It's official, better season than team A, B and C...

vi1lain said:
They've scored more goals than we have, and have nothing to show for it except CL qualification.

In 10 years time, will they reminisce on the times they scored more goals than everybody?
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It is their best season in a long time and they went unbeaten at home so probably yeah.
 
Some of our fans have clouded vision for sure. Liverpool won a Treble of League Cup, Europa League and FA Cup in 2001 whilst we only won the league. I can guarantee not one of our fans reckoned Liverpool had a better season than us back then.

Chelsea have had the best season as they have finished with a League Championship regardless if they complete the double.

We have had the second best season as we've obtained a European trophy and the League Cup.

Tottenham/City/Liverpool had great seasons but they have achieved nothing more than we have achieved this season, and we have the benefit of 2 cups.

Arsenal have had a bad season regardless if they win the FA Cup. If they had have finished in the top 4 and won the Cup they would have had a good season, but still not better than Chelsea or Us.
 
Rusholme Ruffian said:
Yeah, the fact that the negative posts have actually increased following a European trophy win is a bit of a giveaway!
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There's also a section of casual united fans on here that hate Mourinho more than they like the club. Oh and lets not forgot the Pochettino love in. Fecking hipster supporters.

The idea of Mourinho having a better season than Poch hurts their little hipster heads
 
ivaldo said:
So which of those did they achieve success in? As far as I can tell they failed on both fronts. They could have finished 30 points ahead of us it wouldn't have mattered. Prize money, trophies, pot seeding, whatever metric you care to use, we still out-perform Spurs.

Yeah, we made fun of them when we were winning the league and the Champions League frequently, that's the difference, we were winning things, not bragging about finishing second and ending yet another season without silverware.

You offer Spurs fans the chance to swap our season for theirs if they were being truthful they'd bite our hands off.
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They have a better team and can go confident into next season. If they continue like they do they will most likely win silverware at some point. Our season has been that great that we will spend another 200m+ to fix the squad and maybe get closer to where we should be, while they just need to do small things and keep it together.

And even if we didn't win things under Fergie it didn't matter. We were always a pretty good team and competed on all fronts, fluke cup wins were never regarded as a better season imo. And for me the PL or the CL alone are more worth than all other cup competitions together and people seem to agree with me in putting Chelsea ahead of us despite "only" winning PL so far. Only one can win the PL, but that doesn't make anything else pointless. Spurs had a great PL season. Liverpool made it into CL and finished above richer teams with better squads. Good achievements that weren't expected.
If I am honest we didn't do anything which was unexpected. We beat teams around CL group stage level and lower to the EL title. And we beat a City B-side and Southampton to the league cup. We struggled in most of those wins too when we should have trashed them. People overexaggerate our football quality too. It's still pretty poor, it's just better than LvG level, we still struggle to score. We had a good spell around Christmas, but in the last few weeks/months it has been pretty dull. We finished around the same points as we did in the last 2 seasons after spending a lot of money again. Van Gaal missed Top4 because of GD and won the FA cup. If he would have finished 4th would someone call his season great?

Overall no spurs fan will have bad feelings about their season, we still have major problems and the EL title only avoided a disaster of a season. That's the difference for me, to only look at trophies is a bit too easy for me when we follow football that much closer.
I am also not sure Spurs fans want to swap with us, they might only for the fact they barely won something in the last few years, that's true. But apart from that they are probably happy where they are.


And again I can just point to which season would you choose:
Scenario A: 6th in the PL, CL group stage 4th, FA-Cup QF, League Cup win
Scenario B: 2nd in the PL, CL final, FA-Cup QF, League Cup early exit

I think it should be Scenario B without a doubt, even if you throw FA-Cup into A on top of it.
 
Boycott said:
'Football's all about trophies' 'if you're not first you're last'

The players and managers can adopt this attitude. They're employees. For fans, entertainment counts a lot. Actually it's the main thing - being enthused to watch your team week in week out. Trophies or no trophies.

Utd won an FA Cup stopping Liverpool doing the treble in 77. They also got relegated that decade but played exciting football with young players under The Doc. Older Reds still reminisce about those days because they enjoyed following Utd home and away. It was really fun.

