Why do we generally not do as well in Europe, even under Fergie?

Sir Erik ten Hag

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Excluding the Barca domination that costed us at least 2 Champions League titles, we also seem to just crash out of Europe in disappointing (and unlucky) ways:

2006-2007: We played GREAT football that season with Ronaldo and Rooney finally coming together. Yet we still crashed out against Milan.
2009-2010: We crashed out against Bayern even after leading by 3 goals at Old Trafford, and with a goal on their stadium already.
2011-2012: We crashed out in group stage, then got spanked by Athletic Bilbao. Embarrassing stuff, really.
2012-2013: We faced the hardest 2nd place winner possible in Real. But Nani's red card distracted us from the fact that we missed chances in the opening leg and should have buried them with at least 2 goals.

And this was just Fergie's later years. I was not counting other disappointment like that defeat against Mourinho's Porto, or how that underwhelming Leverkusen prevented us from a dream-like Real-MU final.

Why do you think we are so often disappointed or unlucky in Europe, even under Fergie's management?
 
Because hes a mythical manager who was always expected to perform miracles. When Fergie had the best squad in europe he won the thing. And when he didnt, it should be understandable to not win it.

What happened after Fergie shouldnt be mentioned. We were bad in all comps not only europe.
 
I break SAF's reign in three. Edwards reign, treble period, Glazer period

Edwards reign we were nowhere near the financial juggernaut United are known to be. Sure we dominated the local pond but that was hardly an achievement. We couldn't buy Batistuta because Fiorentina (mid tier Serie A club who also suffered relegation) paid him far more then we could ever do. The 3 foreign rule made things even worse as we couldn't field our best side either + Edwards made it quite clear in one of his old interview that his aim was to win at local level and anything else was a bonus.

Treble period - That was a strange period which mirrors the Glazer post SAF's period in some ways. United could go full spending spree in one season (Stam, Blomqvist and Yorke) only to go full skint the season after despite winning everything. The transfer window following the treble was laughable. We bought Silvestre and Fortune from Inter and Atletico Madrid reserves, we signed Bosnich who was an average goalkeeper and then Taibi from Venezia. That's relegation fodder type of transfers.That's not an issue in the EPL as one bad game can be ratified by a series of good games later on. It becomes an issue in the CL though were one mistake from an average player can knock you out of the CL.

Glazer period - The Glazers inherited a fantastic side and we did well to squeeze every drop of talent left out of it. Yet at the time a new threat came in that would dominate football for a long long time ie Pep's Barcelona. No one could beat that.
 
Took all English teams time to be competitive in Europe because of the restrictions in the 80s and early 90s. But after that, I think we did fairly okay in Europe under Fergie considering the PL wasn't the top league that the superstars wanted to play in till at least the late 2000s. Got to at least the semis in 97, 99, 02, 07, 08, 09, 11. Should have gone deeper in 04 and 10. Only truly disastrous performances I remember were 06 and 12 when we didn't qualify from the group. Then there's our transition peruod between 03 and 06 where we just weren't as good in general.
 
You can argue we were unlucky too that Milan game you mention in the lead up to that we had centre back injury crisis, Bayern a red card to Rafael set us back we were dominating them until that point and you can add we should have beat Porto in 04 a disallowed non offside goal by Scholes, I reckon if we played Chelsea again in 09 which should have been given all those decisions against Chelsea we would have won 2 in a row as with any game you need a bit of luck and we lacked that at times.

Prior to that all the other leagues were better than the PL and attracted better players especially when we were at our best in the 90's, we were also hurt by the 3 foreign player rule which included Wales and RoI iirc so we were never able to play our best players all together

All that being said we really should have neaten Dortmund in 97 we missed so many chances, Leverkusen in 02 I think, Monaco on away goals all chances we let go past where we should have done better
 
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In both the Bayern and Real games you mentioned we got absolutely shafted by refereeing decisions. One of the Da Silva twins got wrongly sent off against Bayern which changed the game. Nani was wrongly sent off against Madrid.

English clubs never get the favourable decisions in Europe compared to the likes of Madrid and Barcelona.
 
