mulligan eamonn. liverpool clearly did get the better of united. but united were better over 38 games against weak teams obviously.

and united got one of the easiest routes to the champions league final ive ever seen. they played a porto team that lost their star man queresma and are a shadow of the team they are since they won it. lost a world class manager and players. they play in a terrible league which is highlighted by the fact that sporting lisbon who came second in portugal got beat by bayern 12-1. a champions league record and if you look at sporting and benficas other recent results in europe they have taken several big beatings. porto are very poor and team scoring 2 at old trafford just shows united arnt a great team anyway. and porto didnt finish too far ahead of sporting and benfica in the league

before that they played an inter team that are 1 dimensional and have no money. they have took heavy beatings by liverpool last year and got played of they park by villareal one year. their team is full of players who are past it and are very old for a football player and still managed to outplay united in the 2nd leg.

and then they got an arsenal who gifted them two goals and who are now not really part of the big 4 anymore. its more a big 3.

hardly a hard route

barca played a ok bayern who really put it up to them in the 2nd game and outplayed them for long periods with ribery playing amazing. they also played a very useful lyon who are very capable of getting goals and could have easily beaten united if they got them. and then we seen them outplay chelsea for 180 minutes in which barca got unlucky in the 1st leg and got a red for nothing in the 2nd which gave chelsea their only chances

to sum it up barcas route was a lot harder. united were outplayed by a very weak porto in the 1st leg and inter in the 2nd leg. united are lucky the standard over europe has gone down because they are a very average team to have won it in 08 and get to the final in 09

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 01/06/2009 17:42:40    298886

re spudenator 1/6
You said what does a team have to do to be proved better than Utd and you thought beating them twice in one season would be enough well in my opinion if we go with your thinking then the statistics show that from their first meeting in 1895 to the present day in all compitions (played177) UTD won 68 Liverpool won 59 and 50 draws then you would have to say Utd are the better side. Now you see we can all pull rabbits out of the hat. Then you went on to say the best team doesnt alawys win the league this i could not understand so i looked up the reader's digest dictionary to see what BEST means and it says and i quote= the most excellent,and to the higest standard one can reach now in my book that means winners not second game over.

Mulligan Eamonn (None) - Posts: 896 - 01/06/2009 22:47:48    299120

re 32 4 1, 1/6/2009
You say Liverpool clearly did get the better of Utd but Utd were better over 38 games against weak teams have i missed something because did Liverpool not play the same teams as Utd did.
As for the easier route in the CP its only your own opinion we can all come up with our own statistics to suit our thinking.

Mulligan Eamonn (None) - Posts: 896 - 01/06/2009 23:08:56    299144

Sorry spudenator for the spelling mistake in always had a heavy weekend and not watching what i am doing.

Mulligan Eamonn (None) - Posts: 896 - 01/06/2009 23:16:50    299150

like i said united were better over the 38 games. so they are better at beating weaker teams. liverpool draw to much.

dress it up as you like but they got the easy route to the final and the 1st good team they played got hammered

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 01/06/2009 23:16:59    299151

Good old 32, bangin the same old drum. Here's one for you, Athletico madrid beat barcelona this year, so by ur reasoning athletico were the better side but barcelona dont better against the weaker teams... Boom

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 01/06/2009 23:26:52    299164

welcome back master. took a few days of after did ye, after all your talk about united and ronaldo being the best only for it to completely backfire. let things settle down first

barca didnt win most of their games 1-0 and hope the team in second kept drawing to let them back in it. also barca didnt get thrasted twice by the team in second

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 01/06/2009 23:51:40    299193

re 32 4 1
As i said its all about opinons and as they say its not often you are right but you are wrong this time. Good post the Master couldnt put it better myself.

Mulligan Eamonn (None) - Posts: 896 - 02/06/2009 00:16:22    299219

No 32, I was out and about for the holiday weekend. You should try it. Or maybe you rather the world of warcraft?

Utd scored 68 goals, so ur 1-0 theory is out the door straight away. They also ended the season with 90 points, barca were on 87, even though utd are in a far superior league. Why bother makin stuff up? You know u always get caught out? So athletico are a better side than barcelona but they didnt do as well against the smaller teams. Any other little gems?

