Top of the league and top of the world.
I used to love cars. Spent a fortune on them over the years.
The one I loved the most was a 1966 MGB Roadster. I bought it in 1990, it had been restored lovingly to concourse condition by an enthusiast who came on hard times during that particular recession.
I saw the pictures of it before the chap had worked his magic. Even then it looked nice and he said it had always been reliable. But afterwards? Oh, it was a thing of beauty. Stainless steel wire wheels, leather upholstery – the whole nine yards.
Of course he might have not bothered and simply sold it and bought a nice new Golf GTi. Thankfully he didn’t. He worked with what he had and in the end he produced a work of art. Can you see where this is going?
Yes? Thought so.
Well our wonderful set of players are quickly turning into a thing of beauty. Just as my MGB was.
Even when, like yesterday, it’s just cruising around in second gear.
I thought yesterday was a very professional job. We started off totally dominant although never getting into top gear. After the Welsh Wizard scored the opener, we dropped back into second. And paid the price. Not that an equalizer had looked on the cards, but we had stopped dominating.
But what happened next?
Well we moved up into third again and wrested control back. And it looked like we could , if need be, move through the gears further if it became necessary. It looked to me that the many games this eleven has played recently meant they were happy to conserve energy and win with as little physical exertion as possible. That’s what we did.
Three points and top of the league.
I don’t want to go over the top in praise of the team, because it could come back to bite me on the bum.
However, I am as happy with this team and squad as I have been since 2004.
I love this bunch of lads and I love what I am seeing.
Happy days.
Positively Arsenal 
anicoll5 September 24, 2013 at 1:23 pm
lol..not only pardew was it anicol? the whole country nearly “lynched” him for it….he was bringin disgrace to the “english game” as i remember…..with all them foreigners who didnt have the ‘passion and commitment’…..right or wrong?
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anicoll5 September 24, 2013 at 1:20 pm
yes anicol but the ones back then were not LIES like the ones today which are specifically designed to seperate arsenal from wenger and are following an agenda….
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when we had to deal with accusations of our players collapsing because of beer and coke it was true….we bit our lip and showed defiance and tribalism even though we knew it was real……on the contrary when they say today that wenger cant do defence its not true…
there is a difference…i believe….is there not?
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Hunter,no one here is saying that Arsene has not transformed the playing stye for the better.But really,to just keep harping back to the low point immediately prior to his arrival is daft.
Here is a thought,how do you think the great teams like Milan and Madrid would have adapted to playing in the English winter on pitches that would had worried a Warthog? Do you think they might have had to resort to kick and rush? I do.
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For those who read the Guardian article posted by Shotta, here’s another article about Arsenal’s finances. Note that this piece makes no reference to AST or any of Arsenal’s detractors. There are plenty of quotes from IG, and there doesn’t seem to be a slant, but correct me if I’ve missed something. My aim here is to show the difference between two articles talking about Arsenal’s finances, so that readers can ‘spot the difference’ and draw their own cinclusions :
http://www.london24.com/sport/arsenal/gazidis_speaks_out_on_arsenal_finances_and_ozil_deal_1_2797272
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Everyone I know sees the marriage of Arsene and Arsenal as the perfect match.
Could any other club have tempted AW and BP away from Japan at that time?
And I quite enjoy comparing the old WM innovations with AWs cutting edge stuff (not that I know what that might be – usually I work out what trends AFC have been following or inspiring a fair while after they happened…)
Tony Atwood thought AW was trying to reintroduce the WM at times! Heh.
When we have two at the back (most of the time!) I like to agree even though it’s just fun and not serious or accurate banter.
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“yes anicol but the ones back then were not LIES like the ones today”
Really ? so if the club, its players and managers were so drunk, coked, gambling, under the table grabbing thugs during the Graham years how come we won two League Championships, an FA Cup, a League Cup and a European Cup Winners Cup ?
Was the great Trafford Park on pitch 21 man punch up of 1990 better than the great Trafford Park on pitch 21 man brawl of 2004 ?
