Champions league without a doubt. Its the biggest club competition in the world and something we really should have won more then 3 times.
Premier League or Champions League?
- Thread starter thelemon
- Start date
I'm just being a bit difficult with you, because I interpreted your first answer as a defensive position because most people think Porto fluked it in 2004
However - as a general rule - I think we can agree that normally the winner of a league competition will be more deserving than the winner of a cup competition, right?
I don't think Porto fluked it at all. We were superior to United in both hands by a distance. I'd say our luck with the (outrageous, I reckon) disallowed goal, is more than evened out by our massive dominance in both games. I wonder how many United fans remember that Porto had 27 attempts on goal against only 7 from United (in both matches combined). That's pretty poor for a team that "should have won it" [the competition] like someone claimed back there
.From there onwards we were superior to every opponent we faced (Coruña being the tightest tie). That's not a fluke the way I see it. Just a year were top teams where unusually unstable, with teams like Real and Milan oscillating between the great and the ridiculous. Porto was effective, assertive and the most competent team in the competition. Had our moments of luck, but I struggle to remember the last winner that didn't had any, whatever the cup competition we're talking about.
Indeed
That's quite a statement! I don't agree with it, but we are all entitled to our own ranking of what is more important.
I don't think Porto fluked it at all. We were superior to United in both hands by a distance. I'd say our luck with the (outrageous, I reckon) disallowed goal, is more than evened out by our massive dominance in both games. I wonder how many United fans remember that Porto had 27 attempts on goal against only 7 from United (in both matches combined). That's pretty poor for a team that "should have won it" [the competition] like someone claimed back there
From there onwards we were superior to every opponent we faced (Coruña being the tightest tie). That's not a fluke the way I see it. Just a year were top teams where unusually unstable, with teams like Real and Milan oscillating between the great and the ridiculous. Porto was effective, assertive and the most competent team in the competition. Had our moments of luck, but I struggle to remember the last winner that didn't had any, whatever the cup competition we're talking about.
Oh your team back then was definitely good. However I don't think that Monaco or Porto would have made it to the final in a more "normal" year, if you see my point? The road was kind of open that year - which is why I think people are right to say that "United should have won it that year". So the "fluke" statement is, of course, about the ref but also about the general opponents that year.
The likes of Lyon and Deportivo were certainly no mugs then, but Porto still avoided any "real" big hitters because they all fecked up that year.
Still a massive accomplishment by Porto obviously.
Actually that would involve getting very very worried the whole season, so probably not the greatest idea.Indeed
That's quite a statement! I don't agree with it, but we are all entitled to our own ranking of what is more important.
Perhaps 3rd and CL...
I see your point, but when I think of a "fluke" I think of teams parking the bus and getting past their opponents mostly based on luck, not our theoretically harder opponents being shit. Like I've said, we had our lucky moments, but then again I would claim United was extremely lucky to come out of Porto with only a 2-1 loss.
Indeed they were our toughest opponent, but they weren't stronger than ourselves. If United shouldn't even gotten past Porto how can the claim that they should have won the competition have any validity?
If you want to claim that "luck" doesn't matter and only referee mistakes are accountable, then United should have gotten to extra time (that's what would have happened if Scholes goal counted) at best, what would happen from there onwards remains to be seen. If you take that route though, then all the claims of Chelsea or Liverpool fluking it go down the drain as well, as it wasn't exactly referees who gifted them the victories, was it?
It's like the fact we benefited from a blind linesman takes away all the meaning from both ties. Porto ceased to be the best team in those matches because of it... It's ridiculous.
Last edited:
To be honest I didn't remember that, was thinking most people say they fluked it because of them being shit and 5th in the League.
People still say Chelsea fluked it by parking the bus though. Or am I forgetting yet another memorable referee mistake?
It would!I agree with 3rd and a CL if we were in a period where we are winning the league regularly. That would be a hit worth taking for one season to get a 4th. But these days I'd give anything to get the PL trophy back.
