeat of the performance over two legs against Porto.
There aren't many teams left in the competition that plays like Porto, maybe apart from Atlético Madrid.
What? No. NO. Italian fans would rather juventus go bankrupt and disappear than win the audi cup. Are you insane?!?!?!?
Think you could beat anyone but Inter, actually
Inter or Real would be a hell of a tie. Just hope it's not City. Unbelievably tedious.
What, no love for Arsenal-Bayern? I'm hurt
Seriously though, you might be able to get some revenge this time
Revenge would be nice, and there's the Kane factor! But... Sorry, I feel like I've watched us get battered by Barcelona and Bayern enough times. PTSD from the later Wenger years.
Tbf, that was rather very unfortunate. Where your declining teams had to go against their very best for years. Whereas now it looks like the other way around.
Barca-Arsenal would be fun. Poor 4th official though. Will have two maniacs running and jumping around him.
We struggle against scrappy teams, Newcastle, Brentford,Porto are examples this season. Hope we get ball playing opponent next time. Knowing our luck it will be mostly Atletico Madrid.
City, Madrid and Inter to an extent are the teams to avoid. Other teams should be even match for Gunners.
We did what we could, we don't have players to get further.
We have probably the worst squad of the last 20 years and still managed to discuss the tie in the knockout stages with a team that is 1 order of magnitude richer than us.
This was again due to Conceição - the good and the bad. He is good tactically and makes teams cohese and that have a good plan but he has problems with creative players so he ends up filling the squad/team with sparkless workhorses.
Arsenal was very disappointing, Arteta never managed to find a way to get past us and was bailed out by the quality of his players. If we had 1 or 2 good players in the attack Arsenal would have had no chance.
Saka was very disappointing as well. Wendell is bad defensively and had basically no issues with him.
I don't know what is happening in the Premier League but I guess if teams had any kind of tactics this Arsenal wouldn't be 1st place at all.
We are 3rd place in the portuguese league, 6 points behind a terrible Benfica in 2nd place. We are not a good team and this Arsenal really struggles with us, this speaks more of them than of us.
We now have to keep hoping we can catch Benfica in the 2nd place otherwise we won't be in the Champions League next year despite our good performance (again) in this competition - 3rd place in Portugal doesn't give access anymore.
We have probably the worst squad of the last 20 years and still managed to discuss the tie in the knockout stages with a team that is 1 order of magnitude richer than us.
This was again due to Conceição - the good and the bad. He is good tactically and makes teams cohese and that have a good plan but he has problems with creative players so he ends up filling the squad/team with sparkless workhorses.
Arsenal was very disappointing, Arteta never managed to find a way to get past us and was bailed out by the quality of his players. If we had 1 or 2 good players in the attack Arsenal would have had no chance.
Saka was very disappointing as well. Wendell is bad defensively and had basically no issues with him.
I don't know what is happening in the Premier League but I guess if teams had any kind of tactics this Arsenal wouldn't be 1st place at all.
We are 3rd place in the portuguese league, 6 points behind a terrible Benfica in 2nd place. We are not a good team and this Arsenal really struggles with us, this speaks more of them than of us.
We now have to keep hoping we can catch Benfica in the 2nd place otherwise we won't be in the Champions League next year despite our good performance (again) in this competition - 3rd place in Portugal doesn't give access anymore.
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Really? Despite more spots in total, they removed a spot from 7th placed country? Didn't they say that smaller countries would benefit from the change as well?
I do get that point. But i fear citys cheating will be brushes under the carpet and as time passes, things will start to count. I cant overstate how much i think theyve ruined english football and if im being consistent, then I should be in favour of a sporting achievement (Arsenal or liverpool win) however unsavoury. Let any arsenal or liverpool success be something we have to aim to achieve, we might not like it, but its at least sport.
They didn't remove a spot, we simply fell to 7th place in the UEFA ranking (we were 6th before).
I agree however that the distribution of spots has became a farse since the 3rd and 4th places from the top 4 got direct access to the group stages instead of having to go to the qualifying rounds.
