The Double

[KS55]

At the start of the season we enter 4 competitions and we have won so far 50% of those with a chance to make it 75%. Hopefully we do that but don't let anyone tell us this hasn't been a great season especially after having to chase someone down so hard

The Community Shield was an unmitigated disaster which proved:
a) That Nunez is a far better player than Haaland.
b) That Haaland chose the wrong club and should have gone to the dippers.

 

[FantasyIreland]

It’s like if you enter a poker tournament with 100,000 runners. The last hand that 99,999 of them play involves them losing all their chips and a feeling of disappointment. The fact they may have targeted top 1,000 as being a great week at the start, won’t stop the disappointment, even if they finished second.

No matter how much we’ve achieved so far and how hard people try to convince themselves otherwise, if we get turned over on Saturday it’s going to leave a huge feeling of disappointment that the season ended on a defeat and sense of anti climax.

Let’s just get the fucker won and it won’t be an issue.

While not winning the CL will be disappointing,after Saturdays result this season cannot be considered anything other than wonderful.

 

[bluemoon32]

With the very real possibility we will become European Champions and treble winners on Saturday,the chat has somewhat lost touch with the fact that we have just completed the Double,a feat few clubs could ever imagine doing......and yet we have managed this incredible achievement twice in the past 5 years.

So....if the worst happens on Saturday night.....lets not underestimate what an amazing season this will have been regardless - one the Dippers,Arsenal,Chelsea and those rag cunts can only dream of!

Well said Sire

 

[Vienna_70]

The League and beating them twats in the Final were the important ones for me.
The first Double team i remember watching was Arsenals,Charlie George goal and all that.
I was nine at the time and thought it was a great achievement.
Now we have done it AGAIN,feeling no pressure about Saturday night,just enjoying it all at the moment.
But come Saturday night????

You must be a few months older than me, as I was eight, but I clearly remember Charlie George scoring the winner.

 

[Coatigan]

There's the next target then (after next saturday). Try to pull level with the gruesome twosome. To be frank, our record in the FA Cup since we were founded 15 years ago is a bit meh, isn't it? Don't get me wrong; three wins in 15 years isn't bad. Along with that defeat we don't mention. But it does seem low compared to the other two domestic trophies. I realise we've binned it off a few times, bigger fish to fry, and all that. But I'm from an era when the FA Cup final was the big day of the season. It ranked higher in "glamour" than the league back then. And I love to see our captain lifting it aloft in the royal box in Brent.

We've only 'binned it off' the one time, when Pellegrini was being a fanny to prove a point. I really hate seeing that said. We lost games for all sorts of reasons. Deliberately fucking off the cup is not one of them.

For a club that has won 5 Mickey Mouse cups and on average got to the semi finals of the FA cup so often, I really think we should know better than to even think let alone suggest we'd throw a competition.

 

[halfcenturyup]

It is still worth celebrating and marking - even of it has become more common place in the last 30 years than it was until 1971.

Here is the full list - borrowed from Wikipedia

In England, eight teams have won the double of the Football League First Division (1888–1992)/Premier League (1992–present) and FA Cup.

Club	Number	Seasons
Manchester United	3	1993–94, 1995–96, 1998–99
Arsenal	3	1970–71, 1997–98, 2001–02
Manchester City	2	2018–19, 2022–23
Preston North End	1	1888–89
Aston Villa	1	1896–97
Tottenham Hotspur	1	1960–61
Liverpool	1	1985–86
Chelsea	1	2009–10

• Preston North End in 1889 won the double without losing a game all season and without conceding any goals in their cup winning campaign.
• Manchester United won the double three times in the 1990s, including as part of a continental treble in 1998–99.
• Manchester City won the double as part of the first-ever domestic treble for an English men's football team in 2018–19

Aww. Liverpool, the history club. Diddums :)

 

[Ubiquitous]

There's the next target then (after next saturday). Try to pull level with the gruesome twosome. To be frank, our record in the FA Cup since we were founded 15 years ago is a bit meh, isn't it? Don't get me wrong; three wins in 15 years isn't bad. Along with that defeat we don't mention. But it does seem low compared to the other two domestic trophies. I realise we've binned it off a few times, bigger fish to fry, and all that. But I'm from an era when the FA Cup final was the big day of the season. It ranked higher in "glamour" than the league back then. And I love to see our captain lifting it aloft in the royal box in Brent.

Doing well in the FA Cup will always be difficult, due to the semi final clashing between a big champions league tie. We were lucky this season that we had Sheffield United, and not Stratford or Brighton instead. We would have lost against either of those two IMO (and how United would have crowed if they had knocked us out at that stage and then gone on to win ‘a double’ in the final!)

 

[its a Barm]

15 years ago we could only watch and dream of such wonders as a double, we just beat the rags at Wembley to win the fa cup, just let that sink in.

 

[The Lightbowne Cowboy]

Maybe this warrants it's own thread, but City moved level with Chelsea in the English trophy count on Saturday. We're both on 25 now. Whisper it,but we could go clear 4th on Saturday..COULD!!

 

[johnevans]

With the very real possibility we will become European Champions and treble winners on Saturday,the chat has somewhat lost touch with the fact that we have just completed the Double,a feat few clubs could ever imagine doing......and yet we have managed this incredible achievement twice in the past 5 years.

So....if the worst happens on Saturday night.....lets not underestimate what an amazing season this will have been regardless - one the Dippers,Arsenal,Chelsea and those rag cunts can only dream of!

Exactly.

When I was growing up and learning my football as a kid, 'The Double' was this almost mythical thing that had only ever existed in some far, far distant past, only won by teams present at the birth of the English league.

Many teams had tried and failed to win the First Division and the FA Cup in the same season, including ours in 1904. Yes, 1904.. to a kid from Hulme in post-war Manchester it might as well have been pre-Dark Ages when the impossible had last been done, with superhuman effort of Arthurian powers required to do so.

Then that marvellous Tottenham side did it in 1961. And one or two others since. But it still required prodigious efforts to get to the ultimate, Holy Grail of our game, 'The Double'..

And blow me down, on Saturday at Wembley, I saw us do it. For the second time in five years. And all with the added distraction of a demanding World Cup tournament mid-season, which pulled almost every member of our squad away from the task in hand.

Drink it in and enjoy it. The greatest football, the greatest squad, the greatest coach in English football history. Ever.

It doesn't matter what happens on Saturday, although all us Blues want a third trophy. This is the greatest football of our lifetime.