Hoping a New Thread may fix the posting issues.
Hopefully the first leg is on the Tuesday. Fri 6 Mar - Wolves (a) FA Cup Tue 10 Mar - Galatasaray (a) Sun 15 Mar - Tottenham (h) Wed 18 Mar - Galatasaray (h)
6/8 v 1/8 (Barcelona, with a least a couple of their wins being joyous here)
It will be
Arsenal are blessed compared to what Liverpool got for finishing top last season
31 total wins on our side
5 on the other, and they're all Barca 🤣
6 teams have won the CL in the past decade, all are on our side of the draw
Barca must feel like they are in the Europa league
actually works out well that our game in between Galatasaray legs is Spurs as they have exactly the same fixture dates and will have the Barça 2nd leg to prep for
Newcastle got Barca.
Spurs got Atleti.
Right - sorry - very distracted with work this morning, even missed the draw. But at least it's not some team with a blank midweek before and after
that is a horrible draw
I would put us underdogs for 4 of the teams on our half
maybe to one on the other side
Well, at least we'd only have to play 2 of those 4 😅
Have to feel for Bayern though, coming second in the league phase and ending up with Atalanta - a tough pick of those outsider teams - and then Man city or Real Madrid, and then probably PSG (or ourselves).
Presume we're hoping that Chelsea get past PSG.
I'm seeing 5.45pm ko for 1st leg on Tuesday 10th, not a fan of that time
Yeah, confirmed.
Guess that's 8:45pm local time, so kind of makes sense. Bit of a pain though
I'd rather PSG. Our league form is so bad I would rather we ride the wave of relative success we've been having against teams from other leagues. Also… we owe PSG some revenge for last season. If we get that far, it's the semi-final where I don't see how we get further… Man City, Barca, Bayern 😶 Galatasaray first though. Happy to be playing away first. The aim there needs to be hold them to a draw and put us in a good position for the second leg.
We can't meet Barcelona until the final
I genuinely don't understand what that has to do with anything?
Does a team that won it 9 years ago with 0 players still playing in the current team somehow make the current team harder to beat?
How far back does this historic influence on current events go? If we draw Bury in the FA Cup next year should we be unduly worried that they are multiple winners of the competition having won it in 1900 and 1903 or would it be better to draw Brentford, Bournemouth or Fulham given they've never won it at all?
The CL last 16 are all there on merit, it's now an old school knock out, sometimes the draw is favourable, sometimes not.
Would you prefer it if he said every team that's won it in the 2020s is in our half of the draw? (5 of them)
And 2020, the longest ago of those, was Bayern. 5 of their starting XI that day still play for them
I think you're reading it far too literally.
Basically, we're on the hard side of the draw! That's the way it goes sometimes.
It doesn't matter a jot if we can't get past Galatasaray!
yeah I mean the oldest teams in that run are a couple of Real Madrid wins so yeah you can discount them I was just making a point around the teams most successful in recent years
But if you want to take it from your perspective I think you could make your point better using the opposite side and say something like:
"The most recent time a club from the Blue side of the draw even got to a final was Spurs in 2019 and none of their starting XI are even at the club anymore, whereas 9 of the 12 finalists since are on the Silver side of the draw"
Just trying to make it clear which side is tougher on paper looking at recent success
You could also go by UEFA Club coefficients which measures success on a more recent rolling time frame (5 years up to 2024/25)
The 8 teams on the silver side are ranked (by coefficient):
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 16th and 58th (average rank: 12.0)
On the blue side it's the clubs ranked:
10th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 27th, 35th, 43rd and 79th (average rank 29.1)
First step to the final is easier on our side, I much prefer Galatasaray to Atletico at this stage. Even though they beat us already, and even though our form isn't great, I do feel they will be much more nervous about the games in the last 16. If we can't beat them we don't deserve anything anyway.
Also given we need our form to improve significantly, it gives us more time to get to that form up to snuff. Feels like the type of draw we can grow in to game by game. There is a good chance we will face premier league sides until semis also, which I think would work in our favour too. Who doesn't love a Chelsea quarter final.
Finally if we do make it to the final, after coming through our side of the draw, nobody on the other side scares me at all. It is a long way to go, and there's no reason at all to be optimistic given our current form, but… we know we have a squad that can beat anyone…..
We've played Chelsea once in a quarter final before and they won 7-5 after that bonkers 4-4 game
Well that's it exactly, a wild night 😀. To be fair, I'm talking about the whole series of games we kept having with them during the 05-09 seasons, it felt non-stop for a while, and it was always a sensation.
Yeah we even played them in the group stage one year when they said we didn't have country protection
I was at the game with the Garcia controversial goal,2004 maybe, good times,, clear penalty if the goal didn't stand.
'05, was the match that sent us to Istanbul 🙂
I was there too, in the kop, the noise was deafening!
Good season that one, Stevie's winner against Olympiakos, Garcia's volley against Juve, the Chelsea semi, then obviously the final
Shame, would have been nice to have more Irish at the club. Hopefully a good move for him
2004 maybe!!!!????
Villa getting dragged back into the race for top 5. Losing two nil to Wolves.
That Mane chap we were linked with is actually very good but raw. Could be a good buy during the summer and loaning him back to Wolves next year.
