AVB on The Champions League: "Our time will eventually come!"

AVB has taken the Chelsea job and has spoken of the fact that we are fighting for EVERY competition we enter in every season. As you can imagine as he sat facing the media ahead of tonight's opening Champions League fixture, questions were asked of our record in the competition, how we can compete with Barcelona and the pressure of success regarding the safety of his job in the competition. He said:

"Chelsea are not the only top European club who haven't won it. Others have not won it and want it. It's incredible, but it's a fact. Only in the last few years have Barcelona added a few more European Cups to their trophies, after all, and they're a top, top club.

Our time will eventually come. We just have to focus on making it one of our objectives, as it has been for the past few seasons. I don't think I'll be judged on how I do [in the Champions League]. I don't think so.

I've seen Barcelona roll over a lot of teams in the Champions League, and clearly United in the final as well, so they're the ones out there that everyone really needs to catch. If you meet them on their day when they're playing as well as they can, I'm not too sure anyone can touch them, if I'm honest.

But, physically, I really believe that we are a good match for them. So, if we come across them in the Champions League, I believe that, out of all the teams, we've got as good a chance as any of beating them.

They have come so close before and, even in that last semi-final which they lost to Barcelona, everyone knows how they lost it. There were a couple of controversial decisions and, if any of them had gone in Chelsea's favour, they'd have been in the final.

There's a kind of unpredictability that can sometimes take you all the way. Other times, it doesn't. It's the most difficult competition that we're in, with a lot of good teams competing for one trophy, but we put our squad together in the belief that we can compete.

(Source)
I wrote an article after Carlo Ancelotti was sacked and stated the main reason I believe it happened was because of his record in the Champions League. We on average, were reaching the Semi Final nearly every season, when Ancelotti came he took us further away from getting back into the final. He was sacked.

Now after paying Porto £13.3m for his services, I cannot see AVB being sacked for failing to win the competition this season but we ALL expect to do much better than we have done in recent seasons.

I still believe we can give Barcelona a game and they know it, our squad now this term is stronger than last season, we have a man manager again who is tactically astute so why not?

AVB says our time will eventually come, I just hope that time is sooner rather than alot later!

KTBFFH

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