There’s no comparison… the way we did it was factually better. In a nutshell, no luck involved and a lot more convincing.
In the FA cup they had 2 replays. Arsenal missed a penalty in the last minute of the semi final and would’ve beaten them.
In the league they didn’t even break 80 points, and had one of the lowest points tallies of any PL champion. They drew 13 games in the season, and had a tally that would’ve seen them finish in 3rd place this season. It was a season, where they were the best of a bad bunch.
In the Champions league though, this is where they had a truly staggering amount of luck on their side.
1. They had a reasonably tough group with Bayern, Barca and Brondby. But they failed to beat both Bayern and Barca, drawing all the games, Brondby were the only team they beat and it was only good enough to finish second. But that didn’t mean they automatically got to the quarters back then (no last 16 then). There was 6 groups of 4 and the top 2 from all the runners up, went through.
- Real Madrid had the highest points of the runners up. Utd had the next best, but about 6 other teams could’ve beaten them to that. However, non of them won their final games. Benfica was a good example, they were going through until they conceded in the last minute to only draw and finish with 1 point less than Utd. So Utd had to rely on 6 other results going their away, in the last round of group games, and they all did. Which in essence, meant they qualified for the quarters as the second best losers.
2. They got lucky with their opponents in the Quarter final and the Semi finals in Inter and Juve. They were both weak as fuck. On paper they might’ve looked strong, Inter had won the UEFA cup the year before and Juventus had got to the CL final. But both had absolutely disastrous seasons, that make Chelsea and Liverpools season this year, seem ok.
- Inter went through 4 different managers that year! They finished only 8 points above the relegation zone and had one of the worst defences in the league. They conceded more goals than two of the teams relegated.
- Juve went through 2 different managers. They finished 7th and had one of the worst attacks in their league. They scored less goals than Bologna, who had finished just one point above the relegation zone.
- Despite this Utd still struggled to overcome both teams. Against Inter they won 2-0 at home, but away they could’ve and probably should’ve gone 2-0 down. They conceded first and should’ve given away a penalty, but somehow it wasn’t given. Then they scored an away goal on the break of play and sealed the tie.
- Against Juve they were outplayed for large parts of the tie and came from behind to win the game.
3. In the final they were again lucky, they went 1-0 down to Bayern. Bayern then hit the woodwork 3-4 times. Then obviously Utd scored those two last minute goals from corners, to win the game.
So yeah, their whole CL win was lucky from start to finish, to say the least. It was like one of those years where the best team in Europe, doesn’t actually win the trophy.
With ours CL win, there was no questions from anyone that we were the best team.
So to summarise, we won all of our trophies in more convincing fashion, we didn’t have to rely on any luck or referee decisions.