Seems to me Hunter people talked crap back in the 90s same as they do now
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When I was a young boy growing up in the 1960’s trying to decide which football team to support, my Dad, a lifelong Gunner ‘sold’ Arsenal to me on the basis that it was the classiest club in the country. Indeed, for a good number of the pre-war years (WWII) it was known as the Bank of England club on account of its huge stash of cash and ability to generate enormous match day revenues. Sadly, WW II did for our cash pile (Highbury got bombed whilst being requisitioned as an air raid shelter and six years of zero gate receipts proved somewhat crippling to our famous reserves).
Upon closer inspection, aside from fiscal wealth, history reveals the club to have ALWAYS been at the forefront of innovation with a list of significant ‘firsts’ as long as your arm (including, in no particular order, first use of floodlights, shirt numbers, heated pitch, exclusive naming ‘rights’ on the local tube station at Gillespie Road etc, etc).
To what extent the club failed to go ‘global’, pre-Wenger, is as much to do with the scale the football industry as a whole was operating at as much as any lack of ambition by the club. If the industry was still in development for much of the 20th Century that is hardly a stick with which to beat the club. But the club’s unquestioned ambition – as FunGunner points out – is as well established in our DNA as any other measure you care to examine.
There is no real way of proving the next point but the idea that Arsene has now successfully built on exceptional foundations is encapsulated by the following quote to be found greeting players and fans alike upon entry to the stadium every single match day:
“The deeper the foundations, the stronger the fortress.”
That the club is now a global force is indeed due in no small measure to the unrivaled activities of Arsene Wenger and his directorial contemporaries. But it’s also a product of the age in as much as the club has successfully exploited the opportunities presented by access to finance, technology and the emergence of key ‘players’ such as Sky. That all of these elements have been skilfully marshaled in our favour to enable us to truly join the top table of global football can hardly be denied.
But the fact that certain clubs have tried and continue to fail to join us can, in large part, be attributed to their lack of class, tradition and history.
All things Arsenal have always exhibited in abundance.
To properly understand Arsenal today – and the Arsenal of tomorrow – it is essential to grasp not only the sense and meaning of our history, but also that of our rivals.
Arsene Wenger’s contribution is hard to over-state and his importance to the club yesterday, today and (I’d personally argue) tomorrow, is hard to exaggerate.
But to only look as far back as the Wenger era in attempting to place the club’s history into some kind of context, is to completely overlook our foundations.
If allowed to continue unchecked it would prevent you as an otherwise astute observer of the club from ever properly understanding what makes us the fortress we are today.
And there is nothing to be gained in selling the club short; something my Dad could hardly be accused of during that fateful (for me) conversation that took place all those years ago, way back in the 1960’s.
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Really ? so if the club, its players and managers were so drunk, coked, gambling, under the table grabbing thugs during the Graham years how come we won two League Championships, an FA Cup, a League Cup and a European Cup Winners Cup ?
ehhmmm chelsea have won equal and more between 05-now…tell me about their ethos and style and class and tradition…. (ignore the money influence of roman, its not the point) …
maybe that style of football was the way here…..maybe being a hard bastard and having apint before kick off was the norm for english football practices…hence i insist on this “class” that is wenger’s import.
all those triumphs you mentioned were won ugly werent they? so what tradition and class are we talking about? perhaps it was also the opportune momment…a fading liverpool…no clear favourites or big teams around….. enter a team of hardmen who would fight for results and ignore the aesthetic aspects of the game….
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That AW has kept the club and his teams on the cutting edge, even during the “bad times” is, i think, unprecedented at Arsenal. Definitely there have been clubs around the world who have won admirers without baubles but for AFC that five odd year phase recently, where coaches around the world would still tune in to see what was going on, is probably a first.
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Everyone I know sees the marriage of Arsene and Arsenal as the perfect match.
if it were seen as the perfect match we wouldnt be as surprised at the change he brought. we would have expected it……. but thats not the case.
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Here is a thought,how do you think the great teams like Milan and Madrid would have adapted to playing in the English winter on pitches that would had worried a Warthog? Do you think they might have had to resort to kick and rush? I do.
but my good friend thats exacty the point. the football here was/is based on wrong principles and ideas. Just cause football here is approached like a crossbreed of kickbox and rugby dont mean its right. in fact its primitive and wrong.
why would milan or wenger have to tolerate such football practices? maybe its because you seem to be of the side that whoever comes here should adapt to the kick and rush where in reality its english football that should adapt to european approaches.
the above was the focus of the vision article that blowed our minds, which essentially proved why wenger gets the stick he does……..its because the primitve football ideas here are threatened by a superior football mind
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and therefore since arsenal was part of this system were we not also primitive? ……even just a little bit?
