Champions League Experience....

[dancity19]

Don't understand this phrase much to be honest.
You hear it a lot, especially after games such as last night: "We don't have the experience as a club, Dortmund have bags of experience...."

I realise you have to understand how the games can be slightly different against teams in Europe, but ultimately it's a game of football. If you are good enough, and play well enough, you should win. I am sure if we play Benfica for example, we would expect to win, but they have bags more experience than us. Just seems like too much of an exucse to me.

Also, we knew the Champions League was an ambition this year; if Champions League was so vital to us, why not get more players in with more experience in the competition.
We have players who individually have experience, so having 'experience as a club' I don't understand. Bit of a soft excuse to be honest.

How long is it till we have the required experience...next year...5 yrs...??

 

[Dethred]

Considering most clubs change out their entire squad and management team every few years, the only common factor is the fans. Its all bullshit. We have just as many CL experienced players as Dortmund.

 

[City 1 Chelsea 1 1971]

Firstly I think a lot of City fans underestimated just how good Dortmund are in terms of technique, speed and intelligence. Indeed it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Dortmund could meet Madrid in the final.
Agree about the lasy Media cliche. Why did United fail to qualify last year if it all comes down to experience?
You can't compare City with the other English Clubs because our group is far more difficult. That's our problem and we just need to deal with it.
Our best hope is to beat Ajax home and away with Madrid doing the same to Dortmund. Given that scenario Madrid would have already qualified by the time they come to the ETIHAD and might rest a few players.
This would infuriate Dortmund, but United do it frequently.
My biggest worry is that we won’t beat Ajax. The players look confused with the new formation and there are worrying signs of a dramatic loss of confidence throughout the team.
Last season we scored the most goals in the Premier League with only three strikers available for most of the campaign. This season we have four strikers, but all of them seem to play better on their own with Yaya just behind. Yaya is wasted in the holding role and doesn’t win as many tackles as his bulk would suggest.
However this isn’t the time to panic. We simply need to revert to the tried and trusted with the potential return of Richards giving us more height and pace at the back. Things might look a lot brighter in three weeks.

 

[dancity19]

Firstly I think a lot of City fans underestimated just how good Dortmund are in terms of technique, speed and intelligence. Indeed it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Dortmund could meet Madrid in the final.Agree about the lasy Media cliche. Why did United fail to qualify last year if it all comes down to experience?
You can't compare City with the other English Clubs because our group is far more difficult. That's our problem and we just need to deal with it.
Our best hope is to beat Ajax home and away with Madrid doing the same to Dortmund. Given that scenario Madrid would have already qualified by the time they come to the ETIHAD and might rest a few players.
This would infuriate Dortmund, but United do it frequently.
My biggest worry is that we won’t beat Ajax. The players look confused with the new formation and there are worrying signs of a dramatic loss of confidence throughout the team.
Last season we scored the most goals in the Premier League with only three strikers available for most of the campaign. This season we have four strikers, but all of them seem to play better on their own with Yaya just behind. Yaya is wasted in the holding role and doesn’t win as many tackles as his bulk would suggest.
However this isn’t the time to panic. We simply need to revert to the tried and trusted with the potential return of Richards giving us more height and pace at the back. Things might look a lot brighter in three weeks.

Not sure? They are the German Champions for 2 years, so no one should have under estimated them. They were on of the best teams I have seen come to us. Equally, our fans seem to forget we are the Champions of England- we should be up there with the best teams now. We didn't scrape though to the Champions League. Dortmund were brilliant, but we were out played, and that shouldn't have happened, particularly at home.

 

[LoveCity]

Not sure about this experience mantra.

Malaga - a team that had a nightmare summer and had to sell its best player to Arsenal, a team that had next to no money to spend and whose big acquisitions were mostly players deemed past it like Saviola and our own Santa Cruz (as we pay most of his wages). A team in it's first Champions League campaign after a summer of turmoil and uncertainty...

 

[MSP]

it's utterly crap excuse.

Mancini talked about Dortmund's CL experience last night.. WTF, lol

 

[greasedupdeafguy]

it's utterly crap excuse.

 

[Palerider]

We are simply not as good as we think. Our away record against top sides looks weak. We had two standout freak results away last year ( Spurs and United ) both were too good to be a true reflection. We got beat at Bayern, Napoli, Arsenal and Chelsea. This year we have been beat at Real Madrid and nearly turned over at Liverpool. For me, unless we are dominating a side we struggle. i.e. in games where it should be 50/50 we capitulate. The key question is whether this is a character defect or a tactical defect. The number of times the players have fought back from losing positions suggests to me this is mostly a tactical issue. We need a major rethink for these games. Also, I do think our front players do not work hard enough. We need to defend from the front.

 

[bapi]

Dortmund's XI played in 60 CL matches and 7 of them are under 25 years. But here Clichy alone played in 47 CL games. Yaya in 40, Nasri 34 and Kun, Silva, Kompany and Javi Garcia played in 20+ CL matches too. Sorry but nobody can say City are not experienced enough, that they need to few years to learn in CL.

 

[sam-caddick]

I hate this experience myth in the Champions League, it is absolute rubbish in my opinion.

Look at Gary Cahill for Chelsea last year, he was playing in a relegation side that was Bolton, went to Chelsea in January and overall had some superb performances against Barcelona and Munich to win the Champions League - He never had any Champions League playing time prior to going Chelsea and I think if you are good enough you don't need to rely on experience.

Our City team is by far good enough if you ask me, it is managerial tactics that are letting us down in my opinion, not the players.

If you want to bring experience into it:

Every player we have got has pretty much played for their country in either the Euros or the World Cup. Yaya and Tevez have won the Champions League, Sergio the Europa and Silva has won the World Cup and the Euros twice over.