I say yes, because I do not think that there is a reason why we should not. usual excuses: 1: trips to distand eastern european countries tires out the players. how exactly? they fly with chartered planes from liverpool or manchester airport straight to the nearest airport, the day before the game (same as ucl), and leave day after, or straight after the game (same as ucl). it is not like they are forced to take the bus to stadium from liverpool on the morning of the game. 2: playing thursday sunday is not good why? is it that different from wednesday saturday? and lets be honest, playing steaua bucharest (with all due respect) is a much easier game to "kill off" early and rest for 60-70 minutes compared to playing Valencia for example, or a few other teams in the ucl, obviously excluding barca etc since we are top seeds. 3: we can focus on on the league we are liverpool fc. we do not do preferential treatment, we go to win everything, always have done, and ESPECIALLY now we need to. a european competition is a european competition, and the europa league offers as many points for a home win against Rabotnicki as it does for an away win in the ucl at barcelona... they both carry the same uefa coefficient ranking points. These are my views, along with the fact that teams buy players, and pay them weekly wages to play games. why bother paying carrol 70000 a week if we expect him to just play at stoke or at home to birmingham. What is wrong with him playing an extra game every other week against a team equivalent to upper championship or lower premiership for the group stages. Also, playing with youngsters away and having full strength team for home games gives you 3 wins, with relative ease, and three 3 or 4 nil wins at home gives everyoine big smiles, and a smiling team = a happy team= a pressure free team. And the excuse that high profile players wont join us if we are not in the ucl, then even fewer will join us if we are not in europe at all. I do not believe this however, because players will always want to join Liverpool, and it is only the english that slag off the europa league, it is actually quite popular and big everywhere else. look at porto/villareal/benfica and look at their lineups for the el and their division. just as strong. oh and last point towards people that say we should not qualify for it: if we win it, will you celebrate it or not? cause if you dont want to be in it, you shouldnt really be happy winning it should you?
How often have we played Wednesday to Saturday and how was our form? We go to win everything and what have we won? Coefficient ranking points? We were the top team in Europe under Rafa. Sadly you don't get silverware for coefficient points. Seems to me our form's been a heck of a lot better since we went out of the Europa. What was it, 30 games and not even a quarter final? Even Redknapp says it affects your league position so just how badly do you want the Europa compared to the league? Just as you (slightly condescendingly) suggest there's some kind of hypocrisy in not wanting to be in it but celebrating a win then I suggest you're not really that bothered whether it affects the league because you'd rather be in a competition that's been greatly devalued, brings little to no reward and could cost us top 4 and possibly a league title.
How will it affect the team to attract top players if you are not in Europe? We all know top players want European football and if the top 4+Spuds get those players, how will you compete for the league?
I would take it, the EL, and play all the players in it that can't get a league game, they'll be getting euro experience. Use it as Wenger used the League Cup
I celebrated when we won it because we put out Barca and Roma on the way to the final and won 2 other cups so that was all part of it. it is the dour atmosphere at the games that really kills the tourney, it is awful at times especially in the early rounds
Totally. Fed up of hearing about "those magical European nights" that don't happen in the EL until the semis. CL qualifiers have the magic.
we were top of the coefficient rankings and we were bragging about, and now that we are not we couldnt care less about it, brilliant. also, it is important because when we qualify for the ucl again, we get a better grouping, being top seeds, and therefore avoid one of barcelona, inter, bayern munich, real madrid. our "bad form" after games was down to a weak squad, which anyway needs to be addressed, and prioritising competitions is a small club mentality, ie tottenham, who although have a respectful history, currently are a smaller club. if we continue with the same attitude, we will be them. Harry Redknapp says he does not want to qualify for the competition, but do you honestly believe he will say no to it if he gets it, knowing that tottenham start the competition as one of the favourites. I am not old enough to remember paisley or shankly but i have read a lot about them and i am quite sure they would not have the attitude of "we do not want europe, we will focus on the league". what i imagine is "we enter every competition we can and aim to win it". we brag about more european trophies than any other british team, and yet we do not want to enter european competitions. every fan should want their team to finish as high up the league as possible, whilst competing for EVERY competition they enter. after all, thats what they players and staff are paid to do.
