The Champions' League Final 2011: Page 7 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

The Champions' League Final 2011

Xcdude24

By the way, I dont think we played any worse than man united did. They loomed completely devoid of ideas.

Claudius

Ha.
I'd just to like add that it gave me great pleasure to see Evra so outclassed througout the game. He's one of the vilest creatures to ever kick a football. Hopefully, he shuts up for a few years

Gazza M

This Barca team will continue to terrorise Europe for as long as Xavi stays on the right side of 32-33 years old, and Messi and Guardiola stay put. They play this level of football almost on auto-pilot in big games these days.

Qwiss

Tony Montana wrote:
qs! wrote:
Is that what counts now? Because you don't seem to have that attitude when we play teams off the park but fail. I thought it was goals that count and we had that tie won until the ref fucked us over no matter how much possession Barca had.

People will talk about how great this Barca team are but all I can keep thinking is they wouldn't even be there if not for that utterly ridiculous decision.

We don't know that. They could have scored anyway. Not against the realm of possibility by any stretch of the imagination.

They do need help from the refs a lot of the time though. Chelsea 09, Arsenal and Madrid 2011.

Maybe they would have scored, or maybe we'd have scored. The game was turning when the sending off happened so who knows. All we know is that we were robbed of a fair chance to prove it. Hell maybe if we'd won that game our whole season wouldn't have collapsed (not excusing the teams ability to let individual games completely upset their mentality BTW
).

Gazza M

Yep. Ofcourse we were being battered. Every team that goes to Nou Camp - even the ones that end up winning - will cop a 70% possession induced hammering. We weren't in the game admittedly. But the point is we were robbed of a fighting chance, and had every right to feel aggrieved for that.

Burnwinter

You're not getting it mate. This is how it goes. We were:

Never in the tie
Absolutely crap at the Nou Camp
Not at all unjustly treated in the matter of Van Persie's sending off, he deserved what he got
Never going to win anything, ever
And so on
...
N. Not allowed to be proud of beating Barcelona at the Emirates despite the absolute schooling they've handed out to the supposedly untouchable "winning mentality" of Ferguson's latest foot-plebs

Claudius

Lol. That's an extremist view. I know that I was absolutely over the moon after the first leg. For the majority of that 2nd half we showed that we could play football with Barcelona. I've watched a lot of their big games, and I do not recall a team in recent years really going at them in that fashion. Maybe Inter in their first leg, but teams like Real and United have all failed to play Barca as equals. On that day, I was tempted to buy into Wenger's vision because everything came together so beautifully. That 45 minutes, for me, was the high point of the season. And then Birmingham happened.

Burnwinter

Well put Cali.

Gazza M

Agreed. Our winning goal will be etched in my memory as one of the great goals under Wenger. It took some insanely risky one touch passing near our own area to pull it off, but that's how you've got to play if you want to beat them

Tony Montana

Burnwinter wrote:
You're not getting it mate. This is how it goes. We were:

Never in the tie

Absolutely crap at the Nou Camp

Not at all unjustly treated in the matter of Van Persie's sending off, he deserved what he got

Never going to win anything, ever

And so on
...
N. Not allowed to be proud of beating Barcelona at the Emirates despite the absolute schooling they've handed out to the supposedly untouchable "winning mentality" of Ferguson's latest foot-plebs

Who has actually laid out this view?

Burnwinter

Obviously no one has laid out that view in those words except me, sarcastically, Tony. If that weren't the case the post could've been a quote.

It's an amalgam with more than a hint of fiction and hyperbole, but derived from real experience of a particular maudlin strain of thought concerning our club.

The point I'm making - by declaring the opposite in an absurd, exaggerated manner - is that aside from our crushing disappointment with the season gone we still did achieve one or two good things during it.

The home win over Barcelona is the best thing we can take away, and the fact they destroyed United on English soil arguably even adds to its value and shows that we were capable of something that United, despite all the praise they inevitably receive both from the punditry and posters here - yourself included, could not.

Do you disagree?

Tony Montana

I watched the highlights of our game after your post actually....twice.

I smiled at our goals both times.

To be fair Barcelona have schooled us 3 times over the past 4 individual meetings (if not in scoreline) in the CL so it's not like we haven't felt what United have felt but that one game was how you play Barca. I forgot the passing movement we made for our second goal. Brilliant. As Xavi would say spraying his hands here and there, 'pam pam pam!'. Cesc's pass for the goal was weighted perfectly and I remember a little chip he did for RVP for him to volley (which unfortunately Valdes saved).

Anyway, Barca battered United two years ago and the fact that this time it was on english soil means little if anything. If we want to be technical, it wasn't at Old Trafford. We don't need to use United's loss to pump up our win as it was a great win by its own merit. Could we have done it at Wembley in a final? Maybe but the whole atmosphere around the game is different and the pressure and mentality is different. Given that we lost to Birmingham at Wembley in a final, it's not hard to imagine Barca would give us a hiding there as well.

I hope we don't get carried away with the Barca win though. We need trophies which are a series of good wins.

Burnwinter

All fair enough. I still think the manner of Barcelona's win shows that the mystique surrounding Ferguson and United is silly (as it was in 2009).

Tony Montana

There's no mystique. I've never associated United with mystique.

It's all hard work, talent, intelligent tactics and proper organisation from top (management, not board level necessarily) to bottom. There is also genuine belief.

Barca were favourites in 2009 and they were favourites this year. We were all scared (other than Captain) that United would win but lets be honest, every single football fan knows Barca are by far better than United. FFS BBC Sport were claiming that United only had a small chance.

Claudius

And that's just it, Tony. I think people accepted Barca are much better, but United have won enough over the past decade and a half to make you believe that they always have a chance.

In addition to having an inferior squad overall, Ferguson was arrogant in his team selection. I often tell Arsenal fans that I would get rid of our 4 3 3 and only play 3 in midfield against Barcelona. Ferguson was naive to think that a midfield of Giggs and Carrick would have the energy and awareness to stop Barcelona. Ususally Barcelona have a lot of possession at the halfway line, but due to United's lack of midfield, they just sliced and diced their way to goal over and over again.

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