Broadcaster Johnny Ward, the Irish Independent's Dan McDonnell & Liverpool legend Mark Lawrenson joined John Duggan for today's Football Saturday where the panel examined whether Manchester City will go on to win the treble this season.
“Of course it is” answered Liverpool legend Mark Lawrenson when asked whether Manchester City would consider their season a failure if they didn’t go on to win the Champions League.
“This is what the owners when they bought the football club, yeah they want to win the Premier League and the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup and all of those kind of things but ultimately you have to win the biggest competition available to you and undoubtedly as we know this is it” he says.
Lawrenson then went on to explain where his own priorities were put during his playing days, citing the European cup as a “bonus” to a league championship.
“I think the 42 game slog in what was the Football League was the ultimate achievement when you consider that pitches, diet, training, all those kinds of things…I think it was always going to be the hardest” he continues.
“The first two rounds of the European Cup then you could play some dodos if I’m honest with you. I think quite often whatever round we came in, I think we beat one lot 11-0 once and that was easy, but then obviously quarter final onwards was a bit different.
There was no coming in the dressing room at the start of the season and saying we want to win this one this season or this one, it was just whatever you win, if you win anything they’d always take.”
A different era
The Irish Independent's Dan McDonnell considered whether in today’s footballing game there’s a trend of utter dominance and whether that has had an impact on the goals and aspirations of certain teams.
“You have a situation where you have clubs like Bayern, PSG, Juventus…is almost the Champions League” he outlines.
“City’s run isn’t a million miles from that, there is the sense for a lot of these clubs and Real Madrid too that they measure themselves on that.”
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