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 02/06/2009 10:27:40    299346

and if i remeber correctly i think it was barca playing atletico in their second match and didnt barca score 5 goals in the 1st half?

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 02/06/2009 10:50:03    299364

They lost 4-3

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 02/06/2009 17:04:41    299794

haha of course you were out for a weekend holiday. how convienent;)

i think you like being wrong. i said liverpool THRASHED united TWICE, did i or did i not. atletico scraped over barca ONCE and guess what happened in the other game they played. they lost 6-1. type it in youtube and you'll see the highlights.

and master evey here knows that after christmas united go a whole host of 1-0 wins and then around the time they played villa got several last minute goals from players like marcheda because the likes of ronaldo wernt up to it when the pressure came on as usual. but being the wikipedia wonder kid i doubt they tell you the times teams scored in every match or the results of every team during the season. its like when you tried to argue aimar played over half the season because wikipedia said he made 22 appearances. what wikipedia dosnt tell you is they were mainly for the last 5-10 minutes of games. its a well known fact he has long suffered for injuries and thats why valencia sold him. buts thats a different arguement, im just proving the point all your football knowledge is wikipedia based and you dont have a notion about football outside the premiership. and even then you only rate players by the amount of goals they score. anelka deserves world player of the year, eh.

oh and if barca finished with less points than united in a weaker league why didnt united beat them? maybe because la liga is the best, well outside the big 3 and big 4 of spain and england

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 02/06/2009 17:40:49    299836

Ha ha. Wikipedia kid eh? They say imitation is the highest form of complement you can get. Since it was me who caught you quoting the infinite wisdom of wikipedia!

And didnt ronaldo score in the come back against aston villa? Couldnt you say that great teams come out on top of close games? Like Kerry in gaa

I dont want to be dragged back into this rubbish about aimar. The reality about that was you said he was out for the season when his team got relegated, yet he was still able to make 16 starts and 5 more as a sub (scoring no goals), so how could he have been out for the season? The season before where you said he starred, he had about 8 goals and a similar assist haul. Hardly world class form, reflected by the fact that he now plays for benfica. So you think this guy is a superstar and ronaldo is useless. That says it all

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 02/06/2009 22:22:10    300103

ive never once quoted from wikipedia in an arguement with you. remember the arguement about van der vaart. i said he was injured but the fact was he fell out with the manager. i still knew it wasnt because he wasnt good enough to start normally which you claimed it was. but i never refer to wikipedia. you have on several occassions.

aimar also had brain meningitis. he's been plauged with countless injuries every time he gets fit. thats why he has been sold on on several occassions. but when fit you cant comare ronaldo to aimar. aimar's got everything. quick feet and lightning pace, free kicks, headers (and look at the size of him), unbelievable vision, and deadly defence splitting pases. this is the main reason for valencias appearance in 2 uefa cl finals and two la liga wins. just when he gets injured valencia fall down the table. and then guess what. he goes to relegated threatened zaragoza and they end up 6th only 1 or 2 points from uefa cl place. and then injured and guess what? relegated. just because he wasnt hyped up by the british media dosnt take away his talent. aimar is twice the player ronaldo can only dream of being. maradonna said aimar was the only player he would pay to watch and maradonna is the greatest ever

and ye like kerrys two close all-irelands with tyrone where they came out on top

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 03/06/2009 00:30:52    300240

and i see master you never replied to thr original atletico arguement. i can only assume you were wrong. the fact is barca have proved they are head and shoulders above the rest of europe while united time and time again have been seen to have been very average. they were shown up by barca for the average team that they are

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 03/06/2009 00:44:54    300246

The only time I ever referred to wikipedia was to point out ur dependace on it. I dodged nothing, athletico beat barcelona, just like liverpool beat utd, so what is the difference? Didnt get an answer to that one so I let u off (again).
I like aimar, but he's not in ronaldos league. My point was you said he was out for the full season yet he had 16 starts in the league alone. This shows ur arguments are full of holes and are embellished to suit urself. Again the CL final bit, Aimar was substituted very early in that match, could have even been before half time, mendieta was their key player all season. Again another gaping hole in ur argument... You can compare him to ronaldo, they both play in a similar area, and ronaldo scores 5 times as many goals and gets twice as many assists. Maradona says alot of things, he said kinkladze was the best player in the world at the same time, he also says pele was useless, sounds very fair doesnt he?

