Adrian Durham rips apart Arsenal's 'Invincibles'

fez said:
You are massively oversimplifying that aren't you? When Chelsea play against QPR, do you genuinely believe that they stick the team behind the ball and sit in their own penalty area?

If Chelsea treated and played in the semi-final in the same manner as they do a premier league match I wouldn't have been surprised to see double figures over two legs.

Very, very few sides have kept Barca from scoring in a game and they have a squad of players that can change a game single handedly in an instant. Genuinely interested as to whether you think that the current Barca squad would beat "the invincibles".

If they played 10 games what do you think the results would look like.

I would say easily 8 - 2 to Barca.
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You obviously never watched that team much to think so little of them. Arsenal have beat Barca with a much weaker team that that team.

I also think you are disrespecting the great teams that played in that era as well. Utd themselves were brilliant.

Personally I think this years teams have been pretty poor on a whole. City brought a lot of greedy players in but no where near as much talent as the past.

You say it is a stronger league but I cant see where these stronger teams are you are imagining...
 
fez said:
I thought you were talking directly to me so I apologise. No, everything he says is quite mental. If I was using his tact I would use the fact that United have won more games this season than "the invincibles" so therefore they must be better.

The 03-04 squad was great but I think that people are overselling it a bit, thats all.
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But you are underselling them quite a bit. Maybe you should watch a few videos of them before disrespecting them so much.
 
Guys, we are debating whether this arsenal side are the best EPL squad ever and now about whether they would beat Barca at the moment. I seem to have given the impression that I don't think that team was anything more than average which is not true.

It was a great Arsenal side and easily one of the best the Premier League has ever seen but I don't rate them anywhere near as highly as the current Barcelona.

I have watched a fair bit of football over the past 10 or so years and to me, the teams lower in the league are a lot stronger than they have ever been in the past ergo the general strength and quality has improved.

Yes Arsenal have beaten Barca with a weakened team and yes plenty of other side have too, that doesn't make them a even a shadow of Barca.

Put it this way, I have never seen Barca play to the best of their abilities and lose or be outplayed.

So to reiterate, I am not slating that Arsenal side, I just don't think it is as good as you think. Difference of opinion.
 
Haha what a plank. Especially the comment about New Zealand being as good as The Invincibles and Robin van Persie wanting to move to Juventus because they win titles.
 
United lined up in that famous game at the start of the season with a midfield including Phil Neville and Quinton Fortune, and a defence including John O'Shea and Mikael Silvestre and we were still just the width of a bar from ending Arsenal's unbeaten run. Just saying. :p
 
For anyone who doesn't know (unlikely), Adrian Durham is a massive 'provoker' in terms of debates, I'd forgotten how much until I heard him on the radio again recently and found myself getting riled up over some topic. In fact I think he has got a lot worse than I remember when I used to listen to talksport a lot. Fair play to the guy, that is effectively his job, get the phone lines / email / txt / tweets etc pouring in, it works and effectively he is just playing Devil's advocate or at least stating his opinion in the most OTT way possible.

I'll touch on one point that has been mentioned in this thread, the drawing thing:

1) Towards the end Arsenal didn't need to go chasing victories because they already had the points in the bag. e.g. game 30 vs MU, a draw was clearly order of the day in terms of the title, just don't lose. Then game 34 they just needed a point.
2) Again towards the end once the title was in the bag they probably wanted to maintain the unbeaten record, hence games 35 and 36 were also drawn.
3) Saying "LOLOL 12 draws r teh suxx0rs!!" is all well and good but the fact is most champions draw fewer games because they lost some of them :)
 
:D

And we have Pires' belly flop to thank for giving us the opportunity to break your run towards 50 unbeaten games at the last possible moment :p.
 
Firstly, who cares, secondly, Arsenal played some outstanding football at many times throughout the season, more often than most other "greatest teams ever" and that is what made it a great team, not the fact that some games a team doesn't play at its best. Of course a team that doesn't lose will generally have more draws than a team that loses a few games.

Lastly, Barca have a great offence, they've had a **** defence for 5+ years and have mostly been able to hide that from teams not willing to attack their defence. I've said that for years, Mourinho decided to start his Real games against Barca in ultra defence, and they lost, since they've actually worked out they can get at Barca's weak defence, they've won/drawn games with them and done significantly better.

Arsenal had a phenomenal first team and a phenomenal bench, a great offence a freaking awesome midfield and a very very good defence. Barca even at their very strongest had the best offence, the best midfield, an average defence and not a bad bench but not a good one. A couple youngster wingers who didn't do a whole lot, a couple extra central mids who are brilliant but because of the strength/fitness of the central midfield starters, doesn't really improve the team. They are light upfront, they don't have good backup defenders either, and their second string keeper isn't even that good let alone great, Valdes himself isn't really regarded as a great keeper.
 
Nevermind the dive the real killer for me was Rio taking out Ljungberg when he was clean through on goal and somehow not getting sent off. Mike Riley :mad:
 
It's surprisingly difficult to find that particular Pires dive. What I did manage to find whilst looking was Steven Taylor's handball dive, which along with David Dunn falling over is still just about the funniest thing I've seen in the premier league :D.
 
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