Napoli are not gonna care about the cup. They desperately want to the title in Italy.
I feel like you are overstating the case here. People are reasonably saying that we should be able to beat sides like Lazio, Marseille and Milan. We have aspirations of being in the CL, weāre a very wealthy club with some very expensive players, theres nothing unreasonable about thinking we should be beating clubs of that calibre (note: Milan are obviously a massive club but in their current guiseā¦)
Nobody is saying itās a foregone conclusion, we are all aware that we could run into serious difficulty, people are just saying that we should be competent enough to prevail.
4 Likes
Iām not writing us off. I said I think weāll be favourites against most opposition. I donāt mean you here but things like this have been said in this thread, āif we canāt even beat them we donāt deserve CL footballā¦ā as if the teams are in the third division or something. These are teams who will have Champions League football next season.
You just said it yourself, anything is possible ā including us getting beat by a team considered worse than us.
2 Likes
No, itās as if those teams are in a second tier European competition.
Thereās validity to that sentence you have quoted. If we canāt progress against a Marseille or Lazio then who would hold out hope for us against what is generally a better standard of team in the CL?
2 Likes
My point is these are Champions League level teams. They will more than likely be in the CL next season. Marseille yeah, we should be beating them. But Lazio - nah, with their attack and our defence I wouldnāt fancy our chances. Basically, all iām saying is itās not just Atletico we should be worried about getting drawn against.
Except theyāre all in the Europa League this season because they were too inconsistent/not good enough to be in the Champions Leagueā¦
I totally see what youāre getting at, Iām just not scared of any of these teams. I respect them and I wonāt underestimate them, but Iām scored of them.
Agree mostly with @Phoebica line of thinking but having the two legs should allow the likes of Ćzil enough time to demonstrate our favourites tag. I think weāll demolish Ostersund at home but after that I expect close ties
2 Likes
Arsenal
Atletico
Lazio
Lyon
Zenit
For me.
Thatās 5 clubs in alphabetical order. What is it youāre trying to tell us?
7 Likes
Iād put Atletico ahead of us purely because of their recent European success. Theyāve also improved a bit in the second part of the season so Iām expecting them to make a strong run in the Europa.
2 Likes
Zenit Atletico and Lazio are the danger ties.
I hope Atletico focus on getting 2nd in the league and go out of the EL early.
The funny thing is costa actually destroyed Holding that game and itās only the head pointing which completely rewrote what happened.
1 Like
Completely destroyed seems particularly hyperbolic to me, as I remember it we were pretty good defensively despite Costa scoring, especially considering how makeshift that defence was.
But I was in the ground for that one so I do find that that can distort my memory/reading of a game sometimes, particularly after a few pints.
2 Likes
The favourites. Itās easy to understand 
It depends. If they beat Barca away next month they would be in the title race again so they could decide to focus on it.
In a game in which we dominated Chelsea for the most part Holding directly lost Costa on two occasions (that stick out in my memory) for the goal and again in the first half. The team played well but costa could of got something from that game of the back of Holding mistakes.
Itās just a small grieve of my mine that people used to big up holdings performances the back end of last season imo solely due to the fact we were picking up points and he was young. When in my opinion he was shaky af. Arnautovic had him on toast I remember as well.
So now every time someone brings up a past Holding performance I like to chime up like a miserable cunt.
4 Likes
Weāre made to measure for Atletico tbh
The first game of the knockout stage is Red Start-Spartak Moscow. 0-0 FT.
Definitely not winning this with Welbeck as our principal goal threat. Even those who think weāre 2nd favourites (not me) must be in agreement
2 Likes
It depends on the draw. I still believe we are among favourites.