Atm in Portugal the 1st place will go to the group stage and the 2nd place has to play 2 qualifying rounds.
Madrid look tired right now and are not firing when Vinicius and Bellingham are absent or having a quiet night. Better for you to face them now than lets say May when Militao and Courtois are back. And it'd be better for you to have the underdog mantle coming into the game.
If Inter knock out Atletico tonight I'd want to avoid them. Haven't lost a match in 2024 yet and are very compact.
I think you just needed one quality winger to get the draw yesterday, or a world-class fullback.
Tactics meant Nico Gonzalez being slow wasn't an issue, Varela and Evanilson did well and the defence was good enough apart from the occasional dodgy moment from the fullbacks (Wendell weak right foot clearance led to Odegaard having the ball and creating for Trossrd on Joao Mario's side).
I can't think of anyone other than Bonucci I've seen have even a single game at CB passing the ball that well. Pique was great but not this level.
I thought Kounde dominated him.
Very few players I can think of that have played that position at that age, at such a high level and have looked so so good. Pau Cubarsi is gonna be an absolute beast. 17yo and looked so assured while defending and absolutely world class when passing out from the back.
Am I the only one that has become bored of champions league outside of United (or your supported club) games in it, it's losing it's excitement and becoming too predictable, I forgot it was back on last week and this week
I think Arsenal were disappointing because:
- You are very well coached
- While you may not have players with the biggest names (yet) they are all high quality - particularly your full backs
- You were never behind in the tie at any point and seemed happy for penalties, which is incredibly hard to break down
Arteta not finding a way through and being bailed out by his players is a bit of stretch. After all, our goal wasn’t a set piece of a strike from range - we literally played through you.
But all in all, I think we looked ordinary because you made us look ordinary. It was a really good tactical battle against an incredibly well-drilled team. It was by far the toughest game with played at home this year.
You really believe that?
This year in particular there's a lot of crap teams. Also City are better than all the other teams. Before you had Real, Juve, PSG, Bayern on a similar level which made for exciting ties, now all the others are weaker than City which makes it boring when you now they're inevitably going to be in the final.
It’s really annoying that whenever this happens it’s coincided with us being shit or in transition. Whenever we’ve won the CL we’ve had to be the best team in Europe, and beat some damn good sides along the way. We’ve never just picked one up because everyone else dropped the ball.
You are conditioned to believe Arsenal, who are currently ahead of City in the PL and are outperforming them by any metric, can't compete with them. That Real Madrid and Barcelona and Bayern and Inter/Atletico can't compete.
Here's the thing: back when you had Madrid, Juve, PSG and Bayern, it was really just Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern, the others were the Arsenal and Inter and Bayern of this season - until they beat one of those 3...
I agree and I'd suggest that the Liverpool match should give some significant encouragement to some of these other sides.
A number of teams - Chelsea, Spurs, and now most effectively Liverpool - have shown that if you can get City into a high tempo, more stretched kind of match then you can expose the age and lack of athleticism of some of their players, especially in midfield. KDB/Bernardo/Rodri (and with Stones jumping into that line too) is a brilliant midfield in many respects but its not a very athletic group at this stage in their careers or one that does well if the spaces get bigger and they are more stretched. I think we saw some of this in Real's first leg against City last year too, even though their level was higher than now.
Would like Barca to win it this year. They’ve got some really exciting young players. Enjoyed watching them… reminds me of us and the way we bring through youth players.
Why have other teams started booing the CL anthem?
Good start by Dortmund. Decent finish by Sancho
Knew he'd score
The yellow wall that Dortmund have looks impressive . If we do build a new stadium I’m ok with something similar
We are quite a few years off challenging really and will need to get the correct manager after Xavi but the youngsters look very bright. Of the under 20 y.o players in world football currently, Yamal* and Mainoo really stand out as footballers that just have 'it' with great decision making beyond their years.
*just hope we don't make the same mistakes we did with Pedri
Our league has really fallen off a cliff. Psv hasnt impressed at all in Europe and they might (and probably will) win the league unbeaten.