I am going to say something controversial.
But before I do let’s get one thing out of the way.
The May 2005 final in Istanbul was my greatest ever moment as a football fan nothing else is remotely close. I am proud to be able to say I attended that game and am grateful for once for flight delays and general Turkish airport transfer cocks ups which meant I was not able to have any alcohol before the match which mean’s I watched the game entirely sober. This meant I saw and experienced every second. So no way would I want it to never have happened.
But and I said this at the time I wonder whether that result gave a false perception of our status it hid underlying flaws in our club and prevented actions that had to be taken. It also created an inflated view of Rafa amongst the fans. Now I do accept we also qualified for the 2007 and the semi final in 2008 and regularly qualified for the champions league to be fair to Rafa. And of course the ownership debacle to be fair also made it almost impossible for Rafa.
But I wonder underneath all these events was an apathy in the club and an underlying decline and had we not had that huge shot in the arm in 2005 this might have been recognised and rectified earlier?
Just some thoughts I have wondered over it sometimes.
I don't really understand what you're trying to drive at stan.
Before rafa took over, GH got us back into europe and we started winning cups. That was progress IMO. Eventually, it was a single summer of madness (signing diouf, diao and cheyrou) that set us back a few steps backwards.
When Rafa took over, his tactical nous won us the european cup and that was another step of progress for the club. I don't think in any point of time that there was any underlying decline. In fact, we were on the up and we became the feared team for a few years in europe under rafa. That was also progress in my opinion. In fact, we progressed so much that it was a miracle that rafa could use our inexpensively assembled squad to dominate europe. So it wasn't just 2005. I saw success in 2007, 2008, 2009. We over-achieved.
The killer blow was H&G. If only we had DIC onboard with rafa or any arabs, they would have brought us up to a whole new level and we probably won't be having this discussion today.
But that's life isn't it? At the end of the sky, there'll always be a golden sky. Walk on.