I can't remember, and personally don't see anything wrong with bus parking tactics. If Sir Alex did that in 09 or 11, we might have 1 or 2 more...
Was a great achievement by Porto and i give them all the merit. Like Mourinho said when he recieved the Portuguese FA Manager of the century award last week, if he anyone else wins the Champions League with 9 native players out of 11, he will give the award to him. Doubt any club outside the big league group will ever win it (fluke or not).
I still think a CL is the quickest way of getting us back to the top after the debacle of last season and since our lead in the PL count is in no danger for the foreseeable future.
I agree with 3rd and a CL if we were in a period where we are winning the league regularly. That would be a hit worth taking for one season to get a 4th. But these days I'd give anything to get the PL trophy back.
Anyway, either would be nice next season.
I can't remember, and personally don't see anything wrong with bus parking tactics. If Sir Alex did that in 09 or 11, we might have 1 or 2 more...
Me either. I don't like it aesthetically as a viewer, but wouldn't dare call someone winning the game that way "lucky". Which is the meaning of fluke, isn't it?
Agreed.
Agreed. Fluke would be what Barca did against Chelsea...
Because we lost to Porto on account of horrifying officiating, which is a manifestation of bad luck. Of course, there are other kinds of "bad luck" such as freak injuries to keep players before or during huge matches, beach balls and maybe even deflections -- although over could argue it both ways as to whether a deflection is or is not a "luck" event.
But that's the game of football. In earlier post I mentioned our luck against Bayern and our luck when Terry slipped. Were we "lucky" when Bayern hit the crossbar a few times in normal time and then we hit them on two corners in the span of 90 seconds in added time? Maybe, maybe not. What about Terry slipping on the pk? I think we caught some good luck in that instance, but the argument that it's all on Terry is a strong one.
I don't believe that luck evens itself out over the years, but I do believe luck plays an important role in certain matches. What are we to make, for example, of the Leicester City match? 5 goals speaks for itself on some level, but the linesman did miss the ball crossing the byline before the cross was sent to Ulloa and Clattenburg clearly overlooked Vardy fouling Rafael before the dubious foul was called. Even putting aside the effect the Clattenburg decision had on the momentum of the game, at worst it should have been a 3-3 draw. Over the course of a season you get over it, but in cup competitions bad refereeing -- bad luck -- can end you run right there. We were poised to shock Real Madrid before Nani was outrageously sent off by the Turkish reveree. Bad luck.
@Gannicus
If you hadn't lost on account of horrifying officiating, we would be the ones claiming to be unlucky, because we were much better than United in both matches. That's my point. I don't disagree with anything else you said.
There were plenty of deflected shots and "lucky" (in our wide definition of the word) moments that favoured United in both matches. You were "lucky" to get to the second tie with only a one goal disadvantage. Most of you are oblivious to the fact you were clearly inferior to Porto because Porto was benefited by a very poor refereeing decision. I don't blame you for that, I'd probably feel the same, as there isn't "unluckiness" that hurts more than the one due to poor refereeing.
What I mostly disagreed though was the initial claim, "United should have won it that year". You shouldn't. You can't make that claim when you didn't even deserve to get past the final 16. It's just that the way you didn't get past it was fairly contrived.
I think "should have won it" makes sense if:
- You have a far better team than anyone else (say Madrid was eliminated from the Club World Cup in the first game, we'd say "they should have won it".
- You were extremely close to winning it (Bayern in 99, Atletico last year)...
It doesn't make sense when you're neither the best team in theory (that was probably Milan), in practice (that was Porto) nor got remotely close to the final. Having a wrongfully ruled out goal is not nearly enough to make that claim, I'm sorry. Even if then you proceed to imagine winning the game against us in extra-time and getting past Lyon, Coruña and Monaco just like we did. Because a Milan fan will be saying the same (we should have won it, just needed to suffer one less goal in that absurd Coruña game) with a stronger claim, and a Porto fan will be saying the same (we really should have taken care of it in the first leg) with a stronger claim. They can't all be right.
