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don’t know if this is because i see more of it being an arsenal fan, or whether it’s because there’s more of it with this fan base especially online but it genuinely feels like a large percentage of people need football explaining to them in the most basic of terms because some of the questions and comments that get asked reek of “i have no idea how this works but i’m gonna argue the toss anyway”
for example, now this may be because we haven’t played in it for 7 years or whatever it is but the whole champions league group stage discussion (and rotation talk in general) is rife with people who seem to not fundamentally understand you can’t just play second teams and smash other good teams while not losing a step. we have one of the easier groups possible and it’s still a difficult thing to do. it’s like saying yeah lets play our second team away at brighton or villa. yeah, we should be winning those games but that doesn’t mean they’re easy or we can play craig eastmond, kyle bartley and jon toral for 90 minutes and get away with it
A lot of people here are probably new to CL football in context to Arsenal and assume that every team not in the top 6 of PL or like…PSG, Juve, Bayern and Real/Barca are just bad. You saw this with Lens who had a great season last year but people assumed we would just walk over them like it was nothing.
I think people also don’t realise the allure of the CL over the EL. Our best players WANT to play in the CL, that’s why “Champions League Football” is sure an advantage in transfer negotiations. We can’t and won’t play second rate squads in that competition because it’s valued as equal to the PL. Trossard, Jesus, Havertz, Rice etc. all came here because they want to play in that competition.
The years of playing in EL has basically just warped a lot of newer fans perception of what a European campaign should look like.
People who watched since the old CL can probably remember the surprise with which even a dire banter era side could turn over a team in the EL
It’s just an entirely different level between the two
Oh yeah like a dire Arsenal team with Carl Jenkinson in it managing a win over Prime Bayern lol
It’s not ad bad these days when we have a squad. It was when wenger was here and this sub wanted us to play a team of 9 academy lads in the cups when it really got to me. Meanwhile wenger played full strength teams as he realised it was his best shot at a trophy
My favourite is the ‘PL goalkeeper and Cup Goalkeeper’ take during the Raya signing. Anyone with half a braincell could tell that wasn’t the plan…
It’s not younger fans fault we suck at rotating. We’ve heard nonsense about how we can’t possibly rotate in the premier league so people naturally think we should be rotating in the group stages of cups.
I hear you but also I just don’t think we do that rotating thing very well. Arteta seems to have a first team and he really likes it. Which is fine. I don’t think people are daft for saying we do not rotate a lot.