If football is all about trophies then you're going to get yourself down. Most teams do not have the resources to win a trophy. You can however play great football. None of us lift the trophies - enjoy the moment but good times don't need trophies. Doing that breeds a 'only sing when you're winning' fan.
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Not the debate we're having though. It effectively comes down to if trophies and letting fans enjoy a final is more significant than the team scraping 4th in the league.
 
vi1lain said:
They've scored more goals than we have, and have nothing to show for it except CL qualification.

In 10 years time, will they reminisce on the times they scored more goals than everybody?
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You're missing the point, from what Spurs have shown this season, they're in a much better position than us at the moment, to go into the next season, and there's no shame in accepting that.
 
Shane88 said:
Is it even an argument? We got CL, like them, and we got 2 trophies, unlike them.

They got an extra £10-15 million in Premier League prize money. I'm sure their fans will enjoy that.
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That money is easily more than covered by Europa League total prize money and tv money.
 
It's pretty obvious that we've had atleast the 2nd best season in the country, and probably the top 10 best season in Europe. And still we've not satisfied and people have the guts to complain or belittle the team? Guess we've been spoilt rotten for the last few decades.
 
CG1010 said:
My two cents on whose season between United and Spurs was better:

Both Spurs and United have got CL football next season. The difference is Spurs are 4 league positions above us while we have won two trophies and they haven't won any. So who had a better season? I don't think the answer is as straightforward either way and it depends on what you value more. Obviously trophies are extremely important and I am absolutely buzzing since yesterday that we won the EL. But league positions are also important - especially for a club like us. They tell us how far we are from our objective of being #1. So hypothetically if West Brom (who are 10th in league) won both the league cup and FA cup whereas we didn't win any, I still wouldn't trade our 6th position with them. Because that would mean it is going to be so much more harder to reach the top in coming seasons.

In reality, I prefer our season to Spurs simply because while we are 6th in the league, that's because of having some specific holes in the squad that would could fill and easily compete at the top next season. And having two trophies, including a European cup is fantastic!
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Agree with your last part, we struggled in the league because of poor decisions made by previous regimes left Mourinho with too much to do in one window. Despite that we still managed to add to our trophy cabinet and we did play some good football during the middle part of the season but came undone when fatigue and injuries piled up. The number of first team players we had on crutches last night should really help people with contextualizing what we achieved this season.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
It is their best season in a long time and they went unbeaten at home so probably yeah.
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I think that only proves the point that this is one of their best seasons, comparatively for us - it's an average season. And ours is still better.

kthanksbye said:
You're missing the point, from what Spurs have shown this season, they're in a much better position than us at the moment, to go into the next season, and there's no shame in accepting that.
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They played better football than us - i'll happily accept that, but next season is a clean slate.
Mentality wise we've been through a lot of ups and downs, and have still won two trophies. Their ability to win when it matters has been shown up on a few occasions (last year against Chelsea, this season in CL, again when they were chasing Chelsea, domestic cups etc) and that will be a concern.
 
kthanksbye said:
You're missing the point, from what Spurs have shown this season, they're in a much better position than us at the moment, to go into the next season, and there's no shame in accepting that.
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They have also shown that they cannot get past an average Belgian side in the mentioned Europa League.

What now?
 
Funny thing is that most of us say now that we've had the better season, but I'm pretty sure that if next season we achieve City's or Liverpool's result and they achieve ours, we will say that our season was better. Football.
 
Maciek said:
Funny thing is that most of us say now that we've had the better season, but I'm pretty sure that if next season we achieve City's or Liverpool's result and they achieve ours, we will say that our season was better. Football.
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Exactly.
 
Are people here actually that dumb? I mean, the idiots are actually suggesting City and Liverpool had a better season than us. LOL, for feck's sake, that's why I no longer frequent this joke of a place anymore. That 2 teams are actually hopeless in every other tournaments, focused on PL, and only finished 7 and 9 points ahead of us. Do these people actually think 3rd/4th is actually that important? They mean absolutely nothing for a big club especially if you get to qualify to CL without needing them.

3 trophies less, 7-9 points more in the league, with one of them having to play a playoff match before actually qualified for CL group stages. And even if Liverpool qualified for CL, they are in pot 3, which means they can easily have Bayern Munich/Juventus/Benfica/Monaco as well as Barcelona/Atletico Madrid/Paris Saint-Germain/Borussia Dortmund/FC Porto in the group. Anyone with a functioning brain would prefer our position going into next season.

