Got beaten but not absolutely f*cked.

Claudius wrote:
Mirth wrote:

At. Madrid are a top 5 club....so, on the basis, most of their players would waltz in.

Name them. They have a team made up of never knowns and rejects. But to a man, they buy into the blue collar ethos. Helps to have an infield colossus to help lead them. But these are no galacticos. 
Imagine Wenger coaching that squad. 

Difficult to answer because of the whole different systems and different approaches... Plus the occasion and who the opponents are, and formation etc.. loads of things to think about. Wenger will set a team up differently to a Simeone.

Depends on so many of these things. Set the scene...?

Mirth wrote:
Claudius wrote:

Name them. They have a team made up of never knowns and rejects. But to a man, they buy into the blue collar ethos. Helps to have an infield colossus to help lead them. But these are no galacticos. 
Imagine Wenger coaching that squad. 

Backward reasoning should be sufficient - how many Arsenal players would get into their first team? Even the likes of Ozil might not meet Simeone's criteria for attacking players despite his obvious talent.

Also, it's been a few years since At. Madrid won the league and reached the CL final, at this stage they're no longer a team of unknowns and rejects. They've been one of the strongest teams around for a while now, sure they've been assembled on a relative budget but that's not really indicative of talent nor is something new

Well said

I believe a proper, ambitious manager would get us a class striker as his first order of business, and then I I'm pretty sure that proper manager would soon have us competing at about the same level as this Atletico side is competing at. We have some really, really good players, but I don't think Wenger gets anywhere near enough out of them. I'm quite certain several of our players would thrive in a stricter, more structured environment.

I reckon we actually have (more or less) the personnel to mimic Atletico's style too. Could line up something like this:

back 5
Ramsey---Momo---Coq---Wilshere
-------------Ozil
------------Sanchez

I personally prefer more traditional wideplay with pacy wingers though.

Yeah that's the one, 2 wide workaholics to pack the midfield. Ramsey/Wilshere as interiors.

Great. Take a team that can't score goals and limit them to one somewhat sporadic scorer and a bunch of tippy-tappy boys around him.

The mentality and the way the players play would change drastically. Sanchez would be the single (main) outlet in the starting 11, with the rest of the team doing the hard work and creating.

It's the way Atletico play anyway, 4-2-2-2 with two narrow wingers. Griezmann with 20+goals, then Saul, Correa, Torres with like 6-8.

Ramsey/Wilshere/Ozil would get 6-8 goals, with Sanchez doing what Griezmann does. Impossible to say if it would work because we have Wenger and we'd have to go to a 4411/442, but that's what it would be in theory.

Either way, unless you have a manager who can motivate the life out of anyone, and have a manager who is hell bent on winning and nothing else, then you will fail regardless of the technical quality of the squad or the system they play.

That sort of system will only work with a water tight defence otherwise lack of goals will be a problem.

Atletico have conceded only 16 compared to Barca's 27.

Absolutely immense.

They have kept 11 clean sheets at home this season in their last 12 European matches. Insane.

Ronaldo's performance was just perfect. Total domination. That said, it doesn't help that Wolfsburg has an average manager at the helm. Schurrle's poor miss in the first leg costed them dearly.

Shady wrote:

That sort of system will only work with a water tight defence otherwise lack of goals will be a problem.

Exactly, we don't exactly have a Godin in defence. Earlier this season around December there was talk of a crisis for Simeone in Spanish media because of how Griezmann's and with him the team's goals dried up. They remained close to the top because they simply don't concede.

Interestingly enough the season seems to pan out just like last year, back then Real were destroying everyone for the first half of the season and Barcelona in crisis mode around December, then the former started to struggle and the latter won virtually every single game. Now it's Barca who hit their peak prematurely and Atlético who are getting stronger every week.

City vs Madrid
Atleti vs Bayern.

Madrid with the easiest of the 3 teams yet again.

Saw that coming by a mile. Knew they will seperate the Madrid teams, and also not let Madrid fight Bayern this early. They want a big match in the final.

11/12 - CSKA/Nicosia/Munich(KO'd)
12/13 - United/Gala/Dortmund (KO'd)
13/14 - Schalke/Dortmund/Bayern/Atleti
14/15 - Schalke/Atleti/Juve (Ko'd)
15/16 - Roma/Wolfsburg/City

Unreal luck for Real. Compare their draw to a team like Barca, huge difference.

Good draw, atletico vs bayern will be a cracker

Ugh, just hope one of the Madrid teams gets knocked out.

Actually nah the draw is good - this way we get to watch 2 legs of 2 interesting matches, even if it were to end up an all Spanish final.

Atleti - City would be nice just to keep things a bit fresh. No Barca is quite pleasing. They're a bunch of entitled arseholes