is porto a top tier club because they won in 2004? arsenal have been consistently in the knockout stages of the champions league for the better part of a decade. our seeding reflects that.

and in all honestly i should ask you to name the top-tier clubs because you might only have three on your list and then your views on arsenal's status would be perfectly reasonable.

List of participates in the Champions League

I can only see six or seven clubs that boast a better European pedigree out of 32 - excluding the 48 that play in the Europa league. Take into account that only Real Madrid have made it through to the knock outs as often as Arsenal have and I can't for the life me see how we're a mid table club.

and when you look at things like pedigree, you think about a club like juventus. they haven't been relevant in europe since the 2006 world cup. two world cups might come and go in between their irrelevant period.

General Mirth wrote:

List of participates in the Champions League

I can only see six or seven clubs that boast a better European pedigree out of 32 - excluding the 48 that play in the Europa league. Take into account that only Real Madrid have made it through to the knock outs as often as Arsenal have and I can't for the life me see how we're a mid table club.

Coefficient?
Who gives a fuck about that, I'm talking about honours-reality, both PSV and Porto have been Champions of Europe something we have never achieved, I'd go so far as to say we're probably the biggest underachievers in UEFA when you consider our wealth and tradition.
Wenger is a crap tactical match coach, he has won nothing in European competitions in almost 30 years despite having some great players in some of his teams.

PSV and Porto are mid to lower-tier teams. Let's not get confused.

Biggus wrote:

General Mirth wrote:

List of participates in the Champions League

I can only see six or seven clubs that boast a better European pedigree out of 32 - excluding the 48 that play in the Europa league. Take into account that only Real Madrid have made it through to the knock outs as often as Arsenal have and I can't for the life me see how we're a mid table club.

Coefficient?
Who gives a fuck about that, I'm talking about honours-reality, both PSV and Porto have been Champions of Europe something we have never achieved, I'd go so far as to say we're probably the biggest underachievers in UEFA when you consider our wealth and tradition.
Wenger is a crap tactical match coach, he has won nothing in European competitions in almost 30 years despite having some great players in some of his teams.

I said nothing about coefficient, I wanted to show the list of teams in the CL nor did I mention Wenger but old habits die hard?

And yes, we have under achieved given the number of years we've been in Europe but we're still not a mid table CL team.

cant back you on this one, biggus, it's just not factually true.

We're a regular qualifier for the knockout stages yet we've never won the Champions trophy and appeared in the final only once.
This is factually true.
It gives our coefficient a typical Denilsonesque boost, but we've actually achieved nothing it's is the very definition of mid-tier mediocrity.

We don't need to delude ourselves with faux achievements this fine club has many in the past, we must accept what we've become, once the Wenger junta is deposed and we start winning real things again you'll know how hollow this masturbatory instinct is.

you're being ridiculous. so if a team finishes 2nd in the premiership every single season, it's midtable? blackburn has won the premiership before, so it's a bigger team than liverpool?

you don't need to resort to absurd exaggerations to support the position that wenger should go. no offense, but you are being irrational on this point.

Fine, you get out your little calculator and work out all the coefficients that tell us that we are in fact one of the top teams in Europe and Wenger is in fact a tactical genius.
Have you people lost your minds? goals win games not statistics, and they give out trophies to the teams that win the games and the competition.....Do you see how that works?
How can we be a top team? We've won nothing, we're a 2nd tier (at best) European team......

Wenger junta
masturbatory instinct
Biggus, you kill me.

These are the clubs that are presently bigger than Arsenal:
United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan. Bayern
6 clubs. Inter has lacked the European consistency to be above us. Citeh could pass us in the next 2 years. Right now I would struggle to support the assertion that there are bigger clubs. In a 32 team Champion League, to be in the top quartile --- that's not mid-tier. This historical stuff is nice to think about, but someone will inevitably say that Forest and Red Star Belgrade are bigger than us

Caligula wrote:

These are the clubs that are presently bigger than Arsenal:
United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan. Bayern
6 clubs. Inter has lacked the European consistency to be above us. Citeh could pass us in the next 2 years. Right now I would struggle to support the assertion that there are bigger clubs. In a 32 team Champion League, to be in the top quartile --- that's not mid-tier. This historical stuff is nice to think about, but someone will inevitably say that Forest and Red Star Belgrade are bigger than us

Cal, Inter won the Champions trophy a few years ago.
We haven't won a fucking thing in 7 years!!!
You don't just make up your own rules about what success is, thats what trophies are for.
And our last European trophy was under George Graham.

