European titles - United 3, Chelsea 2. How do you feel about it?

stw2022 said:

of course it matters but the pretence there’a an emotional connection is ridiculous. If any of our title wins would have meant less to you if James Magnall hadn’t led his side to glory in 1911 then that’s where we depart. History is fine but at some point it becomes trivia that has no relation to achievements we’re emotionally invested in.

In 93 nobody thought “nice but were still 12 behind “ not a fecking soul

Click to expand...

At the time, I agree. If we win the CL next year no one's thinking we're 2 behind Liverpool. But if we get to 7 before they do, that'll feel good.

Winning #20 was a bit special, at least to me.

Don't care. Chelsea are an empty club and no fans around where I live.

The quality of European football was much stronger under the SAF years. Tuchel just got lucky & City didn’t turn up.

Peter van der Gea said:

People say SAF should have won so many more, but the first part of our involvement, we had the stupid 3 foreigner rule and then from 2005 the Glazers in charge and a positive net spend.

In that sliver of time in the middle where he could spend like champions, he won 3

Edit: 2 CL's (sorry, half asleep, over confident)

Click to expand...

In my mind we still should have won it in 97 and the year Porto won it.

Think we'd also have had a good shot in his last year without the bent ref in the Madrid game.

Annihilate Now! said:

In my mind we still should have won it in 97 and the year Porto won it.

Think we'd also have had a good shot in his last year without the bent ref in the Madrid game.

Click to expand...

2004 was a travesty.

Well I don’t know why it bothers some so much? Being bothered that United are not as good currently is fair enough but being bothered by a London club’s CL wins?
Most of the current United fans started supporting United when we had 1. Some even when we had 0 and some when we had 2.
When SAF came to United we only had 1 whereas Liverpool had already won 4.
Yes we could have won more since but Liverpool/Chelsea could say the same as well.
Chelsea have actually played more CL semi finals since Roman took over than any other English club.

We probably should've won 1 more under SAF, also would have probably one at least one in late 50s/early 60s if it wasn't for Munich tragedy. But then I look at Juventus, huge club with only 2 CL won and some insane amount of finals lost so they probably feel worse about their CL record.

Problem for us is we've been irrelevant in Champions league for a decade now, ever since that loss to Barca at Wembley. It's a long way before being back to elite I guess.

I couldn't care less.

Souls - United 1, Chelsea 0.

If they get a third one then it matters. Right now they're still behind.

Annihilate Now! said:

In my mind we still should have won it in 97 and the year Porto won it.

Think we'd also have had a good shot in his last year without the bent ref in the Madrid game.

Click to expand...

Those Dortmund games in particular the 2nd leg at Old Trafford still rankle me.

How we didnt even muster a single goal as well!

I for one am happy chelsea won. It just proves all this talk of process and all BS. This whole idea that you need time to win big stuff is bs. I hope Ole and the board see it. You buy quality players and get the job done. Not this whole one step at a time bs.

I feel we should have about 5-6, that's how i feel.

It will probably be United 3 Chelsea 3 if anything else the way we are going.

The only thing Chelsea's 2 titles highlight is that we haven't won enough to match our stature in the game.

If it weren't for the Munich tragedy, the babe's with Best and Law still joining later hopefully, would have easily won 4/5 between 58 - 68 in my opinion.

Fergie was hindered pretty badly by the foreign player rule in the early to mid 90s but the Milan team of that time was insane so it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway.
We then had pretty rotten luck early to mid 00's often being beaten by the eventual winner or finalist. Overall, our tactics in the 90's to early 00's were probably too naive, probably due to the fact that we were completely dominating domestically.

From 2007 onward, Fergie had mastered his tactics in Europe and this is the period which still haunts me most. I have extreme anger towards the Glazers from the years 09-13 and have disliked them since.
3 Finals in 4 years was phenomenal and I can't be too annoyed about only winning 1 as that Barca team was so exceptional, it was just unfortunate that arguably our greatest team since the late 60's had to go up against one of the greatest teams of all time.

The Glazers 09-13 were absolutely appalling though and that is the period which set us up for a decade of failure. Losing one of the all time greats in 09 and replacing him with Valencia and Owen, it still pains me to reminisce. World record £80 million received and not even £20 million reinvested. Tevez, a fantastic player in his own right was allowed to be signed by a direct rival. To make matters worse Robben and Sneijder were available this window for a combined 40 million Euro, not even half of what we got for Ronaldo. Christ , even thinking about it, I still get angry.

