Would you prefer CL for the heck of it, the big nights and attracting better players? Or would you rather us go into EL and have a better chance of winning it and potentially not get shredded by CL teams with our squad depth issues? Maybe EL would be better as we'd be against teams realistically around our level next year? Our squad depth is extremely poor, and it's gonna take more than 1 transfer window to sort that out.
I'd love newcastle to win the europa league, but it's like quicksand.. it'll make breaking into the top 4 more difficult. Straight in the top 4 or end up like Leicester West Ham, Everton and the others including ourselves a few times.
CL 100%. More revenue, bigger ganes and the schedule for Europa is more of a killer for teams with smaller squads, like ours. All that said, if the question is which is "most likely", rather than which do we "want", then it's probably a different answer.
Got to be CL - Europe will be a drain on the squad next year however you slice it so benefits are the extra revenue, better opportunity for commercial deals, more prestige to bring in better players, less games in the group stage*? (I believe you can have 8 group games in the Europa but with CL you only have 6) and I think the owners will be more prepared to heavily invest in the squad for CL as opposed to EL so while the squad is probably better suited to EL at present if they bought in an extra 2/3 players (assuming we will make at least 2 signings regardless) of sufficient qualify for the CL that could make the difference. TBH the squad isn't that thin on talent that I'd be to worried about burn out across multiple comps: 1st XI - Pope, Trippier, CB, Botman, LB, CM, Bruno, Joelinton, RW, ASM, Isak 2nd XI - Dubz, Ashby, Schar, Burn, Target, Anderson, S. Longstaff, Willock, Almiron, Gordon, Wilson Other (10): Karius, Manquillo, Kraft, Lascelles Dummett, Lewis, Fraser, Richite, M. Longstaff, Murphy
Or Murph... no sorry, I can't even bring myself to joke about it. Here's to Murphy scoring the winner and me eating a lifetime supply of humble pie.
