so even by your own list of the 'tough' competition theres no City, Real, etc?
Bayern is a great example. The only team from our half of the list who played Bayern were... oh, yeah, us.
Pls remind me how that went - against a club that went out in the QF of the 'other half' of the final run? Oh, right, we lost 4-0 on aggregate across 2 games.
HMM GEEE THANK FUCK WE DIDNT DRAW BAYERN IN THE QF! Thank fuck the draw, which is fully drawn at R16 stage, PREVENTED us from meeting a Chelsea, or a Bayern, or PSG, or City until the final was reached.
Thank you for making my exact point <3
Milan? Same group as Chelsea, They lost to Chelsea 5-0 on aggregate on two losses, Chelsea? Also out at the QF
Benfica? Drew 2-2 on aggregate (2 draws) vs PSG, who went out at R16
Napoli? same group as Liverpool (draw on points), beat Liverpool 4-1, then lost 2-0, Liverpool went out at R16
You've perfectly made my point more clear than I ever could, thank you bubba. Take a like for that post.
My point was previously based kinda on "reputation" of club, infact you've made it significantly stronger - by results in the CL, our side of the draw was basically entirely beaten by the teams on the "other" side of the draw!
To be clear, because I know a whole bunch of people reading this post will "See what they want" and assume this makes me an Inzaghi hater - Inzaghi beat the teams in front of him. He deserves credit for that. But probably 90 out of 100 'rolls' of the CL last season, we would have been out at the QF or R16. I fully expect this coming season we will probably be out... I'd hope at the QF stage? Based on what we know now (e.g. no draw information). If you're more confident about our chances of success, lets place a bet! My point about Inzaghi's salary is we're now pushing him towards a significantly higher salary, when I dont personally believe he'll deliver to justify that level of salary again next season (but as stated, "league performance" is the key decider imho for up to, say, 5mils/net). I will also say, in these circumstances, I think Conte would have screwed the fucking pooch. We'd probably have faced another group, if not R16, exit with Conte, so I do think Inzaghi has "delivered well" against the circumstances infront of him, but I dont expect him to pull off anything like the same level of success next year.
For what its worth, I had a look at some betting sites earlier, we're currently 13th most likely to win the CL, so that is consistent with an R16 exit obviously
Anyway, I've said my point on this repeatedly, if you dont agree, dont understand, whatever, its all good. Enjoy, lets see how next season ends
If you want to believe thatgetting to the CL final was purely down to the coaching genius of Inzaghi, and nothing to do with the fact that we didnt have to face any harder teams in the run up, and that if we'd drawn Chelsea R16, Bayern QF, PSG SF, and City Final, we'd have still made the final... be my guest!
I'll say it again - 2009-2010 is a great counterexample. By analogy, we'd have had to beat City, Bayern, and Real madrid in the run to (and including) the final to have a 'comparable' draw to what we had in 2009-2010, e.g. the German league winner, the Premiership league winner, Russian league winner, and the Spanish league winner. We fucking fully deserved to win that CL, and that year I'd have bet we could have beat ANY club in the CL (Not going into the season, dont get me wrong, but at no point was I like... thank fuck for a lucky draw). This year, probably our hardest competition were Milan, lets be honest, who only made the CL this year because of Juve's deduction.
This year, I think we would have potentially lost to Real, we would have lost to City, we would probably lost to Bayern...