And yes, Spurs had a better season and seems to have a better squad at the moment. So what? They aren't going to improve their squad as much as we will during the summer simply because they can't even compete with us financially. Player would always prefer to join a club with more prestige, more history and had won more trophies instead of a good 2nd place team with no trophies to show. At the end of a player's career, all they have to look at is the medals they won, not that one season where they played above expectations and finished second. Most people tend to forget that Poch had 3 season to build his team, while this is actually Mourinho's first season. He also had less expectations and way less media pressure to do well.

Only Chelsea can say they had a better season and a better future outlook after yesterday.
 
Spurs play 'good' football yet got knocked out by the mighty Gent in the Europa League. Spurs are going to play at Wembley next season where they have been mid-table standard. The last 2 season were a prime opportunity for Spurs to win trophies but next season they will struggle because they will lose their home advantage!
 
Maciek said:
Funny thing is that most of us say now that we've had the better season, but I'm pretty sure that if next season we achieve City's or Liverpool's result and they achieve ours, we will say that our season was better. Football.
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No chance. Id have said we had a good season but they would have done better. Think most would on here as well.
 
FlawlessThaw said:
Not the debate we're having though. It effectively comes down to if trophies and letting fans enjoy a final is more significant than the team scraping 4th in the league.
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Fair enough. Just a pet peeve of mine seeing a lot of people on here these days rub their noses at other clubs because they don't win trophies as if it renders the season obsolete. If football is all about trophies no one would support a small club.

As someone who watches my local non-league team often, that experience of turning up with mates and being a part of a community is what supporting a club is about for me. In fact I probably feel more value for the money I spend knowing it's being put back into the club who are run by great custodians. The team floated around the mid table spots in the last few weeks but we still had a good time and I've probably enjoyed them play than most PL teams.
 
Seveneric said:
Posts like this are kinda weird, if it bothers you so much, ignore him. Not sure why you seem disturbed that he's been negative in his 10k. If he wants to be negative and post a 100k times, it's on him.
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I'm just interested in the human psyche mate. I'm interested to know what is going on in someone's mind when they've just watched the team they 'support' do exactly what it is that we follow a football team for (i.e. win a trophy), and yet splurged out about 100 negative posts on various threads displaying not the slightest element of pleasure. Nowhere have I told him he shouldn't post that, I've just asked some questions...which he is under no obligation to answer.
 
Maciek said:
Funny thing is that most of us say now that we've had the better season, but I'm pretty sure that if next season we achieve City's or Liverpool's result and they achieve ours, we will say that our season was better. Football.
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I feel like I'm missing something that City and Liverpool. How are people spinning no title challenge, flopping in some cups and failing in semis in the others to any form of success?
 
Obviously our season has been very hit and miss. Obviously Liverpool, City and Spurs have better teams and squads than us too. But we won two trophies, we're in the CL and we have a better manager. I think we had the better season, particularly considering squad strength, injuries and having to recover from Moyes/LVG and the crushing of our clubs spirit.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
Were we all praising Rafa when he won Europa, FA Cup and finished third with Chelsea?
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Probably not because we won the league that year. Can understand why Chelsea fans thought they did better than us and rightly so. League title triumphs anything we have accomplished

I've always thought the fat waiter is underrated on here though. Not looking forward to going to St James' Park next year.
 
Pyroblazer said:
And again I can just point to which season would you choose:
Scenario A: 6th in the PL, CL group stage 4th, FA-Cup QF, League Cup win
Scenario B: it2nd in the PL, CL final, FA-Cup QF, League Cup early ex

I think it should be Scenario B without a doubt, even if you throw FA-Cup into A on top of it.
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The only reason you'd pick B is because you think it bodes better for the season after. If you take out the one season part from your hypothetical and extend it to a decade, lets say:

Scenario A: 2nd in the PL, CL final loss, FA-Cup QF, League Cup early exit for 10 years
Scenario B: 4 league cups, 4 fa cups and 3 Europa league cups in 10 years

which would you pick?
 
Pyroblazer said:
They have a better team and can go confident into next season. If they continue like they do they will most likely win silverware at some point. Our season has been that great that we will spend another 200m+ to fix the squad and maybe get closer to where we should be, while they just need to do small things and keep it together.

