Irwin99
Full Member
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- Aug 6, 2018
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For such a massive football club, it's fair to say we haven't achieved as much in Europe as we could have done down the years. Along with the likes of Juventus and Inter we're not alone in being a giant club that's underachieved in this respect, but if we look back over the past 25 years or so the Treble team in particular sticks out in my mind as the team could have won more. The 1994 side was stymied by that stupid foreigner restriction rule and the fact that the team was broken up pretty quickly, whilst the 08 team had the misfortune to come up against possibly the greatest team ever assembled in Pep's Barcelona. Why then didn't the Treble team go on to conquer Europe again? The following two seasons were almost embarrassingly easy domestically but we got knocked out of the champions league stage at the quarter finals on each occasion. We never disgraced ourselves (alright, maybe Real Madrid first leg in 03 aside) but we never got close enough. A few possible reasons spring to mind
1. Our transfer policy wasn't as good as it should have been and our defence and squad quality gradually worsened. It's easy to forget that Ronny Johnson played just 39 times in 3 years after the Treble season while we had to rely on Wes Brown, Berg, Silvestre to partner Jaap Stam. Good squad players but hardly world class starters. We never properly replaced Denis Irwin at left back who was 33 when we won the Treble and we never had a settled goalkeeper until we signed VDS. In hindsight, Silvestre was a decent squad signing but we desperately needed a better centre back and left back. Giggs and Beckham never really had a challenge for their positions either as Blomquist never played for us again after 99. The squad option for that role became Luke Chadwick if i remember rightly.
2. English teams were lacking tactical nous in big European games. This one is more contentious but Arsenal's record in Europe was utterly abysmal during this time and there was a feeling that English teams didn't really control games that well in Europe. I'm not entirely sure this is true in our case as we had a lot of players that could keep the ball well and recycle possession but i think we struggled to break teams down. I would have liked to have seen another dynamic winger like Figo and another quick striker like Owen at the club at this time. If you look at the games we went out in it's just dumb defensive errors that cost us and then we couldn't break teams down when they defended deep. Keeping possession was never a problem, neither was workrate or fitness.
3. Bad luck or small margins. Against Leverkusen (02) and Porto (04) we missed glorious chances or were the victim of stupid decisions (Scholes disallowed goal for instance).
Anyone want to offer their argument for why we didn't do better? A mixture of 1 and 3 is my personal opinion. The 99 team with a new centre back, goalkeeper and another winger would have gone a long way to getting us another CL title.
1. Our transfer policy wasn't as good as it should have been and our defence and squad quality gradually worsened. It's easy to forget that Ronny Johnson played just 39 times in 3 years after the Treble season while we had to rely on Wes Brown, Berg, Silvestre to partner Jaap Stam. Good squad players but hardly world class starters. We never properly replaced Denis Irwin at left back who was 33 when we won the Treble and we never had a settled goalkeeper until we signed VDS. In hindsight, Silvestre was a decent squad signing but we desperately needed a better centre back and left back. Giggs and Beckham never really had a challenge for their positions either as Blomquist never played for us again after 99. The squad option for that role became Luke Chadwick if i remember rightly.
2. English teams were lacking tactical nous in big European games. This one is more contentious but Arsenal's record in Europe was utterly abysmal during this time and there was a feeling that English teams didn't really control games that well in Europe. I'm not entirely sure this is true in our case as we had a lot of players that could keep the ball well and recycle possession but i think we struggled to break teams down. I would have liked to have seen another dynamic winger like Figo and another quick striker like Owen at the club at this time. If you look at the games we went out in it's just dumb defensive errors that cost us and then we couldn't break teams down when they defended deep. Keeping possession was never a problem, neither was workrate or fitness.
3. Bad luck or small margins. Against Leverkusen (02) and Porto (04) we missed glorious chances or were the victim of stupid decisions (Scholes disallowed goal for instance).
Anyone want to offer their argument for why we didn't do better? A mixture of 1 and 3 is my personal opinion. The 99 team with a new centre back, goalkeeper and another winger would have gone a long way to getting us another CL title.