Over the next few seasons we'd stand by and watch as the likes of Aguero, Kompany, Silva, Mata, Matic, Hazard and Toure were being signed by our direct competition while we signed the likes of Smalling, Jones , Bebe and Young.

Robben would go on to Brutally knock us out of the CL in 2010 when he should have been playing for us. The Glazers robbed both ourselves and Fergie of 2 more CL titles in this period. If we'd have at least replaced Ronaldo and Tevez with Robben and Sneijder we'd have lifted the title in 2010 and 2013.

Don't care about this anyway. Wouldn't have cared if City got one either. Liverpool already has six of them and are clearly the most successful English team in Europe. The important thing is keeping Liverpool from getting another Premier League.

We could have won it this year.

About the same as I feel about Nottingham Forest winning the European Cup twice the only difference is forest didn't have a sugar daddy owner to help them out.

With Tuchel I get it. He is a good manager, has good players and new manager syndrome.

What I still dont get is how the feck did that Di Mateo won it. Because after that he looked like a shit manager.

always_hoping said:

About the same as I feel about Nottingham Forest winning the European Cup twice the only difference is forest didn't have a sugar daddy owner to help them out.

Click to expand...

Yes, because we clearly prefer owners that take money out of the club instead of pouring in them, right?

Listen to yourselves people, making one shitty reason after another. Roman has owned Chelsea now for nearly 2 decades and has clearly shown he is invested in the club and its success. I would much rather an owner that helps our club than ones we have right now.

They will equal our record before we even get a chance to challenge for our 4th title. I can see them winning one more within the next 10 years while I don't see us at all.

Really couldn't care if Chelsea have got 2, they've ploughed so much money into their team they are always in contention to win stuff.
Us having 3 well its better than 0,

Spoony said:

It's a joke. Great sides should win these comps not the likes of Chelsea. Insane.

Click to expand...

Take it you were a supporter of the Super League then?

led_scholes said:

From 2004 till 2009, Chelsea was like us in the early 00s: always challenging and a team to be feared. Since then, they have won it twice even though they have only made 3 impressive runs:2012, 2014, 2021. They are really lucky, especially in 2012. Probably the worst team to have won it.

Click to expand...

They’ve lucked out in winning when the chips fell their way. But we blew chances like against Porto in 2004 which was our lucky chance to beat Porto and then Monaco in the final.

We can complain all we want about oil money this and blood money that...at the end of the day the other major reason is that they are run much better than we are and have aspired for much more than we have. Just a bitter feeling, but entirely of our own making, as I don't really mind the competition the oil money has created.

I feel we've underachieved with only 3. Particularly in recent decades when we had such a huge advantage over so many teams. Chelsea dont really come into it.

What did people expect? We've been pretty much a locally thinking & locally acting football club. Rather than a global powerhouse that has high standards & won't tolerate failure. Our "tradition" & "pride" are much more important than actually winning cups or the football itself. We can't sack managers because you know, it's not "United way". We don't act like a big club.

People here blaming Glazers only deluding themselves. United were also underachievers in Europe before they bought the club. These people probably think we need to wait another 5 years and "trust the process & build something" to win a CL trophy when Chelsea just proved that is just a procrastinating bullshit mentality. That's why we've always had the never ending "what do we still need" threads here. We need to be absolutely perfect before we even try to win anything.

United also have always been too forward planning. It prevents living & being in the moment. We're too concerned about the future. It's always about "in the next X years" rather than right now. We're losing not only today but also tomorrow because of this mentality.

Not happy but just glad it wasn't Citeh that won. They've won their 2 CLs in the same period of time we win 2 and 3. I bet it won't take them as long as us to get to 3 though.

Coxy said:

Take it you were a supporter of the Super League then?

Click to expand...

No.

It bothers me about as much as the fact that Forest also have two European Cups. What bothers me is that we haven't really had a serious tilt at the CL since 2011.

Thing is, apart from 68, 99 was won in added time after being the inferior team and 08 was won due to Terry slipping. I mean Rio is even on record saying that he thought it was game over as Terry was such an excellent penalty taker (I think it may have been the only one he missed.) So, we could be sitting here with Chelsea on three and Utd on two or even one.

For me, the CL is really SAF's only caveat. Domestically, no one, especially in the modern game comes close. However, in Europe he left a bit to be desired. 09 and 11 where both deserved losses (although 11 was really poor tacticall), 08 was lucky in the end. 99 I do think was a deserved win but that was some right down to the wire sh*t.

For me, the key reasons for not having more are: Munich tragedy (winning a European Cup then was a lot, lot easier to win than a CL) and the three foreigner rule in the 90's.

