Champions League 2017/2018

I think we need to defend like how we did vs Sane when up against Asensio if he plays, but the player I most worry about is Marcelo, he is probably the best attacking full back in world football!

Marcelo in this game, unlike most, wont be able to be attacking as much as he usually does because it’s not often he comes up against someone with the pace of Salah or Mane.

My main concern is Ramos being the c**t he is and deliberately setting out to injure one of the front 3 knowing he will get away with it.

Only way to counter Marcelo is to put him on the back foot
and that will mean Salah & TAA having to play like they did against City.

Our first line of defence are the trio upfront..

I don't think we need to argue that both the Spanish teams are play actors. Add the Italians and most other top teams outside England as well. Falling down without any contact, behaving as if someone broke their leg/nose/other body parts, haggling the officials in a group and so on.

Don't want to sound like a dick, but I see that most of the Latin American players have this culture of play acting - That included when Suarez was with us and seeing that most of them play outside of England, you can see that the culture is more outside of England.

But you cannot deny that they are great team irrespective of whether they are cheats or not. In that was I fully agree to what Diego is trying to explain(Of course failing in his attempt). You cannot go to 4 out of 4 CL finals just by Cheating/bribing and other sh*t.

We have seen that the pl has some of the worst divers around, zaha, alli etc, have pretty much lost the morale high ground

My main concern is Ramos being the c**t he is and deliberately setting out to injure one of the front 3 knowing he will get away with it.

Where as Casemiro gets away with murder.

I'm still a manc c**t let's not forget that 

But thanks . 

I didn't doubt it for one minute Keith,cheers

Offer for away fans. Look here
Fb.com/groups/chleague2018kyiv

I didn't doubt it for one minute Keith,cheers

Plenty of people on here will remind him of that fact

I sure wish I could find relevance in your 50% occupancy charge argument but for the life of me I can't fathom how it is relevant. No one needs to know the full facts about Roma home attendance when Serie A home attendances are generally so much lower. Quite how that factors into the context of Champions League, god knows. I mean, no one talks about our poor atmospheres against Burnley, West Brom earlier this season or Stoke at the weekend in the context of our own European nights because it's irrelevant and tonight, as it was for Roma against Barcelona, the fact that they've lost a few times at home this season won't matter much to them. A wholly different context you see. And again, I've yet to see any evidence of the 'superiority' of PSG over Roma. Don't allow the fact that they paid the most expensive transfer fee in history for an overrated Edd The Duck lookalike who's biggest claim to fame is being the third best Barcelona attacker of the last 5 years behind Suarez and Messi to cloud your perception of them. They've created the grand total of f**k all headlines under Ancelotti, Blanc and Emery with a squad full of players that on paper consist of players who are past their peak or haven't actually achieved very much in their careers. What was it Thomas Muller called PSG a few months ago? 'Gassed up' by the press? And so it has shown numerous times in recent seasons.  As I've said before - charlatans. That's all they are.

I said in an earlier post (if you haven't read it) that great sides are ones that capture the imagination of the public and/or influence the game in a way that no other team has. They also have an ability to capture the best footballing elements from the country they're from as well as sweeping all before them in domestic competition as well as continental. Real Madrid may be awesome in the sheer size of the club and the relentless way they have picked up the top trophy in recent years but they have done so by imitating the actions of a conglomerate - sucking in all the best talents from around the world, siphoning them away from their continental rivals and putting them together to play a brand that is effective and geared towards Europe only but in a way that makes them not just uninteresting but very hollow as well. It's kind of sad that a club of their size only exists to compete in one competition alone. That their whole strategy and season is geared towards the Champions League and the Champions League alone is calculated but cynical. When it's Real Madrid and they have the resources (and more) to do something like Barcelona did, Bayern in 2013 or even Man Utd in 1999 and scoop up every other honour available to them, it's hard not to say that there is something very false about claims of greatness. In the time they've dominated the Champions League they've only won the two team La Liga once and a solitary Copa Del Rey since 2011. It's a kind of gutless attitude that insists on spewing its resources onto one competition alone and so it comes as no surprise that the claims in recent years of the Champions League having turned stale and boring have arisen during Madrid's dominance of the competition. They're just using the competition to create a slightly fraudulent image of greatness about themselves when domestically they're anything but. That they do so by hook or crook on the filed only makes that worse.

Sorry I missed this post completely. I'm not really interested in the discussion anymore to be honest , but for the sake of closure, here we go again haha. If you honestly think Roma are a superior side to PSG, then fair enough, there's not much else I can say. Dislike them all you like though, for me PSG's squad is significantly stronger and I'm sure the vast majority would agree. As for their lack of history, well, history didn't seem to be a very important factor when you put beating Manchester City (of all clubs, one with less history in European competitions than PSG) over eliminating the French, Italian and German champions in succession - among them 5 UCL final appearances in the past 8 years alone. So I'm sorry, it seems to me you can be overly romantic when necessary - with a rhetoric I most definitely admire and I'm often in agreement with - but then conveniently leave that aside when it suits your argument. As for Thomas Muller's opinion, I wonder what he'd have to say about how much he fears playing in that mythical Stadio Olimpico...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng_oSGPs6SA

I mentioned Roma's occupancy rate to dispel any myths about their fan base and their home stadium. They're far from a "feared" side. I added to this other facts which I consider relevant - such as that just one season ago they were beaten 3-0 in there by a very mediocre Porto side, one that fared far worse in the Portuguese league than they did this season (they've recently been crowned Portuguese champions). So, in a nutshell, Roma's fans are nothing special, their home record isn't particularly great and their recent history in there isn't exactly glorious. One good run doesn't really change any of it. Deportivo La Coruña once also had an incredible comeback against a far superior side but that never changed their minor status.