In simplistic and childish world of "everything else remains the same" such as the one where United would face Lyon, Coruña, Monaco and be favourite in all matches, the game against Porto would have gone to extra time with us playing far better and with the advantage of a goal in extra time for us being worth more. So that doesn't glue either.
If you hadn't lost on account of horrifying officiating, we would be the ones claiming to be unlucky, because we were much better than United in both matches. That's my point. I don't disagree with anything else you said.
There were plenty of deflected shots and "lucky" (in our wide definition of the word) moments that favoured United in both matches. You were "lucky" to get to the second tie with only a one goal disadvantage. Most of you are oblivious to the fact you were clearly inferior to Porto because Porto was benefited by a very poor refereeing decision. I don't blame you for that, I'd probably feel the same, as there isn't "unluckiness" that hurts more than the one due to poor refereeing.
What I mostly disagreed though was the initial claim, "United should have won it that year". You shouldn't. You can't make that claim when you didn't even deserve to get past the final 16. It's just that the way you didn't get past it was fairly contrived.
I think "should have won it" makes sense if:
- You have a far better team than anyone else (say Madrid was eliminated from the Club World Cup in the first game, we'd say "they should have won it".
- You were extremely close to winning it (Bayern in 99, Atletico last year)...
It doesn't make sense when you're neither the best team in theory (that was probably Milan), in practice (that was Porto) nor got remotely close to the final. Having a wrongfully ruled out goal is not nearly enough to make that claim, I'm sorry. Even if then you proceed to imagine winning the game against us in extra-time and getting past Lyon, Coruña and Monaco just like we did. Because a Milan fan will be saying the same (we should have won it, just needed to suffer one less goal in that absurd Coruña game) with a stronger claim, and a Porto fan will be saying the same (we really should have taken care of it in the first leg) with a stronger claim. They can't all be right.
In simplistic and childish world of "everything else remains the same" such as the one where United would face Lyon, Coruña, Monaco and be favourite in all matches, the game against Porto would have gone to extra time with us playing far better and with the advantage of a goal in extra time for us being worth more. So that doesn't glue either.
Last edited:
To be honest, the CL is not an award for being the best team in Europe. It's an award for being the best team in the Champions League.
I want more CLs so that the scouse stop taunting us about the 5 they have.
I want Premier Leagues in the short term. It may be 2 years without a challenge for United come May and we need to set that right.
I'm not saying I wouldn't take a Champions League and celebrate it for all its worth, but in the last 2 wins, we've been deserving winners both in the competition and as the stand out team domestically too. To me that's how it should be. To spawn a Liverpool scenario of coming nowhere near your own league and to fluke your way to that trophy would be a tainted success somewhat.
Had you asked this question pre-Moyes. Champions League every time.
I'm not saying I wouldn't take a Champions League and celebrate it for all its worth, but in the last 2 wins, we've been deserving winners both in the competition and as the stand out team domestically too. To me that's how it should be. To spawn a Liverpool scenario of coming nowhere near your own league and to fluke your way to that trophy would be a tainted success somewhat.
Had you asked this question pre-Moyes. Champions League every time.
I do remember feeling very relieved with the 2-1 scoreline in Porto after the 1st leg, but I think you're exaggerating if you claim that Porto dominated at OT as well.
United could well have won it if we got past Porto, which I thought was a pretty even contest ruined by the blind linesman, 2-1 at OT and ET would have been the "fair" result.
Premier League because I think that is what football revolves around.
The league.
Champions league is prestige, the league is pride.
Champions league is prestige, the league is pride.
I don't think we dominated at OT. We attacked and pressed more, and had some more shots but that was expected since we were trailing for most of the match.
tell our spoilt fans that. most seem to see the group stage as some kind of inconvenience!
I disagree with the majority of your post, but let's return to the underlying principle at hand, which is...
Whether winning the English prem trophy is a greater accomplishment than winning a CL trophy.
I submit that winning the English league, the BPL, trophy is the greater accomplishment.
