Unfortunately, we also need the £50m that CL football brings to pay for the stadium. When we played a weakened side away at Monaco it was obvious that it's more important to qualify for that tournament than to try and win it .
I don't want to be like Arsenal. I want to try to win it, or anything for that matter. If we accept it as fans then it seeps into the ethos of the club. We won't have a very good team for long if we don't get with the nature of the beast. The moral victories are getting on my nerves. We are the closest to dominating the league bar the sugar daddy clubs and those without wage structures....but we aren't going for the kill..as if there is a perfect moment for it. There isn't. Enic are doing great but they can do better.
Got the money, just need to stop wasting it on showers of ****. Amazingly we would end up with a top notch player instead of ****soko for 30 mill and as much as I love him, a striker that can't strike a cows arse with a banjo...that's 48 mill there...ohh there is money...just some stupid ****s investing in it.
The recurring dilemma with the CL is that realistically, only 4-5 teams on the planet have the squads and favourable enough domestic leagues to compete on both fronts. And by 'compete', I don't mean the half-arsed rent-a-crowd we see from Arsenal and City every year, I mean reaching the QF and SF on an annual basis. Barca, Real, Bayern, Juve and
maybe PSG (I say maybe because they only managed this for a few years but have now been usurped on both stages by Monaco). That really is it.
Most PL managers,including Poch, understand this. Pep and Conte have throughout this season (as much as we may deride them, especially Pep, they have enough experience to sit up and pay attention to them) highlighted how taken aback they were by the intensity and difficulty of even the most run of the mill PL game. This is the first big-name foreign manager has come out and spoken about what we've basically known for years.
The last time a PL made it to the final was 5 years ago, and they didn't come close to challenging for the PL. There was a period of around 8 years, starting with Pool's incredible comeback against Milan, where there was a PL finalist in all but one season (2009-10). What has changed since then? TV money has flooded the PL and made it the most competitive league in the world. Not in the sense that a Leicester will now win the league every season, rather in the sense that both Pep and Conte have stressed: it is much harder for Chelsea to beat a Crystal Palace than it is for a Barca to beat a Leganes. The cricket scores seen regularly in Spain and Germany just don't exist here. When they do, it is almost invariably in games between mid-table sides (Everton v B'mouth).
Bottom line is, it is getting harder by the year for PL sides to reach the latter stages of the CL. Poch realises this. He threw the EL last year to focus on the PL and did more or less the same thing this year with the CL. In all honesty, what is the point in forcing most of your first team to play two strenuous games per week if one of them is basically meaningless? Enrique and Zidane can play their first team in a midweek CL game, rest 6 players at the weekend against some cattle fodder team and still win 5-0 with change to spare. That just doesn't happen here. If any of the current top 4 were to rest more than 3 players, they'd be pushed to the limit even by relegation candidates.
The CL is definitely at risk of being reduced to a money-spinning exercise in the eyes of most PL clubs now. Why did Leicester do better than anyone else this season? Because they were playing full-strength sides in the CL and couldn't care less about the PL. They went into the tournament knowing it would be a one-off and wanted to enjoy the adventure.
The two main problems this season has highlighted are without question: poor and ill-advised recruitment, and poor decision-making by the manager in terms of how and when to rotate his squad. Had even one of Sissoko/Janssen/GKN turned out as good as Wanyama, we wouldn't be having this discussion as we would probably be home and dry at the top of the PL. The margins this high up the summit really are that fine. As it is, only one of our summer signings was worth the paper and ink, and we simply couldn't last the distance in both competitions.