Moriarty said:

It bothers me about as much as the fact that Forest also have two European Cups. What bothers me is that we haven't really had a serious tilt at the CL since 2011.

Click to expand...

Nani’s red card against Madrid was RVP’s first season. That was the closest we came. 2013.

Dave Smith said:

99 was won in added time after being the inferior team

Click to expand...

No, it wasn't. We were easily level with Bayern, arguably better, but struggled to put the ball in the net.

Dave Smith said:

08 was won due to Terry slipping

Click to expand...

It was won because we were a good team. Terry slipping was fortunate for us, just as Ronaldo's uncharacteristically terrible penalty was unfortunate.

"no value in the market" philosophy also didn't help.

Dave Smith said:

08 was won due to Terry slipping.

Click to expand...

Their equaliser came after 2 deflections dropping the ball at Lampard's feet AND Van Der Sar slipping.

wolvored said:

Chelsea have a better chance of catching us up than we have of getting 4. As long as the owners are happy with mediocrity, then we will never win the big prizes again. Its no good spunking 150 mill this summer on players, when there is a glaring problem with coaching.

Click to expand...

I doubt the Glazer's even know what the Champions league is.
If you asked them basic questions on how the teams in the Championship league get promoted to the Premier League they would probably get that all wrong unless they had an earpiece prompter feeding them answers.

Why do so many people still call Chelsea a plastic club? They have many supporters and have been clearly one of England and Europe's top clubs in pretty much this entire century. They are financed by a shady billionaire, yes, but they can't be plastic at this point. I didn't see people pulling off this "plastic" bullshit with Milan and Berlusconi's success from the late 80s to the 2000s, rescuing the club from complete mediocrity that they were in the 70s and early to mid-80s. So Milan's huge success in the 50s and 60s made okay what Berlusconi did? Chelsea didn't have such sucess before Abramovic, so it's not okay because of that? How long until people forget about how they came to their success, like they forgot with Berlusconi? If Chelsea is still a top club contesting for UCL in 2040, will people still call them plastic?

I was hoping for City to win the final, but it's totall bullshit to see Chelsea haters still calling them "plastic". Makes no sense. This whole way of calling clubs as "plastic" just because they have few local fans due to being historically small and then get a billionaire making them big is so dumb. It doesn't matter if Chelsea had few local supporters, they still had and have local supporters who are more than happy with the club finally being in top level.

And the Oasis band already supported City in the 90s.

This whole plastic bullshit is envy. "How dare that club and its few supporters want to challenge the hierarchy of 'true' top football clubs?"

Had a look back at some of the years/games we were knocked out in, GK mistakes in some of the most important ones.

Chelsea were gifted one of theirs by refereeing decisions and we’d have at least another 1, maybe 2 if not for refereeing decisions. They’ve also chucked insane amounts of money at it meaning they effectively paid for theirs.

Frank Sinatra Fan said:

Why do so many people still call Chelsea a plastic club? They have many supporters and have been clearly one of England and Europe's top clubs in pretty much this entire century. They are financed by a shady billionaire, yes, but they can't be plastic at this point. I didn't see people pulling off this "plastic" bullshit with Milan and Berlusconi's success from the late 80s to the 2000s, rescuing the club from complete mediocrity that they were in the 70s and early to mid-80s. So Milan's huge success in the 50s and 60s made okay what Berlusconi did? Chelsea didn't have such sucess before Abramovic, so it's not okay because of that? How long until people forget about how they came to their success, like they forgot with Berlusconi? If Chelsea is still a top club contesting for UCL in 2040, will people still call them plastic?

I was hoping for City to win the final, but it's totall bullshit to see Chelsea haters still calling them "plastic". Makes no sense. This whole way of calling clubs as "plastic" just because they have few local fans due to being historically small and then get a billionaire making them big is so dumb. It doesn't matter if Chelsea had few local supporters, they still had and have local supporters who are more than happy with the club finally being in top level.

And the Oasis band already supported City in the 90s.

This whole plastic bullshit is envy. "How dare that club and its few supporters want to challenge the hierarchy of 'true' top football clubs?"

Click to expand...

So, all the discourse criticizing the likes of Abramovic for his shady endeavors and corruption, made by some "moral preachers", while also giving a pass to Berlusconi and Milan, is really hypocrisy.

I also would like to add that every club that becomes far more successful gains many supporters. I'm sure that Liverpool gained who knows how many supporters during their peak in the 70s and 80s. But not all of them were plastics, many of them still supported Liverpool since then no matter what, even though they originally fell in love with Liverpool due to their success. It can also be said that Ferguson gained countless supporters for United due to the club's success under him.