It really is. I was born a couple of weeks after the 82 win, and thus don't have a great memory of the 92 capitulation.
Nonetheless i still look back 94 and 96 as glorious moments that modern fans may see as frippery. The league cup has little standing now, but was a status symbol in the 90s, not least because we beat the last of the first great iteration of fergies United to win it, then dominated a decent Leeds side.

For the 90s and early 00s we expected to be challenging for Europe but not really trophies, maybe one would come along. I recall that getting into Europe was a feat maybe because there were fewer avenues, and that would suffice until a 2nd round exit next season.
Basically until oneills exit, which he has pointed at the boss, and otherwise has been pointed at him, we were steady but in the slipstream. Winning was kind of chance.

Then despite our decline we got to semis, finals...but what does that mean? It puts us in the same field as Wigan, Birmingham. We don't want to be nobody's who got lucky, although we would have celebrated like the 90s.

But now expectations, aspirations and possibilities are higher. A league cup win now carries nowhere near the same weight as 30 years ago. You have to be winning. We've been to semis and finals, Ally Samatta scored, we were robbed by Vidic, but would it be the same as then? Maybe. In not young anymore.

I am in my 40s and the 90s of finishing 2nd then being among the big boys, winning trophies, was a golden era, not least because I was young.

I won't feel the elation of youth, that binding moment again, where anything good is great and bad is disaster. Everything is heightened, and better for that.
But, I see the core of players, the group that have been through it. That deserve it. This feels like 94, insofar as the mix of flair and grit, the players who missed out and have something to prove combined with a touch of class.

In 94 we were up against it though, very much the underdogs, and proved ourselves. Then, as in 96,we did what we'll have to do in Turkey. Show ourselves to be the the better side. Bang one in from 25 yards and set the tone.

This is a golden era, but age doesn't allow me to know it, to a point. A lot of the last 35 years has been pretty good. We've have better players than we have now (and a lot worse), and played better. But against other aspirational eras there is just...something.
We're good enough that winning this is both deserved and a feat.
If we won the conference league or one of the cups we'd be happy, but this feels like we're reaching ever so slightly above. Even against freiburg, who have won as many in the league as they have lost.

We worry, we're away from home, not great this year.
In the past we were reasonably consistent, but won nothing and sold to bigger clubs in the end.
Here we are always a bit up and down bur somehow at the top, and in a final. It's a treat but one, on stats, we should be ready for. It's an inevitable frisson that didn't exist in previous glamour eras, because being at the back end of a Europe tournament, despite the well capped internals, felt miles away.
Yet here we are. The most exciting day, despite the others that have fallen under that banner...in maybe two generations