Liverpool without Europe are Liverpool. Spurs without Europe are a small club in North London that nobody gives a **** about.The last time Spurs won the league, Ken Barlow had acne.
I would like to see the CL seeding dumped I want lots of group deaths, more games of worth imo, too many forgone conclusions in the group ties for the most part. Lets see Barca Che Real Arse in one group, LFC UTD Inter Bayern in another, why the fk not? That would be like a banquet of matches before te group stage is over, instead we get a dribble later on till maybe the final.
I used to think that Ferguson used to insist that Man United get the weakest team in Europe,and if they didn't he would want the draw re-done.There is many occasions where they have in fact got the weakest teams.Conspiracy theories,maybe,but the thing definitely needs to be revamped.As there is clubs recently that have been in the Europa league that are Champions League standard ie PSG,Juventus etc.
The Champions League should be for the League champions and for the cup winners of every country ONLY, with the smaller countries going through knock-out rounds. in the event a team has done the double, the runner up in the cup should go through. hence it is genuinely the CHAMPIONS league, and injects interest into the FA Cup. The europa league should then be for the teams below that, and if a necessity a 3rd euro comp, but thats taking the piss. Also, the two competitions should be played on alternating weeks, meaning one week CHAMPIONS league, and the other europa, meaning ONLY tuesday wednesday games, and then saturday as normal. also, europa league place automatic to league cup winner, and 3 more. most importantly, the winner of the Europa league gets a "ticket" straight into the group stages of the Champions league. money in the domestic league should be set at a limit for the top 4 teams, and then money spilt between the rest, giving more to the rest, equalling the income of the teams, in terms of competition, since top teams will get money from european competitions, and sponsors as bonuses. this would raise the interest in every competition (UCL only champions, EUropa higher profile teams, FA Cup team goes to UCL, Europa winner goes to UCL), and battle for everything till the end because the difference between 12th and 10th in the epl can be 8 or 9 million pounds for example. HOWEVER, this will never happen, cause uefa wont get their money, and heaven forbid there is a possibility that man u, barcelona, bayern munich and inter may miss out at the same time. Anyone else think this would be best?
How about a club must have four players from the city from which the club exists.Liverpool would be fine,Arsenal would be fine,Man City would be fine.Man United would be ****ed as they have very few players from Salford.
I think thats a great idea stonfacd. In my opinion the format of all European competitions should be knockout rounds too. And the Europa league should just be the teams from 2nd to 3rd place. It will help to even leagues up as well as raising interest in the European competitions.
I know this may sound really stupid and me being a nonce for not really understanding but, what did they do when they changed UEFA cup ro Europa? I never really took the time to delve into the logistics of it all.
They accepted every village team from eastern europe and put in as many tables in to the competition as they could
It sounds great in theory, but you'll end up with a lot of dross in the CL, like in the old EC. No one will watch the first few rounds if it's just a case of Barca, United and Milan steamrollering Rudar Pljevlja, FC Santa Coloma, Birkirkara and Tre Fiori 10-0. The only competitive games will be in the semi finals and maybe some in the quarters. All they really did was change the group stage. In the last UEFA Cup season in 08/09, they had eight groups of five teams with the top three qualifying. Now they have 12 groups of four teams with the top two qualifying. It just means they can have 48 teams in the group stage rather than 40, and play six group matches rather than four. More matches = more money. The big change was when they merged the CWC into the UEFA Cup and made the UEFA Cup have a group stage.
Nah, just tried to 'rebrand' it to make it more like the Champions League I guess. There were roughly the same number of qualifiers, they wanted to get more teams into the actual "league" bit where the cash is flowing.
My idea would be to go back to how it was. A knock out competition from the beggining. No pansy tactics and knowing who you're going to play in the future, and having group games. Draw teams out of a hat. Home and away legs, progress to the next game.