I think we have "just slightly" underachieved but historically speaking United has won every single available euro trophy under the sun.
As far as the last 10 years we have pretty much been a faliure in England and Europe except the 2015 FA cup and the 2017 Europa league
 
Fergusons 'underperforming' in europe is massively overstated.

Between 99 and 2011, 12 seasons, Ferguson got to 4 finals, winning 2 and losing two. In that time, we also got knocked out in 2 semi finals and 4 quarter finals. So we made the semi finals 50% of the time and almost always the quarters. Taken in context - until zidane, no manager had ever won 3. If we'd managed to win one of those other finals, nobody would ever even consider saying we should have won more.

Before winning it in 99, we were in the CL 4 times. The early years was a very different competition, hampered by foreigner rule, and we got a quarter final and semi final, before winning it on his 5th try.
 
06-07 vs Milan we had a shambles of a defence in the home leg, away leg just not good enough against an experienced Milan side.

09/10 and 12/13 the red cards cost us. We were a good team, especially 09/10, but not good enough to hold on with 10 men against another good team. 12/13 we were clearly the lesser side but were looking threatening playing a defensive counter-attacking style, but it's hard keeping Ronaldo, Modric and co out with 10 men. Van Persie missed a golden chance. Fine margins and you need the run of the dice to win the whole tournament. Feels like SAF "deserved" a 3rd CL title but hard to specify one year we actually "should" have or deserved to win.

The best chance was the 1st final vs Barca imo. We has enough fire power up front, we should have packed the midfield with runners and hit them on the break. Fletcher and Hargreaves being out meant Giggs and Anderson in midfield who couldn't get near Barca's midfield, but we could have put Park in a midfield 3 to man mark Xavi or Iniesta. Jose and a couple other sides showed how to do a smash and grab job against Barca's tiki taka. We had even done so the year before at the Nou Camp. We could even have gone 352 which would have worked imo:

Ronaldo - Rooney

Anderson - Park
Evra ------ Carrick ------ Rafael
O'Shea - Rio - Vidic​
 
Same reason no English teams have done well in those years. We weren't good enough pre 99 thanks to the Liverpool ban.

In the 2000s the physical style of the English game didn't fit within Europe, we were always more tired than continental teams and always refereed more harshly and it cost us more than a couple of times.

Then finally you had the UEFA favouritism towards Madrid and Barcelona, which is now showing to be verging towards outright cheating.
 
Sir Erik ten Hag said:
Excluding the Barca domination that costed us at least 2 Champions League titles, we also seem to just crash out of Europe in disappointing (and unlucky) ways:

2006-2007: We played GREAT football that season with Ronaldo and Rooney finally coming together. Yet we still crashed out against Milan.
2009-2010: We crashed out against Bayern even after leading by 3 goals at Old Trafford, and with a goal on their stadium already.
2011-2012: We crashed out in group stage, then got spanked by Athletic Bilbao. Embarrassing stuff, really.
2012-2013: We faced the hardest 2nd place winner possible in Real. But Nani's red card distracted us from the fact that we missed chances in the opening leg and should have buried them with at least 2 goals.

And this was just Fergie's later years. I was not counting other disappointment like that defeat against Mourinho's Porto, or how that underwhelming Leverkusen prevented us from a dream-like Real-MU final.

Why do you think we are so often disappointed or unlucky in Europe, even under Fergie's management?
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Doesn't Fergie have the second-most wins in Europe as a manager? He's only just recently been overtaken by Ancelotti. Tbh we are unlucky not to have at least 2 more CLs, but in a competition like this, luck is massive.
 
CL used to be such a great comp because the PL was an up and coming league and you’d hope to get these amazing two legged ties with giants like Juve, AC, Inter, Barca, Real, Bayern…nowadays it’s basically PL clubs + Real + Bayern, it’s a lot easier to win and a lot less exciting to watch because you can visibly see year after year these other clubs falling away.

That’s not even factoring in UEFA are corrupt as feck and even when you talk about Barca, the PL teams probably would have knocked them out if it weren’t for awful ref decisions. People always forget that talking about them but their two CL wins under Pep are mired in controversy.
 
