You may think that your style if football is not hard to watch but then you're a Chelsea fan. For the rest of us, your play against both Barca and Bayern could be patented as a cure for insomnia. I agree that luck comes and goes. However, as a Spurs fan, your run of luck against us has been extraordinary. Your luck in both the semi- final and the final of the CL was just other worldly - i've never seen anything like it!
Luck would be getting un due ref decisions. Bayern and Barca didn't deserve to win becuase they failed to convert the few good chances our brilliant defending allowed them. Don't you get that? And that game at the Nou Camp was one of the best games you're likely to see ever in terms of drama. And he's not a Chelsea fan which is why his post is even better. No bias, just called it how it is.
!00% Agree! As for comparing Abramovich with any other chairman in the PL? Saudi's ok! but I don't think we have villains on this scale anywhere else in the league.
Shinawatra was possibly worse, but comparing Abramovich with people like Ashley or Whelan is asinine.
!00% Agree! As for comparing Abramovich with any other chairman in the PL? Saudi's ok! but I don't think we have villains on this scale anywhere else in the league.[/QUOTE] My point is we really don't know about the other owners. I would never paint Roman as some kind of saint. He blatantly is not. But I honestly couldn't put my hand on heart and say any PL chairman is a fine upstanding person with no skeletons in the closet. I could be wrong but there are not many businessman out there who get to the level of being able to buy a PL club without having **** on a few people along the way. Don't get me wrong either, I wouldn't like to be in Spurs fans shoes. It sucks to be in that scenario.
My point is we really don't know about the other owners. I would never paint Roman as some kind of saint. He blatantly is not. But I honestly couldn't put my hand on heart and say any PL chairman is a fine upstanding person with no skeletons in the closet. I could be wrong but there are not many businessman out there who get to the level of being able to buy a PL club without having **** on a few people along the way. Don't get me wrong either, I wouldn't like to be in Spurs fans shoes. It sucks to be in that scenario.[/QUOTE] It is about degrees of 'badness'. More important though IMO is the part of your post I quoted. Well said! Maldini, Moore, wonderful players but the media likes goals and strikers. The game as you said has many facets and great defence should be as recognised as great attack. Chech & Cole were just as important to Chelsea as Drogba.
What I "get" is, that if that type of football gets passed off as the norm, then gate receipts will drop like a stone. It may have been brilliant, last gasp, defending, but it was like watching a siege. Not exactly what I call entertainment. Yes, both Barca, and Bayern missed sitters that you would expect them to convert 99 times out of 100, and that's their fault - but also your luck!
I'm not really comparing the evils they've done though. He should fail the fit and proper test in reality. But how many others should have if you're gonna drag all the skeleltons out the closet? Not many of them would pass it.
+1 ^^^^^^^^ Ok we have to acknowledge that there is a bit of rivalry between CFC and THFC but for christ's sake some of the stuff in this thread is pathetic. I've had enough of Spurs fans bleating about how they were robbed of 4th place - if it wasn't for CFC and MUFC dragging up the co-efficient rankings over the last 5 years there well may not have been a 4th spot in the first place. Re: money. It's a money sport! Has been for decades. All the major clubs in the major leagues have spent huge amounts to gain success. That's the way it is. If you don't like it then go and watch the kids in the local park at the weekend. And if anyone seriously thinks that any money in this world is 100% clean then they need to grow up. Re: luck. Yup it plays it part. All teams get it both ways all the time. Live with it. Re: pretty football. Nice to watch but if it doesn't buy you success then what's the point. We put up 3 defensive master-classes and got our just deserts. I have the utmost respect for any Spurs fan who would reject their team winning the CL if they hadn't played pretty football. I can't imagine there would be too many though. Look Spurs fans - you are a decent team. I like watching you. You play some good stuff. You stuffed your own season as you have done time and again. You shouldn't be whinging about the 'loss' of 'your' CL spot. You should be wondering why the hell you blew second or possibly first place in the PL when you were flying. Seriously, maybe you should have been more adaptable in your game play. Like we did in the CL. Maybe you should wonder if your team are quitters and not fighters. Like we were in the CL. And maybe you should realise that you just have not paid your dues in the CL. Like we have with 6 semis and 2 finals. Maybe just grow up a bit and say well done CFC - a LONDON club brings home the biggest prize in club football and yes here at White Hart lane we can do that too. Sincerely, I hope you get there one day and if you're ever in the CL final and not playing us I will be shouting as hard for you as I did for CFC on Saturday.
I can't form a cohesive argument yet you print **** like - "Chelsea's hundreds of millions is not the only thing spent by Abramovich but also the lives of all the innocent people murdered by him to gain his position at the end of Russia's gas wars?" What an absolute tit!
Firstly, do you think that it's fair and equitable that your club, along with Man City is not run S any kind of sensible, viable business, but as the plaything of a very rich man who has more money than sense. IF the UEFA Ffp rules have any teeth, then this will all be brought to a halt. Then we'll see how you do when you have to run it on the same lines as most other clubs. If then you can succeed, fair enough. No, I don't like the way you achieved what you did. Yes, if Spurs played that way I would accept it, but I still wouldn't be bragging about the way it was achieved, as you're doing.
Yes, first 80 mins a seige. Not pretty but tactically spot-on for the occasion - remember we had 2 of our best defenders out and 2 that had been injured and had had only a short period of training prior to the match. Last 40 mins was more entertaining though. Pen's were riveting. I am ok with your definition of one teams ineptness being another teams luck. But that scenario is obviously not a Chelsea exclusive. Spurs will have had heaps of luck come there way by that definition and so will we. Tends to even out though with the better teams making their own good luck. Any team that gets to/near the top and stays there does not do that by luck alone - skill and perseverance come into play. Only the totally myopic would deny Chelsea those qualities over the last decade.
^^^^^^ Mad isn't it - I expected more of Spurs fans really. Truly not a wind-up but jeez Spurs have ultimately had a poor season and they are pulling us to bits. Crazy. At least we had the drive to pull out of our bad spell.
I actually agree with a lot of this... your defending *was* brilliant, don't get me wrong about that... but brilliant defending is not enough in three games against Barca and Bayern because they are still going to get an awful lot of chances, so I am criticising a strategy which relied on the other team missing them! There was a sequence toward the end of the season and CL of teams hitting your woodwork when on a lot of days those would go in, bounce off the woodwork in or even bounce out to an incoming attacker. That didn't happen, but how can you *rely* on that happening, *rely* in the other team missing a penalty?
But why knock it when it worked? Seriously why? Penalty was not missed it was saved - 2 very different outcomes.