The argument for the CL trophy is simple and needs no recital here. But it is invariably the case that in any cup competition that luck plays a relatively larger role in a successful cup run than being at the top of the table after 38 matches in the English prem. Let's just take a hypotheticals, which have happened. Hypothetically, your best player could sent off with an outrageous red card (or successively yellow card, which is a stupid rule) in the second leg of the semifinal, depriving your team of your best player in the final. In the cup final, you could have your next best player outrageously sent off with a straight red, a bad offside calls gives your opponent an undeserved goal or deprives you of a deserved goal AND a dubious handball or blatant dive awards the opponent a pk (or a stonewall handball isn't seen by the ref). These things really do happen in a single game and can turn the outcome of a game from what would have otherwise been a win to a defeat, or vice versa.
These things happen in league play as well, of course, but there is no knockout round in league play. You get over a bad day at the office for the referees (Leicester City) or at least you have the chance to get over it and if you don't it's all on you. The Leicester City match might have been our third or fourth match of the season. We got hosed by hideous refereeing, but by May will have played 37 other matches, so we'll have no complaints in the end about the impact of Clattenburg in our match against Leicester City. But we do have a complaint about Cuneyt, the Turkish referee in our match against Real Madrid who sent off Nani for one of the worst calls I've ever seen (the Real Madrid player came up from behind Nani, whi at worst should have been shown a yellow card), who sent us down to 10 men in a match (and tie) we were well positioned until that point to win.
In our match against Porto, Scholes was clearly onside (1-2 yards, not inches) and his goal should have stood. There was no foul (the alleged perpertrator might have been Phil Neville, but I'd have to go over the match notes to be sure) yet a foul was called that led to a free kick in a dangerous position and Porto scored (the infamous Howard mistake). There were some blatant Porto dives that didn't get called. We were the better side over the two matches but luck had its decisive say and Porto went through at our expense. Whether we could have beaten Monaco in the final is a matter of pure speculation, but it's not a matter of speculation that we lost to the eventual CL winner that year on the back of hideous refereeing. Hideous refereeing is bad luck, as I do not generally do not believe in conspiracies against United. The mistakes that night were honest mistakes, mistakes that could have aggrieved Porto but on that night aggrieved us and knocked out of the competition the better club.
That's what I mean by the role of luck in cup competitions. You have funky draws (the two best clubs meeting in the round of 16 or some other round aside from the final) and you have the outsize role of a referee's absurd decisions, an ongoing plague in football. And of course, you have the ridiculous away goals rule too, a rule which should be abolished forthwith. Luck plays too large a role in who wins and who loses in cup play, at least compared to domestic league play.
Lastly, England will almost always land 3 and often enough 4 teams in the knockout rounds of CL play. So it's not as though the CL is really THAT much better, overall, than the standard of play in the English prem. You obviously have a few substantially better clubs in the CL -- the two or three best clubs in the world, in fact -- but there's a lot of junk in the CL that would find it difficult to cope with the likes of Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton (in normal years at least) and maybe even West Ham and Stoke.
There's clearly more "glory" in winning the CL trophy, but I submit that it's actually harder to win the English prem trophy. I'm all for glory, but all things considered there's more honor in lifting the prem trophy as there's no getting around the truth that the best team over 9 months wins it and that top to bottom the English prem offers more difficult competition to get through than the group stage of the CL and then outsize role of luck in getting the right draws in the knockout rounds, injuries to key players at the wrong times and then the inordinate role of referee decisions in knockout rounds.
No way that's true, if you had a time machine and played this PL season over and over, out of 100 times, Chelsea will probaly win it 60-70 times and City 20-30, with the remaining 10 times shared amongst the rest.
But if you did the same with the CL, Chelsea will at best have around 10. Most of them will be won by Real, Bayern and Barca.
Better teams in a competition -> the competition is harder to win.
You usually compete with 1 or 2 teams that could realistically win the title domestically, in Europe you have 6-10 good teams whose victory wouldn't be a shock. Of course it's harder to win Champions League, you need to better at least two teams in the group stages and then beat 4 more top teams in the knock-out stages. You could lose most your big games and still win the league.
