The treble is harder to do IMO. For the simple reason that the treble is influenced by the top clubs outside the domestic league. You might have a very good team e.g Chelsea at the moment. You might win the league by December but the champions league part of that treble will be influenced by luck yes but also how the other top clubs like Real Barcelona Bayern etc perform and are dispatched. An invincible run is unusual but not that incredible. A few teams gave gone undefeated at home. And if you have a superior team in your league then it needs just a bit of luck to go undefeated away too. For example it is quite possible that Chelsea could go the rest of the season undefeated at home and away. Difficult yes but not that incredible.
The treble is the better achievement though I think that Arsenal team (and Jose's Chelsea first time round) were all equally good sides.
Gone unbeaten. Only Celtic, Ajax, PSV, Utd, Barca, Inter and Bayern have won the treble. Juve, Milan, Preston, Perugia, Arsenal, Bilbao, Real, Benfica (twice), Ajax, Dinamo Bucharest, Steaua Bucharest and Celtic have all had undefeated league seasons. Perugia and Benfica didn't even win the league when they went undefeated. Which raises two other questions: 1. Would you rather draw 38 games, thus going a whole season undefeated but probably get relegated, or win 37 games and lose one, thus not being undefeated but having a record points haul and probably being the best team in PL history. 2. Would anyone have given a **** about Arsenal's achievement if they had done it the following season, and finished five points behind Chelsea in the process? Either way, the greatest single achievement in my book is Forest from 1977-1980. Promoted from the Second Division, longest undefeated run in all competitions (40), won the First Division at the first attempt, then won back to back European Cups. Not as snappy as 'Invincibles' or 'Treble', but AFAIK no club in any country or any division has ever won their top division straight after being promoted and then won the EC straight after winning the top division. Forest > Treble > Invincibles
Fair enough, but I guess the European Cup was unavailable to teams before the 50s and therefore they could not do the treble. So 12 Invincibles in 100 years, say. And 8 treblers in 50 years. Preston, for example, could go unbeaten for 22 games to be invincible in 1888, but could not have won the treble til the late 50s. Real Madrid went unbeaten for 18 games in 31/32 but could not contest the treble. It looks likely in the next decade that clubs such as Juve, Bayern, etc could be doing more trebles and go going unbeaten than before the way football is going, and easier qualification for CL. Three trebles since 99 for example. And three Invincibles in the last decade, maybe more
I reckon it's more likely clubs in the big leagues will do more trebles than aim to go invincible. Because ultimately, as Chelsea Pensioner said, three trophies will always beat one. I think most managers would rather win the league plus other trophies, rather than simply win the league without defeat. Mourinho, SAF, Ancelotti and all the top managers have always shown themselves to be willing to rest players in the league in favour of an upcoming cup match, particularly when they are in a dominant position in the league. I think that would go for pretty much any manager who is competing in multiple trophies. And the number of matches players have to face nowadays means that most of the players will naturally conserve their energy and focus more on the big cup games, rather than concentrating on every league game. The only time a club will go invincible is if they are like Juve in 2012 or Porto in 2013, when they are dominant in the league but go out of the cups early and thus have only the league left to play for. I guess you can add another question to the ones above: 3. If a manager knew they would only lose one game each season, would they choose to lose it in the league, the cup, or the knockout stages of the Champions League?
Probably not if that was all you concentrated on. If our sole aim this year was to go unbeaten, I'd give us a better chance of that than winning the treble.
I don't think so, based on the number of managers to have prioritised each achievement. Wenger is the only manager I can recall who has ever talked about going a season unbeaten, and actually tried to achieve it. And he achieved it pretty much as soon as he set it out as a target. On the other hand, Ferguson, Mourinho, Ancelotti, Mancini, Pellegrini, Wenger and pretty much every manager at a top club in the PL has said that their ultimate aim for a season is to win all the trophies they are competing in. But only one of them has managed it, and he only managed it once in about twenty opportunities. I honestly reckon Chelsea could have gone this season unbeaten, had Mourinho really focused on that. But the price of going unbeaten would almost certainly be falling short in some, or all, of the cups, and that's not a price he would ever even consider paying.
Bayern and Inter had virtually no domestic competition. It's different in England where the FA Cup is taken seriously by most sides. There isn't the same level of prestige re: Coppa Italia or the Spanish Cup competitions. No English side will win the treble again in my lifetime, I'm almost certain of that.
i would go for the invincibles quite often some one is in a position at this stage to match the treble ie us and city this season, but very rare for someone to still be unbeaten at this stage both blinding achievments though