Biggus wrote:

We're a regular qualifier for the knockout stages yet we've never won the Champions trophy and appeared in the final only once.
This is factually true.
It gives our coefficient a typical Denilsonesque boost, but we've actually achieved nothing it's is the very definition of mid-tier mediocrity.

We don't need to delude ourselves with faux achievements this fine club has many in the past, we must accept what we've become, once the Wenger junta is deposed and we start winning real things again you'll know how hollow this masturbatory instinct is.

so then we've always been mid-tier then? past, present and in the future until we win the damn thing. liverpool had 4 european cups (forest 2, villa 1) before wenger ever showed up so it was possible for arsenal to rise above its mediocre status with all the faux pre-wenger achievements and all.

This is academic. You've all got the same facts to work with.

Who's right? You're all right once you subtract the empty spin and rubbery rhetoric, because you're all citing the same facts.

We haven't won a European trophy during Wenger's tenure, but there aren't a hell of a lot of clubs that have done better than us in Europe during Wenger's tenure, and PSV Eindhoven certainly isn't one of them.

Call it what you like, mid-tier, upper-mid-tier, no-trophy-tier, record-breaking-qualification-streak-tier ... the facts remain, the rest is just the usual tale of sound and fury, told by Biggus, signifying nothing.

They weren't faux- they were real European trophies, something that Wenger has proved he's utterly incapable of.
Some people say- So what? but I say it is important, it's the one glaring omission from our cv Meaty, and it hurts me it really does, we can never be considered along with giants of Europe until its corrected.

And I can tell you now that Wenger will never correct it- look at his record....
He is a dreamer and idealist and therefore a crap tactical manager.
To win it you have to be a ruthless pragmatist, fine- all the better if you have great players but you have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances and Wenger can't do that.

Biggus wrote:

Cal, Inter won the Champions trophy a few years ago.
We haven't won a fucking thing in 7 years!!!
You don't just make up your own rules about what success is, thats what trophies are for.
And our last European trophy was under George Graham.

We've consistently outperformed Inter in the Champs League. Just because one year they made it all the way to the final, we should assume that they have been consistently better than us?
http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/club//index.html

There are UEFA's coefficients. They are generally fair. This season, I'd say Madrid is better than rankings suggest, but it's not inaccurate given their recent European performances.

Burnwinter wrote:

This is academic. You've all got the same facts to work with.

Who's right? You're all right once you subtract the empty spin and rubbery rhetoric, because you're all citing the same facts.

We haven't won a European trophy during Wenger's tenure, but there aren't a hell of a lot of clubs that have done better than us in Europe during Wenger's tenure, and PSV Eindhoven certainly isn't one of them.

Call it what you like, mid-tier, upper-mid-tier, no-trophy-tier, record-breaking-qualification-streak-tier ... the facts remain, the rest is just the usual tale of sound and fury, told by Biggus, signifying nothing.

Whats in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Bollocks! I'll tell you, a trophy is the only measure of success in football, there is no room for subjective views or points for artistic interpretation.
So spare me your post modernist relativist (it depends on what you mean by success) cynicist pap.
Wenger hasn't won us a European trophy of any sort.
Wenger hasn't won anybody a European trophy of any sort.

These are the facts.

Caligula wrote:

We've consistently outperformed Inter in the Champs League. Just because one year they made it all the way to the final, we should assume that they have been consistently better than us?
http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/club//index.html

There are UEFA's coefficients. They are generally fair. This season, I'd say Madrid is better than rankings suggest, but it's not inaccurate given their recent European performances.

But......don't you understand Cal that this is all a mirage, a chimera, it's all just statistical spin and bolllocks, it means nothing.
Inter Milan have been European Champions 3 times......We don't even appear on the horizon.......

Wenger has won more major trophies than any other manager in Arsenal's history. Also a fact innit.