As for great teams, I was referring to my question whether you consider the Liverpool of the late 70's to feature among those. For in an earlier post you made it sound as if only clubs with a particularly attacking, or attractive type of football truly deserved a place among the 'greats'. We know that on pitch behavior isn't really a measure for either of us, otherwise you wouldn't (as I do) place Guardiola's Barcelona in that list.

But anyway, whilst I agree that this Real Madrid is far less interesting than that epic Barcelona, I disagree with the very notion that a club that wins 3 in 4 isn't a great one, but then again the bar, for me, need not be that high. Ask yourself this very basic question: what would you be saying about this achievement if that was LFC's? I'm sure your words would paint a very different picture, even if that was accompanied by zero league success. If you really set the bar of 'great' teams as high as to include only treble winning squads as your three examples here, then again I must ask myself whether you think Paisley's LFC ever reached that level. Probably not - maybe Fagan's, if we're willing to consider the League Cup?

I sure don't agree with the idea that Real Madrid's superior performance in Europe is something done by design. It implies that any club with similar resources could do as much, but the reality is that they don't. Others spend more - see PSG's "impostors" or your amazing Manchester City - and still fall short. And make no mistake, for both of those clubs, winning the Champions League would be far more important for their ends than winning their leagues. It took Abramovich's many years of heavy spending to finally reach his ultimate goal. So really, this for me is just a fantastic rhetorical effort to discard what in truth are incredible achievements. And that is leaving aside the fact they actually won the both the UCL and La Liga last season.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the Roma/PSG axis. I think Roma are better than you give them credit for, you think PSG are better than I give them credit for – fair enough. And I don’t want this to come between us – too much passive aggressiveness on my side for starters but no offence intended.

Back to Real, if there is one thing that their success in this competition has taught us it is that if you do have the money then you don’t necessarily have to chop and change the side every summer (even if that unbreakable side was put together with hundreds of millions). So what I’ll say is that they show us consistency is everything in football so at the very least they’ve taught us that. And in a footballing sense they have tremendous mental resolve – to be expected of a side that has stuck together for that long. But at the same time they have greater luxuries and flexibility to their financial rivals. Just because other sides with similar resources doesn’t mean they can’t – it’s just that I think certain environments for other clubs are far stricter and more pressurised. Even if they have similar resources, the likes of Chelsea and Man City face greater pressures on the home front than Real will ever do due to the competition in the Premier League and the insistence that victory is seen on that front as well as abroad. And in a relatively uncompetitive league like La Liga I would expect far more of a Madrid side that purports to be great. They kind of remind me of AC Milan at the start of the 21st century – amazing players that was supreme in Europe but at home was always in the shadow of others. Could have and should have done more on the domestic front and on that matter when talking about the great football teams do they really merit much discussion? Madrid are similar to that only more unforgiving given their tasteless nature on the pitch. If we beat them on Saturday it won’t just be a victory for us but football as a whole. With regards to the treble comment – that was an allusion to what you’d expect at least from Madrid to clubs of a similar financial stature/ability in the modern game of which historically Barca, Man Utd and Bayern are their peers. I don’t think I said that you have to win the treble to be considered a great team. But those three teams showed that with their financial might what is possible and to be honest looking beyond the European Cups it’s a bit disappointing that they’ve not allied their continental dominance with domestic dominance. The higher the stakes, the mightier the club, the more I would expect.

And if it was Liverpool that had won three CL titles like Madrid? I wish! I would love it but if we had little domestic success to go with it? Come on Diego - even you would have to admit that that would be a nagging point when trying to justify greatness particularly especially when the high water mark when considering just Liverpool's history will always be that 70s and 80s side. Talking of which, when it comes to the Liverpool team of the late 70s and 80s– no they don’t reach the great innovative heights of teams before and after them because they never transformed the game like they did. But they did play some superb football, do you not think? I've never doubted that or questioned it. I think some people saw it as quite functional and in modern times I guess it may look that way but I think it was perfect – kind of an idealism of the British game, pass and move, good balance between technique and physique that got better and better as Liverpool moved into and across the 80s. And it was perfected by the unbreakable bond between the players on the pitch and the supporters off it added to that ‘one club’ mentality but that goes beyond what happened on the pitch. That Liverpool maintained European Cup success in the 70s and 80s with regular domestic success makes them a better side than any Real side in modern times but then again how could any of us on this forum be objective about that? That it was maintained and overseen in nearly a decade by one man makes it very special. And that it was all achieved in a very competitive era in English football only adds gloss to Liverpool’s sustained success then. It's great hearing and reading about the accounts of supporters who saw it all and have the best tales to tell from those days and their conviction and passion speaks above all else.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45189982

C*NT RAMOS.

Can't be  arsed to even print his words ...

DOUBLE C*NT RAMOS