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ArsenalAndrew September 24, 2013 at 2:01 pm
i wasnt talking about the history of the club…whatever history no matter how big or succesful should be respected.
i havent diresected our history im just insisting that this world class level of sophistication arsenal enjoys in all departments today is wenger’s making and that this level was never part of the club before his tenor . thats all
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Hunter have a giggle at this:
Charles Charley Charles.
A legendary sketch. Too funny. I think this sketch inspired the Arsenal Gent!
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how else can i say it lol… english football or asrenals football was based on bullying first and then trying to win the game…..while wenger’s approach is to win by playing football…..nothing else.
of course he had to mix it at first, hence the petits, vieiera etc..but their primary function was to play football first and if needed then to act like bullies or hardmen…..in previous eras it was the other way around.
no,? not even this time? ….
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finsbury September 24, 2013 at 2:24 pm
dotn know if i can relate to that….
andrew re: this here
Upon closer inspection, aside from fiscal wealth, history reveals the club to have ALWAYS been at the forefront of innovation with a list of significant ‘firsts’ as long as your arm (including, in no particular order, first use of floodlights, shirt numbers, heated pitch, exclusive naming ‘rights’ on the local tube station at Gillespie Road etc, etc).
fair enough about the floodlights and the tube stations…..what about football….can we compare ourselves to ajax>? cause they seriously innovated.
in modern football woudl you say that wenger’s innovations kind of created the barcelona everyone drools about? i do…..
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ok i found it …where we were playing our music with flutes and sticks in the jungle we now do it via the yamaha/korg NORD synthesizer in the vienna mozart orchestra hall…….
ok with that?
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@ hunter
You’re using the word class in a different way to everyone else, then. Class in football means behaving with dignity, dealing fairly and respectfully with people, not washing our dirty linen in public, respecting others. On the pitch it means behaving in a sportsmanlike manner (as the 1913 directors’ notes say) and playing attractive football. The fact that we haven’t always lived up to our traditions does not mean those traditions did not exist. Arsene has taken the football class to a whole new level but even George Graham started out playing attractive attacking football and winning trophies. He only went defensive towards the end.
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Hunter, we all agree that Wenger has pushed this club forward in these modern times, but to disregard the club’s history just to highlight his accomplishments is an exercise in stupidity. We have won the league thirteen times, it’s not like we’re fucking Chelsea or some other Mickey Mouse club. why don’t you take a breather before you start pissing off your allies, eh?
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yuo dont have to agree with any of this…its just my interpretation
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Spot on AA….
The only absolute way to be sure of everything you’ve said about AW is to get him to build a brand new club from scratch.
Since that isn’t possible I’d say kudos to you for your sky-high loyalty but please can we just enjoy the present as we cast our red & white eyes on the near future?
The past is over with and though I miss the czar, I’m looking forward to what Nico, Chuba, Olsson, Benik, Zel, etc can add to tomorrow’s showdown with the Baggies, if called upon.
Enough with the long gone!
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Hunter, Ajax seriously innovated because of Rinus Michels. He could have just as easily turned out for PSV or Feyenoord. Crediting Ajax for Michels’ innovations is like suggesting Santos innovated football because they had Pele in their books.
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You’re using the word class in a different way to everyone else, then.
yes maybe so , i also mentioned it in one of my previous posts…..there is a misinterpretation of the word and what it means……
We have won the league thirteen times
10 before him scattered between 110 years of existence…..that is not big…sorry…. at best and in average thats one league title per decade…..
the trully big clubs count their league titles in 20s….plus they have a really really big european one or two or three……
with that in my mind we are not even bigger than porto..yet wenger makes it look like arsenal is way bigger than them.
my intention is not to piss anyone off…sorry you see it that way….goodnight.
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Hunter – by the standards of the day, Arsenal were as innovative as any other club you care to mention. Read this from Arsenal.com:
“By the 1930s Arsenal were the most famous club in the world, a team that was the natural and perfect expression of Chapman’s professionalism. Yet the Club were actually dubbed by many as ‘Lucky Arsenal’. In 1925 the offside rule had changed so that a team would remain onside if two, rather than three defenders were between the goal and the foremost attacker. This led to a glut of high-scoring games.
