r99c wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:21 pm
Skybet now have us as outright favourites to win the tournament. We are ****ing massive.
It kills me how much that depends on an extremely fortunate bill of health. But IF we stay fit, there's no reason we can't.
Part of that is that we actually have the desire to win it. I suspect half the reason Sevilla always do so well is because they don't see it as a consolation, but a thing that would be an honour to win. I'm not sure something that sounds on the surface to be obvious in practice holds true for many of the sides competing.
Even Leicester, who have tasted CL proper and have been on the cusp of it two years running only to flake at the final hurdle – I get the sense it feels like a booby prize to them. I'm sure if we were in it for a few years we'd eventually get the same way but as things stand the hunger to actually win it will hold us in good stead.
From memory it's only been won by a team dropping from the CL one-third of the time. So while it's always a fear you encounter a strong team that faltered but gets its act together late on in the season, historically the CL teams haven't fared as well as you might think. Again, I suspect it's partly desire – picking yourself off after dropping from the big league is probably not the easiest.