Sir Erik ten Hag said:
Excluding the Barca domination that costed us at least 2 Champions League titles, we also seem to just crash out of Europe in disappointing (and unlucky) ways:

2006-2007: We played GREAT football that season with Ronaldo and Rooney finally coming together. Yet we still crashed out against Milan.
2009-2010: We crashed out against Bayern even after leading by 3 goals at Old Trafford, and with a goal on their stadium already.
2011-2012: We crashed out in group stage, then got spanked by Athletic Bilbao. Embarrassing stuff, really.
2012-2013: We faced the hardest 2nd place winner possible in Real. But Nani's red card distracted us from the fact that we missed chances in the opening leg and should have buried them with at least 2 goals.

And this was just Fergie's later years. I was not counting other disappointment like that defeat against Mourinho's Porto, or how that underwhelming Leverkusen prevented us from a dream-like Real-MU final.

Why do you think we are so often disappointed or unlucky in Europe, even under Fergie's management?
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We did pretty well under Ferguson. It's a bit of a myth that he under achieved imo. When we won't it in 1999 no other English team was even remotely competitive, and between then and 2008 we were mostly not good enough but still performed reasonably well, and would generally go out to a better team.

2006/2007 - we were limping over the line that season. By the time we played Milan our defence was decimated with injuries, we had no striker and we looked knackered in every game.

2009/2010 - that one was annoying because I thought we were miles better than Bayern, but the stupid red card and Rooney getting injured. Just the sort of thing that can happen in a knockout tie.

2011/2012 - SAF kept basically playing a second team in the group games and this is the season it inevitably caught him out. Bilbao were extremely good and I think if that was a CL game we'd have approached it very differently.

2012/2013 - I was pretty convinced that was fixed at the time and if I watched it vack probably wouldn't feel any different. The first leg was worse. I seem to remember the ref ending the game a minute early just because it looked like we were through on goal
 
To be fair, we probably wouldn't have this discussion had we not suffered through some serious misfortune.

First, the Munich air disaster. Had the Busby Babes blossomed into the team/players it looked like they were going to be, who knows what we would have achieved in Europe.

Then, in the 1969 Semi Final against Milan that I was talking to @Moriarty about in another thread, Law had his goal wrongfully disallowed and, had it stood, I think we would've gone on to win it again. I've been on a Law binge recently, and, in interviews, that game has come up and he joked about the ref being paid off, and asking what his and the linesmans nationalities were :lol:

We all know about Scholes' disallowed goal against Porto. Like Law, had his goal stood, I think we would've gone on to win the tournament.

Finally, you have the two finals against Barcelona. They were undoubtedly the better team on both occasions, but should they have been in the final in the first place?

Outside of that, we may have won more if we strengthened our defence on two occasions. First being after the treble. Say we replaced Schmeichel with van der Sar from the get go and kept Stam, we probably could've won another during that period. The other time being in 06-07. Then you think of the daft red cards Rafael and Nani got, but hey-ho.

So, we could have realistically had another 3+ cups, taking us to at least 6, which wouldn't have been something to sniff at.

noodlehair said:
2012/2013 - I was pretty convinced that was fixed at the time and if I watched it vack probably wouldn't feel any different. The first leg was worse. I seem to remember the ref ending the game a minute early just because it looked like we were through on goal
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The main talking point when it comes to that tie is Nani's red, but the other big moment I remember is Varane fouling Evra as he was through on goal in the first leg. I could be misremembering but I thought that should've been a red.
 
Our best squads won it, but other than that we were always behind other teams in europe in terms of top players. Top Italian and Spanish teams had some incredible players during the Fergie Era.
 
Yagami said:
The main talking point when it comes to that tie is Nani's red, but the other big moment I remember is Varane fouling Evra as he was through on goal in the first leg. I could be misremembering but I thought that should've been a red.
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It ended up being the main talking point but I thought the refereeing for the whole first leg was dodgy as feck. You are correct the Varane foul did happen but I thought it was on Welbeck. I'd have to check.

