- Aug 25, 2011
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It's pretty clear to me that this club had been stuck in the "inbetween" by prioritising CL.It's a chance at winning something though. The fact we as a club and fanbase overlook it when sides like Sevilla and Roma take them seriously is what makes us laughable.
We apparently want to win trophies, just not those ones, or the league cup according to some. Which then leaves the FA Cup and the Premier League, and I don't see the league happening any time soon. We cannot be so entitled to pick and choose what we go for. If we end up in either Europa or Conference, we should be going 100% to win it. One UCL final does not make us too big for those two competitions.
Also winning the Europa would give us a spot in the Champions League. So why not go for it?
We aren't good enough or powerful enough to win the CL or the PL. So competing at the top or in CL is a little futile, certainly is when we lack direction and identity. Sure, it obviously has to be an objective. The best teams have to be in it. But I'm not sure we can continue with simply just qualifying for it.
I'm looking at the final 4 teams in the Conference League and if Tottenham can beat Dortmund, Madrid, City and Ajax in the CL there's absolutely no reason why we can't do more when we qualify for this.
We have too many players (and coaches) who treat it like an inconvenience. Look at the way we surrendered our spot to Rennes!
Conte doesn't want to coach in that tournament. Kane doesn't want to play in it - as much as he'll pay lip service. There's a reason he wasn't motivated in 21 (Nuno and ECL) and was in (22 Conte and CL).
To get around that you have to have quite a youthful squad, in which the system is quite dynamic and not reliant on stars.
When Poch came here, he used the cups to give Kane, Mason, et al a chance to play.
We qualified quite comfortably in the EL, and of course its not as glamarous but it never is at that stage.
We fell to an experienced Fiorentina team but to be fair to Poch he had a League cup final to prepare for 3 days after the second leg so it was always going to be tricky. Especially when you have to play Fazio and Soldado.
The year after Poch played the likes of Onomah, Njie, Carroll and Mason and we finished top of group that contained a decent Anderlecht and a Monaco team with Mbappe, Mendy, Lemar in it. Thrashing them 4-1.
I actually felt that year we may have had a chance of winning it.
Unfortunately we came up against a very attack heavy Dortmund team right when we were getting closer to Leicester at the top (we had just played Arsenal) and we had a couple of injury doubts so had to field Carroll and Mason in midfield, Onomah ahead of them, Wimmer at cB and Chadli as a CF.
Next season I expect us to have better depth AND a coach like Slot, Kompany or Postecoglou who can use any European participation as a chance to gel the younger players, drive the system into them and give them some ambition.
I also think us fans need to stop looking down on it.
I haven't seen us win a European trophy before