Just re-watched the 2008 CL Final

sp_107

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It's a shame we had to come against the best club team in Barca after 2008 which was an impossible task.

If SAF got players like Robben/Ronaldhino they could have won atleast another champions league with Ronaldo/Rooney also in the team

I always wonder why SAF stopped recruiting top players after 2008, Except Berba and RVP not any other top class players in his last 6 years. Glazers really minted money during those years.

To be honest except 2007 summer, SAF never spent a lot during Glazer years. I wish he signed few other great players and won another couple of champion league trophies.
 

SER19

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People often say things like we should have won a 'couple more' as if its reasonably straightforward. Guardiola for example, despite managing the best clubs or ones with an unlimited budget hasn't reached a final in almost a decade.

Ferguson averaged a semi final 1 out of 3 years he was in the tournament and were almost consistently in last 8.

I know we'd all love another and can point to years where we might have won another but it was never as simple as not signing a couple of extra players here or there.
 

GDaly95

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It's a shame we had to come against the best club team in Barca after 2008 which was an impossible task.

If SAF got players like Robben/Ronaldhino they could have won atleast another champions league with Ronaldo/Rooney also in the team

I always wonder why SAF stopped recruiting top players after 2008, Except Berba and RVP not any other top class players in his last 6 years. Glazers really minted money during those years.

To be honest except 2007 summer, SAF never spent a lot during Glazer years. I wish he signed few other great players and won another couple of champion league trophies.
I believe that since 2005 when Glazers took over, Sir Alex spent 14m net annually on average.

Which is utterly ridiculous really. And people have the nerve to complain about the fact that he left us with an ageing side.
 

el3mel

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People often say things like we should have won a 'couple more' as if its reasonably straightforward. Guardiola for example, despite managing the best clubs or ones with an unlimited budget hasn't reached a final in almost a decade.

Ferguson averaged a semi final 1 out of 3 years he was in the tournament and were almost consistently in last 8.

I know we'd all love another and can point to years where we might have won another but it was never as simple as not signing a couple of extra players here or there.
We really needed at least one more CL trophy in his era imo. Our current tally of 3 CLs only is really not good enough anymore. At least 4 would have looked nice.
 

Blood Mage

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Carrick, Hargreaves and Giggs scored immense penalties in that game. I still can't believe Terry's miss, one of modern football's most iconic moments.
 

SER19

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We really needed at least one more CL trophy in his era imo. Our current tally of 3 CLs only is really not good enough anymore. At least 4 would have looked nice.
Ya I agree, I think given how close we were at times and the length of fergies spell, a third was achievable. I'm just pushing back a bit on the notion I see sometimes that it's almost implausible that we didn't win 3 or phrases like 'should have won a couple more'.

They're tough to win (or at least were, if ffp is gone I don't see how city and psg won't be winning regularly). Look how close we were to going out in the years we won them for example. 98/99 we could have went out in the group! Let alone the semi final and final miracles.

Such fine margins decide these things.
 

Gasolin

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One of the weirdest games for me. Was in the army at the time and got back to the tent just in time for Terrys penalty(on the radio) . So guess I have a little bit of luck.
In the army? For which country?!?
 

Gasolin

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In 1995, the Basque economist Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, who was then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, began recording the way penalties were taken. His paper, “Professionals Play Minimax,” was published in 2003. One friend of Ignacio who knew about his research was a professor of economics and mathematics at an Israeli university.

It so happened that this man was also a friend of Avram Grant. When Grant’s Chelsea reached the final in Moscow in 2008, the professor realized that Ignacio’s research might help Grant. He put the two men in touch. Ignacio then sent Grant a report that made four points about Manchester United and penalties:

1. Van der Sar tended to dive to the kicker’s “natural side” more often than most keepers did. This meant that when facing a rightfooted kicker, Van der Sar would usually dive to his own right, and when facing a left-footed kicker, to his own left. So Chelsea rightfooted penalty takers would have a better chance if they shot to their “unnatural side,” Van der Sar’s left.

2. Huerta emphasized in his report that “the vast majority of the penalties that Van der Sar stops are those kicked to a mid-height (say, between 1 and 1.5 meters), and hence that penalties against him should be kicked just on the ground or high up.”

3. Cristiano Ronaldo was another special case. Ignacio wrote in the report: “Ronaldo often stops in the run-up to the ball. If he stops, he is likely (85%) to kick to the right hand side of the goalkeeper.” Ignacio added that Ronaldo seemed able to change his mind about where to put the ball at the very last instant. That meant it was crucial for the opposing keeper not to move early. When a keeper moved early, Ronaldo always scored.

4. The team that wins the toss before the shoot-out gets to choose whether to go first. But this is a no-brainer: it should always go first. Teams going first win 60 percent of the time, presumably because there is too much pressure on the team going second, which is always having to score to save the game.

From the book Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
That explains a lot. It took Van der Sar a bunch of penalties to finally realize what these guys were doing, and that's how he ended up telling Anelka that he "knew" where he was going to shoot (his left, or Anelka's unnatural side), and then he created a doubt in Anelka's mind. I don't know if those things can really be quantified, but it was really interesting.
 

thepolice123

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I remember the extra time had some beastly defending from Vidic. Rio had to be sidelined for a cramp and Vidic absolutely locked down the defence. Its almost like he had a ball magnet on him, he was clearing and heading every ball away it was ridiculous.