And even if we didn't win things under Fergie it didn't matter. We were always a pretty good team and competed on all fronts, fluke cup wins were never regarded as a better season imo. And for me the PL or the CL alone are more worth than all other cup competitions together and people seem to agree with me in putting Chelsea ahead of us despite "only" winning PL so far. Only one can win the PL, but that doesn't make anything else pointless. Spurs had a great PL season. Liverpool made it into CL and finished above richer teams with better squads. Good achievements that weren't expected.
If I am honest we didn't do anything which was unexpected. We beat teams around CL group stage level and lower to the EL title. And we beat a City B-side and Southampton to the league cup. We struggled in most of those wins too when we should have trashed them. People overexaggerate our football quality too. It's still pretty poor, it's just better than LvG level, we still struggle to score. We had a good spell around Christmas, but in the last few weeks/months it has been pretty dull. We finished around the same points as we did in the last 2 seasons after spending a lot of money again. Van Gaal missed Top4 because of GD and won the FA cup. If he would have finished 4th would someone call his season great?

Overall no spurs fan will have bad feelings about their season, we still have major problems and the EL title only avoided a disaster of a season. That's the difference for me, to only look at trophies is a bit too easy for me when we follow football that much closer.
I am also not sure Spurs fans want to swap with us, they might only for the fact they barely won something in the last few years, that's true. But apart from that they are probably happy where they are.


And again I can just point to which season would you choose:
Scenario A: 6th in the PL, CL group stage 4th, FA-Cup QF, League Cup win
Scenario B: 2nd in the PL, CL final, FA-Cup QF, League Cup early exit

I think it should be Scenario B without a doubt, even if you throw FA-Cup into A on top of it.
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You seem to be confusing team quality with success. They're two different things.
 
Rusholme Ruffian said:
I'm just interested in the human psyche mate. I'm interested to know what is going on in someone's mind when they've just watched the team they 'support' do exactly what it is that we follow a football team for (i.e. win a trophy), and yet splurged out about 100 negative posts on various threads displaying not the slightest element of pleasure. Nowhere have I told him he shouldn't post that, I've just asked some questions...which he is under no obligation to answer.
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I should ignore this but, for all of my negativity I have not called our squad mid table standard like many here did, I have not called for the whole squad to be replaced like many did on here, I have not questioned the mentality of the entire squad like many here, I did not question the toughness of the entire squad like many did, I did not completely give up on our World record signing after a few months like some did
 
Keeps It tidy said:
My bad
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Yeah, you probably meant 2011/12, they won CL and FA then, it was under AVB and that pokemon looking interim, Di Matteo iirc. We've finished 2nd on GD behind City the same season, don't think anybody claimed we've had a better season than Chelsea despite them finishing 6th. We were all pissed off how we fecked up that season with the 4-4 Everton match and that lost match against Wigan.
 
Going into next season this is how I'd look at prioritising success:

1) Champions League - The competition with the biggest prestige and the most difficult to win based average level of other teams and it being a cup competition, so subject to more variance. We've not won enough of these and nothing compares.

2) Premier League - The competition that is most indicative of how good you are. You can generally expect to win at least one of these if you are the top team in the country for the a few years. Variance plays a lesser role.

3) Europa League - Falls below the Premier League next season, because we've just won it and ticked it off, and winning it again would require a big stumble in the CL group stages early on.

=4) FA Cup/League Cup - Nothing between these two. FA Cup may be more important historically but I actually prefer the League Cup due to when it is largely played and the two legged semi-final not being at Wembley.

6) 2nd in the Champions League

7) 2nd in Premier League

8) 2nd in Europa League

=9) 2nd in FA Cup/League Cup

11) 3rd or 4th in the Premier League

Super Cup is harder to guage due it being a one off, but it's nice to win so I would probably just slot it below winning a domestic cup, but above losing in a CL final.

Note: what I would quantify as something making a good season and being seen as a success is not the same as how I'd judge our performances on the field. I'd rather win the CL with a horrible performance, a lucky own goal and terrible refereeing, than lose it outplaying the opposition, being screwed by the referee and conceding a wonderfluke.
 
Kostur said:
Yeah, you probably meant 2011/12, they won CL and FA then, it was under AVB and that pokemon looking interim, Di Matteo iirc. We've finished 2nd on GD behind City the same season, don't think anybody claimed we've had a better season than Chelsea despite them finishing 6th. We were all pissed off how we fecked up that season with the 4-4 Everton match and that lost match against Wigan.
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Well I would take our season even with the embarrassing CL campaign and losing the title in extra time over theirs.
 