On Arsenal skipper Charlie Buchan’s advice, Chapman, who felt a team could ‘attack for too long’ instigated a 3-2-2-3 deployment which included a free-roving anchor player to police the edge of the area. The WM system, named after the shape which the formation resembled, changed football as a spectacle with many Clubs using it to nullify their opposition.
However Arsenal, with the attacking triumvirate of Alex James, Cliff Bastin and Joe Hulme and inspired selection of Herbie Roberts in the anchor role, used it to mix tight collective defence with devastating counter-attack. Wingers until then had hugged the touchline, but with James putting passes inside the full-backs Hulme and Bastin averaged a goal a game between them from 1929-35.
Spectators watched spellbound as the Gunners switched from attack to defence in a matter of seconds, intelligent players acting as a single, organic unit with a thrilling and devastating efficiency. On muscle jellifying pitches it was a tribute to the preparation of the management and players that they put on such an exhilarating spectacle for an audience badly in need of escape from the misery of economic depression and imminent war.
The Championship trophy was first won in 1931 when Arsenal scored 127 First Division goals – three per game. Visionary off-field developments also made Arsenal formidable in the transfer market. It was a potent cocktail and the ‘Bank of England Club’ were champions once more in 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1938.”
***
World War 2 left us, as a nation, pretty much bankrupt and exhausted. It’s hardly surprising that the clubs of other nations made their own way in the world in ways that for many years we no longer could. And yes, Ajax is a great example of this.
But to present Arsenal’s history as an irrelevance that has only garnered meaning since the arrival of Arsene Wenger is to abjectly misrepresent and misunderstand the club and its development. It hardly serves the interests of our current manager to portray the club as a backwater concern going nowhere before his arrival, as this is simply not true.
In taking such a stance you only undermine your own credibility and encourage some to question ALL your arguments – including those that are so rightly supportive of Arsene Wenger.
With all due respect Hunter, context and perspective are the two key components missing from your analysis of our Arsenal.
Yes, Wenger has enabled us to take great leaps forward.
But that – crucial though it is – really is only part of the story.
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corr: enough with the bygones
Looks like Park’s in contention too….ooh wee
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Hunter, your comment about hoofball sounds incredibly obtuse when you consider how many European cups have been won by British teams.
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“By the 1930s Arsenal were the most famous club in the world,
that is an era that is totally irrelavant to what football is today though. isnt it?
its like comparing the cars at times of my grandfather with the cars of today…completely different ball game.
and imo all that you quoted is relative only to english football history…not worldwide. unless you think coaching and player academies in brasil, argentina, holland, france italy actually have “the arsenal innovations of the 1930s” in their curricular or treat/use arsenal history as a cornerstone in their own football philosophy (ies)…..
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Hunter, your comment about hoofball sounds incredibly obtuse when you consider how many European cups have been won by British teams.
perhaps you dont pay attention in the manner of victory then for the last 4 won by brittish clubs are all flukes or toss of a coin penalty scenarios…..
united 99…flukest ever
united in moscow….terry slipped
liverpool ……. milan suicide
chelsea…we all saw it…
which of the three above entered the pitch and won the european title like say barca did here at wembley or like bayern last year…i.e emphatically and leaving nothing to doubt?
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Hunter, Real Madrid was Franco’s pet club. What in the fuck are you even arguing about?
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have you seen me talk about real gains ? i have written about 20 posts ….madrid has only been mentioned once in the post about clubs being “big”….never again…
and sorry but yes they are big…..in fact huge…giants and we are/were tiny in front of them till someone got us thinking in different ways and now we buy players from them! …
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Very well, but how about Nottingham Forest, Celtic, Manure and Liverpool winning cups prior to the European ban? By trying to make English football sound horrible, you’ve overlooked a lot of history and thus have made yourself look like an uninformed idiot.