But you know, red card/not a red card is open to some degree of interpretation. Ending the game a minute early to stop a team from scoring is about as open to interpretation as the Real Madrid president handing the ref a sack with a dollar sign on it as part of the pre match presentation
 
For the majority of Fergies time in Europe It was a different era to what we see now in the CL, much more parity, much harder for a small number of teams to dominate. The talent was spread meaning a loss of form for a key player or a couple of injuries would make even the best teams much more vulnerable. Tends to get forgotten these days with how the top teams can coast through the early phases of the tournament, stat padding, rotating their bloated squads of world class talent to keep them fresh. Utd made mistakes at key points of games, or had injuries, or just didn't perform. Often also had bad luck, but the margins were small at that time.

There were 25 years between Milan in 1990 and Madrid in 2016, with no team retaining the trophy. A far healthier sporting environment, and for me much more interesting than seeing the reserves of City/Madrid/Bayern smashing former greats like Ajax, Porto, Benfica and co.
 
Continental referees simply do not respect the British style of football.
 
noodlehair said:
It ended up being the main talking point but I thought the refereeing for the whole first leg was dodgy as feck. You are correct the Varane foul did happen but I thought it was on Welbeck. I'd have to check.

But you know, red card/not a red card is open to some degree of interpretation. Ending the game a minute early to stop a team from scoring is about as open to interpretation as the Real Madrid president handing the ref a sack with a dollar sign on it as part of the pre match presentation
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True. I kinda wiped the game from memory because I was so salty, but did the game end after we dealt with a Madrid corner? So, basically a perfect counter attacking opportunity.
 
In 2000 against Madrid was it Karanka who somehow got away with tipping Andy Coles 3 yard header over the bar in Madrid? That second leg was a proper mess up, Giggs was killing it, and Keane scored the own goal, the team panicked and got done on the counter against a Madrid side they were better than. The defense at the time was a weakness, Schmikes gone, Stam didn't have a reliable partner, Irwin was old and both Nevilles were still a few years away from their best level. Really only between 2006-11 that Utd had a defensive unit that was among the best in Europe.

It is odd though how much the game has changed, was watching the 97/98 Juve tie a couple of weeks back when Utd beat them 3-2 at OT, both teams were so direct. Don't mean in long balls, but as soon as they got the ball they were looking to pass forward and the support were charging up. So used now to todays endless tedious cycling of the ball and assiduous tactical discipline that the recklessness of 90's football came as a shock, but an increasingly pleasant one.
 
noodlehair said:
It ended up being the main talking point but I thought the refereeing for the whole first leg was dodgy as feck. You are correct the Varane foul did happen but I thought it was on Welbeck. I'd have to check.

But you know, red card/not a red card is open to some degree of interpretation. Ending the game a minute early to stop a team from scoring is about as open to interpretation as the Real Madrid president handing the ref a sack with a dollar sign on it as part of the pre match presentation
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There were some serious shenanigans going on in the 1969 tournament. Celtic went to Milan in the QF and came away with a 0-0 draw. They were favourites for the 2nd leg at Parkhead but went 0-1 down after 15 minutes. Celtic were denied a penalty and went out. Would we have beaten them? Dunno, but it would have been an interesting tie.
 
We're just poor as a European force. Three CL wins in our entire history isn't good enough for the size and stature of the club we are. Even when we were great I never really felt like we had this CL thing sussed and could expect to be winning or coming close every season. Maybe between 2007-2011, but that's it. Even when we won the Treble we surrended tamely the season after.

You can say we were unlucky here, or this happened there, but fans of all teams will tell you their hard luck stories. You either find a way or you fail, and with us it's almost always the latter.

We're the polar opposite to Liverpool. Even when they're poor, they still seem to do well. Whereas we have to have an absolutely outstanding team to get anywhere near.

Even the Europa League. We can't even manage that. We won it in 2017 but how many times have we been in it before, and since then? The standard is generally poor and yet we always fail.

We just don't seem suited to European football somehow. Some teams just seem to have an affinity with it, and we just....don't.
 
