Plus Bendtner the year before.

Wenger never has nor ever will win the Champions league with any side or any amount or resources.
He's simply not a good enough tactical coach. 😐

He doesn't really have the resources to win it unless he gets an extremely favorable draw.

Yeah just like Ajax, Benfica, Porto, Inter, Red Star, Dortmund .........

His teams don't defend well enough ergo they'll never win the CL.

Inter? Are you taking the piss? 😆

Klaus wrote:
Tony Montana wrote:

He should have won it in 2004. We had enough resources and the teams remaining in the competition were crap.

Just look at Mourinho who had all the money in the world and still couldn't do it with Chelsea.

Jose did it with Porto.

But not with Chelsea.

Indeed.

It's hard to win it and Chelsea weren't good enough/were unlucky. Semis twice but no final.

Still, spending less money he won it with Inter.

He spent over £50 million net on an Inter team that was already one of the two best sides in Europe.

My point was that there's a certain element of luck in a knockout competition, but generally one of the two or three best teams in Europe will win it. It's no surprise that Barcelona, Real Madrid, Milan and Manchester United have dominated Champions League since -00 and onwards. We were in a final and we were very close.

We were the best side in Europe in 2004 in my opinion.

In terms of domestic league performance maybe, but we never really had the squad to seriously challenge on two fronts.

We were better than every team left in the CL at the time of being knocked out of the competition by Chelsea.

We weren't better than Chelsea obviously. 😉

Seriously though, I'm not really interested in discussing isolated seasons. Your form and injury situation at the time will always play a big part in a knockout competition. We've never been favourites to win Champions League despite what people like to pretend. We've been among the six or seven clubs that have a chance to win it for a long time, largely thanks to Wenger, but apart from that one season we've never been among the two or three that are most likely to do it.

Wengers never put together a squad capable of competing on all fronts. Whether thats due to one of his crazy ideals or a lack of investment from the club I don't know and maybe we never will.

Klaus wrote:

generally one of the two or three best teams in Europe will win it. It's no surprise that Barcelona, Real Madrid, Milan and Manchester United have dominated Champions League since -00 and onwards. We were in a final and we were very close.

It's as simple as this, Klaus. It's disappointing. Hundreds of top flight teas in Europe, and only 4 or 5 have a realistic chance of winning every season. It's quite sad to be honest

We were just as good as Barcelona in the 04 final, but got screwed in the 18th minute.

And considering how highly rated they are we've done well against them in recent seasons and could have gotten past them.

By contrast United have been getting absolutely twatted by them.

If we'd had the rub of the green or somehow found the right mentality on the day, we'd have won the CL somewhere between 2000-2005, but we didn't. Nowhere near it at the moment.

We will never be able to accumulate the personnel to ensure that we can consistently get to the semis of the champions league. It's a player quality game if you want to be able to do that consistently. We are nowhere near some of these squads

Claudius wrote:

We will never be able to accumulate the personnel to ensure that we can consistently get to the semis of the champions league. It's a player quality game if you want to be able to do that consistently. We are nowhere near some of these squads

This is it, the best you can hope for is to be in the semi-finals as often as possible. (We really should have made it in 08 vs Liverpool. Worst CL exit to date) and then hope all the other variables are in your favour.

But I'm not resentful of our lack of success there, during 98-06 we were punching above our weight in comparison to Milan, Madrid and United.