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and when many others from the industry come round today to see how arsenal does it…..essentially they are looking to see how wenger does it…….agree or disagree?
our commercial team remember ….effed it up a bit…had to agree to terms which werent favoured towards arsenal and we had to stick by them till renegotiations last summer…..but we all realised beggars cant be choosers..we had to move and get finance so we put pen to paper in anything that was put in front of us…that is an own goal.
check wenger now ..who had to deal with his employers scoring an own goal early on yet he still navigated the ship and even attracted the looks of others in the meantime…..even when playign with kids ..even when having to hit company objectives with budgets to laugh at. this is the class im talkig about…..in silence without exposing his workers, without discouraging the youngsters and without selling “badgekissing” to the fans…honest and realistic and making the whole of the CLUB overachieve
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Real Madrid plays in a pony league and won the bulk of their European Cups while they enjoyed Franco’s full support.
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Nottingham Forest
thats the legendary clough though mate…there are always exceptions to rules…..dont forget he was also heavily critisised cause he was way ahead of his time and people here didnt get him…… clough played football with the ball down on the deck by the way…not like allerdyce…
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Gainsbourg69 September 24, 2013 at 3:21 pm
maybe so..they still count 9…how many does arsenal have? 0….
with all these innovations and rich succesful histories and class and tradition huh…. …….0? thats a bit strange…
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and yes they may have won the bulk of them 9 in weird circumstances but i have seen them win three since then….mijatovic….raul…..zidanne….
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“By the 1930s Arsenal were the most famous club in the world,
that is an era that is totally irrelavant to what football is today though. isnt it?
its like comparing the cars at times of my grandfather with the cars of today…completely different ball game.”
When does history start being relevant then? If its the fifties, then Real Madrid is the biggest team in the galaxy.
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Real Madrid hasn’t won a European cup for more than a decade, they’re no longer a big club.
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“its like comparing the cars at times of my grandfather with the cars of today…completely different ball game.”
Then don’t bother starting – you are right – each era has its strengths and weaknesses, its styles and its characters. The club is constantly developing, changing shape, size, direction.
Long may it continue
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well they are a big club just failling on their reputation…a sleeping giant if you like…
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Hunter it’s true that the Revie’s feverishly devout followers have had too much influence on English Football. That was a tragedy that almost undid the achievements of the greats from the 70s. And there are also a disturbing number of Fergus spawn managing south of the border in the current era. I wonder what those who called for Moyes are thinking now. Hang on, on second thoughts I don’t want to know! No thanks.
But there have always been enough exceptions. Where it is fair to highlight a difference is in the ‘builder’ reference that Adam used in your chat on builders like Rinus Michels. Those that built academy centered clubs. Celtic won a European Cup with a team more or less made up of locals but that was a one off some time ago now and there hasn’t really been a club here that has consistently churned out consistent numbers of Top talent to the same level as the two great modern (and related) schools of BBB and Ajax. And now, looking at the Top players that have graduated from AFC over the last decade (whether they came at 15/16 or earlier) it’s fair to say that AFC are up there with them / have joined them.
It’s a wonderful position for a club to be in and AFC in spite of it’s very strong record with youth players could only have dreamed of taking that huge step up to the levels of these two great clubs without AW. At the very least he raised the cash to build the academy which has given us the most recent graduates. I think most see that. Unless they are experts like the AST.
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Gainsbourg69 September 24, 2013 at 3:27 pm
well they do have a strong claim in being the biggest just by european success.
and in any case, in your lifetime you have seen them dominate and you have seen them for 6 years winning it every second year……….
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There’s a lot of goal post moving being done by you, young Hunter. I suggest you get off this soap box you’re on before you alienate those who enjoy having you around. Seriously, just drop this shit and scoot along. You’re shitting on our doorstep.
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anicoll5 September 24, 2013 at 3:30 pm
very fair …thats why i tried to soften it with the flutes vs nord keyboards comment.
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what goal posts am i changing then….show me…..
shitting on your doorstep? are you serious? for saying something which is logical and true?
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listen gains…these words like young and the rest tell them somewhere else ok….i have treated all of the comments with respect and every poster…..so kindly dont make me have ideas that your motivation right now is different to football and arsenal …. 😉
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Barcelona won their first European cup in the nineties and they have only won a grand total of four. Do you consider them a smaller club than Liverpool?
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later……
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barcelona were known as LOSERS before the 2006 final……you knew that gains?
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