It would have been almost impossible to completely avoid the Spanish, Milan and Munich. Ultimately we may 'only' have to beat one to get to the final. Benfica wont be easy but with the 2nd leg at home, I fancy us.
1, barca 2, real 3, bayern 4, milan 5, benfica 6, marseille 7, apoel In order of who I wouldnt want So it was a decent draw for you. Second leg at home is key as we saw vs napoli Milan are resonable vs barca. They arent afraid and dont play a passing/possesion game that barca seem to destroy. So its not guarenteed you will have to face barca in the semi. Although of course it is likely. I would say 60% chance you beat benfica who are a very good side. Second leg at home giving you the edge.
Good draw. Could have been much worse. If we get through, anything is possible. AC Milan are not there to make up the numbers, they have a chance to beat Barca and face one of either us or Benfica in the semi-finals. And if they don't then, again, we're not there to make up the numbers either. No one gets to a semi-final without being a serious contender to win the whole competition, no matter who the opposition may be.
in all fairness they have been one of the best sides we've faced this season(including the City debacle).Very good technically,closing down and ability to keep the ball.They'd put a lot of premiership teams to shame.Good luckon your Euro adventure though but honestly can't see you getting much change from Barca even if you get past Benfica
Losing to Barca is no disgrace but then, who says it will be Barca? What about Milan? And of course we have to beat Benfica. As for Bilbao, yes they are a good side but only 7th in spanish league. You lot are our current champions and currently top of our league. They didn't just beat you, they absolutely ripped the piss out of you. It seems that our league is very average after all.
In the EUFA Champions League rankings we stand in 3rd place and Befica stand in 13th--so if they mean anything we should make it through! Strangely Real Madrid are in 5th place!
I just think city are still gelling and still need a few players. And they had a tough group. We have been inconsistant and worse (untill recently) than in maybe the previous 15 years) You have been poor and have had an unsettled squad. Man united are good but they are again probably worse than they have been for some time. The EL - city and man utd didnt care and are on a downish year too. Stoke are stoke. Spuds played their reserves. Birmingham are championship. Just a blip for the premier league imo. Europe is hard and if you arent at the top of your game, or if you have 1 bad performance, you can be out. Better to judge leagues as the uefa coefficient does - over 5 years or so.
My bench mark is that either Chelsea or United team that played in Moscow would quite easily win this Premtership. IMO.
We've been better than them overall in Europe for the last five years (for the last nine in fact). Until last year, they had not made it past the last 16 since the 2003/04 season.
I'd prefer Benfica to Marseille. From what I've seen Benfica are clueless defensively but good going forward. We would struggle more against Marseille who keep games tight, plus Deschamps is a brilliant coach and has played with a lot of our players, he would undoubtedly have intel on us. I'm sure Luiz and Ramires will give us some intel on Benfica. Get a 1-1 draw in Lisbon and we are laughing IMO, but after Monaco it would be foolish to take anything for granted.
Totally agree, once you get to a semi-final anyone would back their team to win it. So if we beat Benfica we'll undoubtedly get the WUMs saying we haven't a prayer but the reality is we do. I genuinely believe Milan are good enough to knock out Barca, but they will have to do much better than they did in the Group Stage
Milan didnt do to bad against Barcelona in the group. But if Milan play like they did against Arsenal it be like the Barce and Leverkuson score lol.