Never really played football suited to it. Patience and control.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
CL used to be such a great comp because the PL was an up and coming league and you’d hope to get these amazing two legged ties with giants like Juve, AC, Inter, Barca, Real, Bayern…nowadays it’s basically PL clubs + Real + Bayern, it’s a lot easier to win and a lot less exciting to watch because you can visibly see year after year these other clubs falling away.
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This. I would saying that the CL between say 95-2005 is probably the most enjoyable football European football has been in my lifetime, a proper open challenge with different teams, styles, all coming to the fore. Utd could easily have been playing Dynamo Kiev for the treble in 99, they were a fantastic team for a few years. Now their best players would be sitting on the bench of club in the PL or La Liga and the their unique style would never have developed. Now we have homogenized styles across leagues and extremely systematic approaches to the games. And Superteams, which really killed the European football experience.
 
Tactically we were off. We would play Inter the same way we’d play Portsmouth. Queiroz changed this and Sir Alex used elements after he left along with his way.

unpopular opinion because it’s been brought up we didn’t lose to Bilbao because we didn’t take the Europa league seriously. We were outclassed because our style didn’twork in Europe
 
When English teams got wiser to the diving at any contact it helped us square things up a bit,European football competition was always a nervy affair knowing you could get robbed any moment or cheap free kicks giving back possession.
 
On both occasions we won the champions league we stagnated afterwards and didn't really improve the squad to any great degree. The 2008 team was so good that we kept performing really well in Europe for many years and would have won more but for Barcelona but the 99 team needed some surgery. Denis Irwin was getting older and had a poor game against Madrid in 2000, our goalkeeping situation could have been much better and it would have been good if we had had we had a top class centre back to partner Stam (Brown was great and all but still pretty young and Silvestre was always talented but error prone). The midfield was a concern too with Keane often our best player but he was overrun by teams that seemed to break through the midfield with ease (Real Madrid and Bayern Munich games in 2000 and 2001) but that was probably more of a tactical issue.

After 99 ideally we should have got a better left back, goal keeper, a centre back and maybe another winger to give competition to Becks and Giggs. It was a very talented team but i think it could have done with one or two top class additions. The signings were just kind of ok/good but nothing that drastically improved us.
 
devilish said:
I break SAF's reign in three. Edwards reign, treble period, Glazer period

Edwards reign we were nowhere near the financial juggernaut United are known to be. Sure we dominated the local pond but that was hardly an achievement. We couldn't buy Batistuta because Fiorentina (mid tier Serie A club who also suffered relegation) paid him far more then we could ever do. The 3 foreign rule made things even worse as we couldn't field our best side either + Edwards made it quite clear in one of his old interview that his aim was to win at local level and anything else was a bonus.

Treble period - That was a strange period which mirrors the Glazer post SAF's period in some ways. United could go full spending spree in one season (Stam, Blomqvist and Yorke) only to go full skint the season after despite winning everything. The transfer window following the treble was laughable. We bought Silvestre and Fortune from Inter and Atletico Madrid reserves, we signed Bosnich who was an average goalkeeper and then Taibi from Venezia. That's relegation fodder type of transfers.That's not an issue in the EPL as one bad game can be ratified by a series of good games later on. It becomes an issue in the CL though were one mistake from an average player can knock you out of the CL.

Glazer period - The Glazers inherited a fantastic side and we did well to squeeze every drop of talent left out of it. Yet at the time a new threat came in that would dominate football for a long long time ie Pep's Barcelona. No one could beat that.
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That's harsh on Silvestre. But to your point SAF had to operate within a strict budget in terms of fees and wages under Edwards. Which included the treble period.

As you say we could spend £40m in 98 but there was no chance we could repeat that every year. Especially years like 99 where the club was building a new training ground and expanding OT.

Look at the years OT was expanded and our transfer outlay those summers. 92, 95, 99, 00 and 05.
 
In general European success at this club is treated as a bonus rather than the ultimate prizes possession, unlike the other big clubs in Europe where that is the ultimate goal.

We're too afraid of aiming high, so we don't have to reflect on why we failed.
 
stevoc said:
That's harsh on Silvestre. But to your point SAF had to operate within a strict budget in terms of fees and wages under Edwards. Which included the treble period.

