5 replies to this topic

[ws6blue]

CL no doubt

When mancu won in in 1968, they played 4 less matches and some very small teams - champions of their own countries yes but they played champions from Scotland, Poland, Yugoslavia before the quarterfinal. Check villa, forest & scouse on Wikipedia and its the same story - the best leagues only had one team each so if you count France, Italy, holland, Germany and Spain that's it really

Hate to say it but scouse played top teams in 2005 including one Chelsea fc....so have to admit that was worthy

Our win by comparison with all the european cup winners from England was way way ahead

Yes the so called big teams get seeded, get rid of that and make it a level competition

So remember when scouse sing at us, that their 4 European cup wins was against mostly average teams

Beating Valencia, Napoli, benfica, Barcelona, bayern is up there with the very best winners

Legends

[erskblue]

In one of the seasons they won it.1977/78 Liverpool got a bye in the first round.

To be fair they then played Dynamo Dresen, Benfica and Borrusia Munchengladbach before beating Brugge in the Final.

Just 7 games...

[Englishman]

I was thinking about this earlier too. The toughest aspect of the old European Cup was you had to be domestic champions (or holders) to get in it. However, once you were in it there were a lot more minnows in the draw, the champions of Northern Ireland, Malta, Norway etc, the sort of teams the strong ones would beat 10-1 on aggregate.

The Champions League has more depth because generally, the 2nd/3rd/4th best team from England, Spain or Italy is better than the champions of Poland or Latvia, so more tough matches. In 76/77 Liverpool played five teams, three of whom were Crusaders, FC Zurich and Trabzonspor. We played Bayern away, Barcelona, Benfica, Napoli, Valencia, Leverkusen. The only real 'minnow' we had to face was Genk. Don't think many have won it with a tougher run than that.

[Snedger]

There are two ways of looking at it. It is harder now because nearly all the teams competing are strong, ie no easy games against champions of Finland. However, back then you had to be champions at home first and thus had a lot less cracks at winning it.

(Just seen that I said the same thing as the Englishman while I was faffing around posting on my mobile) Anyway it is harder now cos that's when we've won it!

Edited by Snedger, Yesterday, 10:50 PM.

[erskblue]

Snedger, on 24 May 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

There are two ways of looking at it. It is harder now because nearly all the teams competing are strong, ie no easy games against champions of Finland. However, back then you had to be champions at home first and thus had a lot less cracks at winning it.

(Just seen that I said the same thing as the Englishman while I was faffing around posting on my mobile) Anyway it is harder now cos that's when we've won it!

Good points. When Forest won it in 1978/79 they had to play Liverpool in Round 1. Hard enough to be fair as Liverpool had won it the previous 2 seasons. Their next difficult big manes were Cologne in Semi Finals.

Rangers in 1978/79 got Juventus, then PSV Eindhoven, then Cologne. Had they beaten the Germans they'd have faced Forest.

To be fair Juventus and then PSV respectively probably though Rangers ? Easy game ...

Edited by erskblue, Today, 05:44 AM.

[maytow123]

yes,but i think Chelsea is more better.