What has happened to the English teams in the CL?

yes because any list you make would be buried under a massive list of contradictions from the teams that are supposed to be "Weak" .

please continue trolling the forum you're supposed to be moderating. No wonder the content in here is so bad .oop: oop:

 

Maybe we should give him a break. He loves all things German, and he's pretty bitter at the moment....well, very bitter.

 

what was that? chances conceeded? so. chelsea camp on their own box for 3 full matches, 1 which goes to 120. barca have a problem. how to get through 10 players in a small space and defeat the goalkeeper. and do it enough times to nullify any counters that they might occasionaly gain. how did they face this? they passed the ball to death outside of the chelsea box, and, for the 20 or 30 minutes that they most needed to get into the box, they failed utterly. how did bayern face this problem? 40 plus shots and 20 corners, 90 percent of which were ludicrously far from completion.

if these two wanted to win the european cup, they knew to be the best they will have to unlock some of the meanest defences around. so, they cant be called the best. not saying chelsea are, but they were the best at what they did, which was try not to lose, and they were better at this, their tactic, than anyone else was at theirs.

 

Exactly.. it's amazing how bad the tactics Barcelona used against us were.. Chelsea are most vulnerable when we are facing our own goal, yet still even after 80 minutes it was continuous sideways passing.. for all the ball that they had they could have at least taken some players on, knowing that they would get the ball straight back and have another chance.

 

I thought you said they were weak?

 

i interpret the game as anyone with sense and logic interprests it. you dont need a diagram of how the games were to be played out or how they did play out. the question was there, as i keep saying, how to get through these andorra tactics. 10 on the box, 1 goalie. it is not a rare game, you face many styles of team in a season and you have to have solutions for each potential side. chelseas tactic was not a new one, it pops up here and there. could barcas usual passing whirlwind get around it? could bayerns powerful driving force break it down?not to the extent necesary to have their tactics and team declared the best. so, as there is clearly no best team currently in europe, in default of this, i propose that as chelsea won the cup, we should, for the next few months call them the champions of europe. too much to ask?

 

5? That seems generous. I count the penalty and Olic's chance at the back post. Muller's goal as well, obviously, but you've suggested they missed 5 on top of that. At a stretch you could count the one where Gomez dummies Cahill, but it's not an easy chance leaning back on his weaker foot. What am I missing?

I get the sense that there's a tendency in reflecting on Chelsea's run to conflate Bayern and Barca's performances. The latter had a number of gilt-edged chances. Bayern were far less threatening in comparison.

 

it needs no reinterpretation. chelsea went out, game after game and said fu, were not playing, try and beat us. all the advanced tactics , operations, strategy, skills, shots and running of the best sides around couldnt find the answer to the problem facing them.

what i would find even funnier would be if chelsea just said fu, were doing it again. and just went in exactly the same way again next year. all these prancing peacocks pirouetting around the ten men, all these direct runner shooters driving to the edge of the box and skying the ball. all faced with the same question that none have a possible solution to. and there ends their run.

 

Forza Catenaccio!

 

Meh, I disagree with a few, but it's not really worth getting into. Olic's was the one where Lahm picked him out at the far post and he squared it, but Van Buyten didn't read it.

Regarding Chelsea's defensive performances in this run, I think there's a reason pundits are leaning more towards words like 'heart' and 'doggedness' when describing Chelsea's campaign. Jose's Inter put in a number of defensive masterclasses. Hiddink's Chelsea were far more solid and suffocating against a Barca containing Eto'o as well.

There weren't IMO any great defensive performances from Chelsea this season in an absolute sense. I think instead what you had was a Chelsea team playing defensively as well as they could under the circumstances. Playing Bosingwa at centreback against Barca, Cahill's first European campaign, Luiz's improvement from earlier in the season, his playing injured in the final, etc., will make it very special for Chelsea fans, but I can also appreciate when oppo fans point out that the defensive performances weren't that good.

I don't know, I don't think Pep is totally absolved. Barca were visibly drained in their three most important matches of the season, part of that has to fall on the manager.

 

can you not grasp that acepting you are going to conceede penalties is very much part of the tactics. when you drop back like that it is in hope, not expectation. you accept that you will make mistakes and you hope that it is your day. after all, no one adpots such tactics unless they are very sure of the possibility of defeat. furthermore, the idea that the final could go to penalties was absolutely part of the tactic. in fact it was chelseas main chance of winning the thing. reducing the 4-1 odds against via hard work and luck rididing over the course of 120 minutes to the gamble of the lotteries. they only went forward when they had to, and only briefly at that. it paid off, they won, their philosophy of 'come and have a go' forced bacelona into submission and defeat, they could not score when they had to, simply couldnt. it forced bayern into long shots and forcing worthless corners. the only time bayern made it , it was an awful goal that was not intended to bounce in front of ceck and then go over his head. (drogrbas goal was far more valid, not that this proves anything). there , end of story, as long as the rules permit, defence is allowed. there are no restrictions to where you field your players on the pitch, and if something works to the effect that it endures to the extent chelsea managed this season, it should be seen for what it is. a plan coming together.

 

This was not the best Chelsea team ever, but I think they derserve it for the other times they were near the best team in Europe. All those Semi final and final defeats.

Sometimes bloodymindness can override talent. They have failed when they had more talent and less luck. The sheer will for this team and players knowing it's their last chance has to be admired.

It reminded me of the fight in Rocky 2! Apollo winning on points the whole fight with more skill and flair, but Rocky not giving up and winning with determination.

 

I just facepalmed so hard, I think I have a concussion.

I've stated previously that Barca weren't "unlucky" against Chelsea, but failed in their execution - ergo, they deserved to be eliminated.

I say the same for Bayern. If you create half a dozen gilt-edged chances, while your opponent creates one and the game ends 1-1, it's your own fault that you didn't win.

However, Chelsea (who I wanted to win the final, while this thread made the outcome all the funnier) were fortunate. There may have been some stellar last-ditch tackles, the clinical finishing of Drogba and some goalkeeping heroics that helped them achieve the result, but that alone was not enough to win them the game.

Saying that "their philosophy of 'come and have a go' forced bacelona into submission and defeat" is like a saying a man about to be shot at point-blank range, deserves credit for the gun jamming.

 

That's what made this thread so funny in the end. Irony is the best kind of humour sometimes.

It was meant to be the end of the EPL in europe this year, yet the 6th best team in England ends up winning the thing. Sometimes football makes no sense.