As you say we could spend £40m in 98 but there was no chance we could repeat that every year. Especially years like 99 where the club was building a new training ground and expanding OT.

Look at the years OT was expanded and our transfer outlay those summers. 92, 95, 99, 00 and 05.
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Silvestre was literally in Inter's reserves. Inter froze him out of the first team something he admitted himself at the time. We picked Fortune from Atletico Madrid B, Taibi from Venezia (after previously tanking at AC Milan) and Bosnich on a free. That was a terrible transfer window especially considering that the club racked an extra 60m (big money at the time) after winning the treble.
 
The years we didn't win the Champions League were years if we admit it we didn't deserve to. The closest was possibly 06/07 but our players were all quite young that season and we were decimated with injuries at the back
 
Weren't we beaten by the eventual champions pretty often? Might have only been the kings of Europe twice under SAF, but we were probably the kingmakers about 6 or 7 times.
 
@Sir Erik ten Hag he was a bit unlucky not to win it more than he did. A few cases in point:

We were in the semi final in 1996/1997 and we're a bit unlucky overall to go out on the balance of play, I think Butt hit the post first leg when we needed to score an away goal really and if that had gone in we'd have been in another final.

In 2002/2003 I think? Vs Jose's Porto side that went on to win it - we had some goals disallowed, were probably the better team, and generally played well but went out after a last minute goal (and the famous Jose knee slide).

Prior to 1995 there was the 3 and the 5 foreigner rule which counted Welsh and Irish and Scottish as foreign players which to be honest killed us - we had Brian McClair, Denis Irwin, Giggs, Mark Hughes considered "foreign" and couldn't pick them along with Schmeichel.

I think we went out in 2007 to Bayern because of the red card to Rafael that killed us - we were brilliant in both legs and to be honest probably deserved to go through against van Gaal's side but went out to a Fantastic Robben goal.

So there's a few times Ferguson could have won it. We weren't always the best team in it, Real Madrid usually were if I'm being honest, and after 2010 we've never come close to the best teams, just a perennial nothing team for the last ten years.

If you want to be conspiratorial, UEFA have been accused of protecting certain teams in the competition, by Alex Ferguson himself at times. And given Sepp Blatter's comments about them fixing draws, and their behaviour in general, it's not outside the realm of possibility.
 
didz said:
Weren't we beaten by the eventual champions pretty often? Might have only been the kings of Europe twice under SAF, but we were probably the kingmakers about 6 or 7 times.
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Dortmund 96/97
Madrid 99/00
Bayern 00/01
Porto 03/04
Milan 06/07
Barca 08/09
Barca 10/11
 
I felt that the reasons why we weren’t as successful as we could be to do with a mixture of tactics and a bit of bad luck.

We should have reached the final in these years:

2002- had a great chance to beat Bayer Leverkusen who Tbf were a fab team in Germany at the time. But Beckhams injury really cost us this one and if I remember correctly we played ok but weren’t clinical enough. We’d have probs been beaten by Madrid in final mind.

2004 - not the strongest year but the route to the final was there but Porto were pretty infuriating with their play acting, Scholes offside was rubbish. It was one of those where their name was on the trophy so it was a lot of bad luck for us.

2007 - I think we had the best 11 in the world at this point but fatigue and injuries had ravaged our team by then that we just didn’t have enough to beat a Milan team who only turned up for 13 games that year.

2010 - If Rooney had stayed fit then it was likely that we would have got past Munich in the quarters. Mixed in with Rafael’s sending off, events conspired against us.

It was unfortunate that the class of 2009 was pitted against Pep’s Barca. Otherwise they would have had a great chance at back to back champions leagues.
 
Because you sold your souls in 99.
 
I think its because the gap between the leagues 15 years ago was much closer. The prem now is miles ahead of the others and English teams tend to perform better, we are an exception because we have a broken mindset. Then you have the usually dominance from madrid and in recent years, inter, barca and bayern. I much preferred the champions league from mid 90s till about 2010. Felt so much more competitive, now its all about money.
 
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