Desert Eagle said:
The only reason you'd pick B is because you think it bodes better for the season after. If you take out the one season part from your hypothetical and extend it to a decade, lets say:

Scenario A: 2nd in the PL, CL final loss, FA-Cup QF, League Cup early exit for 10 years
Scenario B: 4 league cups, 4 fa cups and 3 Europa league cups in 10 years

which would you pick?
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Scenario A would be tough as a fan and would make us the biggest bottlers in football history but also make us one of the most consistent teams of all time in Europe. I guess we are not talking about 10 cl finals in a row, but 4 would be great too. People hopefully realize that's something special and I don't think there would be a huge chance to not win anything if we play that consistent on a high level as we would be one of the best teams outthere.

Scenario B means we became Liverpool with the occasional EL title insted of a CL trophy/final

So A.
 
antihenry said:
First of all, no manager is only responsible for his own signings, because they all inherit somebody else's squad for the most part. In that respect Mourinho is no different than any other manager and he should be responsible for how his team performs no matter who signed who. He had plenty of time and plenty of money to prepare for the season and if MU fans were told in August you were gonna finish 6th, people would be quite unhappy, and rightly so.

I also resent that idea that United had a poor squad. You've spent over £400m in the last three years. Granted, some of these players may not be United's level, but there was more than enough quality and depth to finish in the top four. Majority here were betting on the title race being between United and City at the start of the season.
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Showed your true color. Combine bad signings of previous managers & ask Mourinho to turn water to wine.

As I pointed out, Mourinho did a good job fixing plenty of problem resurrecting some bad signings & ease up the wage bill already. His signings are good.

Again with top 4 bs. Is there a reason finishing 2-4 is better than winning EL now (read the context of what different of EL back when Benitez won it for Chelsea in one of my previous post)? We had every chance to finish in top 4 just few weeks ago if we chose to ditch EL & focus in league games. Why did we choose EL?

Don't bring stupid reason like that "if MU fans were told in August you were gonna finish 6th, people would be quite unhappy, and rightly so.". Why? If there is someone who know the future, then there will be leaking & people will try to change that future. If Mourinho knows which players would eventually failed him, then would you think he only made that many signings, kept the same approach? Not to forget that leaving out the part that we won EL & League in the end of the argument is quite sneaky. Again, it's not the best scenario, but it's no less worse than Poch, Pep, Klopp went trophyless achieve virtually nothing more.
 
Pyroblazer said:
Scenario A would be tough as a fan and would make us the biggest bottlers in football history but also make us one of the most consistent teams of all time in Europe. I guess we are not talking about 10 cl finals in a row, but 4 would be great too. People hopefully realize that's something special and I don't think there would be a huge chance to not win anything if we play that consistent on a high level as we would be one of the best teams outthere.

Scenario B means we became Liverpool with the occasional EL title insted of a CL trophy/final

So A.
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Thats the whole point of the hypothetical, that in one option you know you're not going to win anything but be very consistent whereas in the other you'd be guaranteed 10 trophies. If you still pick A fair enough, we can agree to disagree. I want to win, Fergies legacy is winning trophies. How many United fans do you know who moan about the treble cause we were outplayed by arse in the semifinal before that giggs goal or by bayern in the final? How many United fans remember the fa cup final we lost to arsenal fondly cause we played such great attacking football. I think it comes down to idealism vs pragmatism and ike mourinho said in his post match presser, this was a victory for the pragmatists. We were incredibly lucky to have a manager like fergie who managed to marry the two but that time has gone. Now we have mourinho and he may one day achieve a balance between both himself but in his first season in charge of the team to win two trophies and achieve CL qualification i think it's been a fantastic year.
 
kthanksbye said:
You're missing the point, from what Spurs have shown this season, they're in a much better position than us at the moment, to go into the next season, and there's no shame in accepting that.
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Every teams started new seasons with 0 points (unless there are incident that lead to point deduction). Their league finishing wouldn't make them more attractive to players than us. How is that they're in better position come next season?

We're talking about now, & their supposed great season is actually non achievement compared to us now.
 
ivaldo said:
You seem to be confusing team quality with success. They're two different things.
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Team quality plays a part in how you measure and define what success for you is. That's why I am not a fan of only looking at "facts"/trophies.
For some Bundesliga teams it will be an amazing achievement to win the league. For Bayern it's nothing special and they should do it every year.
We kind of did our business and beat teams that we should beat, I don't think we did anything amazing though.
 
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