Doesn't really feel the same being Europe's best if you're not your country's best.
I'm prepared to be convinced that you're right and that I'm wrong, but I don't really follow what you're saying.
The way things shape up this season, and almost every season that I can think of over the last 20 seasons, the best team in the English prem DID (and will, this season) win the league. Off the top of my head I would say Blackburn 94-95 and Chelsea 09-10 were arguably NOT the best teams in the league in those two seasons but if I'm wrong about that then my broader point would be even stronger.
But it's not at all unusual for the CL winner to be the team that is widely regarded as not the best team in the tournament. Chelsea 11-12, Liverpool 04-05, Porto 03-04 and maybe even United 98-99 immediately come to mind. To be clear, the best team usually does go on to lift the CL trophy but the point is that it's actually not that unusual that the best team does not. Freak injuries, the vagaries of a non-bracketed draw tournament, bad referee decisions, unduly harsh rules on suspensions and away goals and just good old-fashioned luck -- have United scored on two corner kicks against ANYONE twice in one game, let alone twice in added time, since May 1999? -- make cup runs what they are. Anything can happen, regardless of who's actually the better side on the night, the tie or in the tournament in football cups.
The CL captures more attention around the world (I assume this, but I don't know that for a fact), but the best team does not always win it. The best team almost always does win lift the prem trophy. And the quality of the English prem, from top to bottom, is comparable to the CL. The very best 3 or 4 teams in the CL are always going to be better than the very best 3 or 4 teams in England, but the 20 teams in England stand up very well to the 20 best teams in the CL.
Take this year's Chelsea, they're more than likely to win the PL and not so likely to win the CL, so it's clearly easier for them to win the PL than the CL.
Also, whilst Chelsea 12 and Liverpool 05 weren't the best team in the CL, as they were less than competitive in the PL, however, Porto 04 and United 99 were clearly amongst the best, they beat everyone in front of them fair and square.
As someone pointed out earlier, in 2012, was City a worse team than United seconds after that "Aguerroooooo moment"? If that game finished 2-2, were United the best team in the season? Likewise if Drogba was ruled offside at OT? Leagues can turn just as easily when you have evenly matched sides competing at the top.
Champions League.
For a club of our stature 3 is nowhere near enough for us.
For a club of our stature 3 is nowhere near enough for us.
Chelsea are as good a bet as anyone else to win the CL this season (top manager on the planet, fantastic keeper, fantastic back line, ridiculous midfield and unstoppable striker...there are no known weaknesses with Chelsea), God forbid that it should come to pass. After all, the club is run by a criminal who aids and abets a regime which represses the people to enrich an oligarchy. We know about Real's reputation (very hard to repeat as CL champion, however) but I wouldn't put down a huge bet against Chelsea winning the CL this season. The chavs romped through their group, as did Real and Bayern. As for the English prem, Chelsea are a better bet to win it, but they're far from a lock. A near lock perhaps, but not yet a lock.
City winning on goal difference is a fair argument -- after all, how much better could the club that won on goal difference be than the second place club? But City did get the goal they needed after we dropped points a few weeks earlier to Everton (I think I have the sequence correct...maybe not) and the argument that City, who finished strong, were the better side than United, who finished poorly, were in fact the better side is a reasonable one. No one is saying that the first place finisher is always miles ahead of second place finisher -- the point is that the first place finisher is almost always the best team, even if it's by a small margin over the second place team.
As for Drogba, we can indeed thank the moron Simon Beck for failing to spot that he was a solid yard offside. But it's also true that United had 37 other matches to amass the points we needed to overcome Chelsea. Were Chelsea the better team? You could argue it both ways, but our run for that trophy did not turn entirely on Simon Beck's insanity, whereas our CL trophy run two seasons ago was stopped cold when Nani was insanely sent off and in 04 when Scholes was absurdly ruled to be offside.