As for van der vaart, he fell out with the manager because he was dropped.

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 03/06/2009 10:03:09    300350

atletico didnt beat barca twice the way liverpool beat united twice. and the time they did beat them it was very close 4-3, but i think barca proved who was the better team beating them 6-1 in the other game while united took two hammerings. barca regularly beat teams 4/5-0 through out the season. united this season havnt and have been far from comfortable in a lot of them van der vaart got dropped because he got in a arguement with the manager, he didnt get in a arguement about being dropped. a bit like andy reid. i dont know which season of aimars you've jumped to but im talking about his last one. he didnt make 16 starts. and would aimar been taken of in the champions league final prove my point. they were winning every game to get there and then he went of and guess what, they lost. the team was built around him. he was by far there most important player. and no ronaldo and aimar arnt similar positions. aimar plays in the deep CENTRE od midfield, ronaldo right wing. the centre is a far more important. he's responsible for defence splitting passes that only players of his vision can see and setting up play with his awarness and quick feet. ronaldo is played very high up the wing and even as and out and out striker sometimes. his job is to score. aimars wasnt. if aimar played in england and stayed fit he would win world player of the year every year. media hype goes a long way into twisting people opinions

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 03/06/2009 12:46:57    300571

So they have to beat them twice? Is that the rule? Any other rules i should know about? I know barcalona are better than atletico, but atletico managed to beat them. The same thing can be said for liverpool and utd but you argue the opposite in this case. Purely because you dont like utd. This is the point i am making Look, van der vaart was dropped and he took the hump, he had actually been also dropped by schuster before he left, so no its not like andy reid, he never started playing a guitar or some daft nonsense like that. read this [url]http://www.insidefutbol.com/2009/01/07/rafael-van-der-vaart-vanishing-in-madrid/. Why cant they be compared? david silva is regularly compared to aimar, he even wears the same number, and silva plays in the same position ronaldo does. So what is the difference? Aimar was subbed in the final against munich. They lost on penalties. So he didnt start any games in his final year at zaragoza? read this -> [url=]http://soccernet.espn.go.com/players/stats?id=11829&cc=5739 . The most assists he's ever had was 7. The same season ronaldo had double that. He also had NO assists for valencia, ever. Some vision alright. What was that you said about media hype? Its like when you told MancIrish about the nou camp and it turned out he was the one who had actually been there. You can talk the talk...

TheMaster (Mayo) - Posts: 16187 - 03/06/2009 13:37:02    300650

haha well that profile is completely wrong. you think aimar would have been kept for 6 seasons and bought for 24 if he never gave an assist. all you have to do is look at aimar on youtube in a valencia jersey and you will see him give tons of assists and through balls. the fact that they put 0 in assists at his time at valencia shows the profile is completely wrong. and its espn, an american company, so i would hardly be relying on them to give 110% accurate stats. and the fact you needed to look up the internet and take espn's "facts" shows your limited knowlegde of football outside england. every defender on a team would be able to give an assist in at least 6 seasons. them stats arnt wrong, they are completely of the mark. and its a well known fact valencia sold aimar due to constant injuries especially in his final season and took next to no part in the second half of the season. and i used to watch most of valencias matches then due to aimar being on the team. and he suffered from brain meningitis during his final season at valencia. and no its not a rule. the atletico arguement just shows barca are way ahead of everyone else as they still beat them in the other lef 6-1 while united are an pretty average team. just slightly better than a bad lot in england. and the fact liverpool ended and started the season hammering teams plus hammering united twice shows they threw it away. mancirish said old trafford was the best and considering he lives in manchester that dosnt sound biast. i said old trafford wasnt the best in any aspect. capacity (as nou camp is bigger just to name 1 stadium) and there are a lot of stadiums with better atmosphere. ferguson and roy keane have criticesed the fans and atmosphere and anfield and celtic park and widely regarded as having the best atmosphere in europe. so its quite clear in both aspects, capacity and atmosphere old trafford is far from the best

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 03/06/2009 17:08:46    300966

i meant celtic park and anfield are normally regarded as having the atmosphere in britain

32_4_1 (Meath) - Posts: 4156 - 03/06/2009 18:31:47    301039