Where do you find a woman like that? If I have a hangover my wife's basic response is "You shouldn;t have got pissed. No sympathy!!"
The Europa League has sadly become a poisoned challis that no one seems to want these days..This is making a mockery of some end of seasone games with teams trying their damnedest to avoid this competition..
It would make more sense if clubs could opt out before the season starts. It'll happen one day that 2 teams do a 'Coventry - Bristol' and play out a game trying to engineer a result. If Spurs were playing Southampton, on the last day, it could end up as a total farce.
The worst thing they ever done was merge the Cup Winners Cup with the UEFA Cup as now there are far too many teams and games to play...In my opinion there are also too many teams in the Champions League which is detracting from domestic competitions..
It's just the inevitable emergence of a European League whereby the top clubs will detach themselves from their own leagues.
Agree with all the above posts however is the winner of this Mickey mouse competition not guaranteed entry into the CL? Surely if you think your good enough you go for it.
Clubs might want that, the corporate fat tw*ts would want that. The genuine fans won't. A highly unlikely scenario but Sunderland v Athletico Madrid or Sunderland v Newcastle. Methinks at least 90% would opt for the latter. The same Barcas, Milans, Madrids,Bayern etc would,imo, become boring after just a few seasons. How do they control relegation and decide which team from which country gets promoted? Do we then let these mercenary teams back into their respective leagues. I for one would certainly tell them to go away in jerky movements. Tbh it would probably make the premier a lot more interesting and give a lot more teams a chance of winning something however devalued it may appear.
I was deliriously happy when we won the 3rd division mate, winning summat is always better than winning nowt
Taking everything into account the Europa League can knacker a club's planning because of the way it is set up. A mish-mash of groups containing cup winners, league placings, even teams from the fair play positions, having to fight it out on a league basis then to be joined by third place ECL clubs coming into the knock out stages, A badly thought out competition that surely cannot go on much ;longer in the present format. Can't see a breakaway European top team league either, simply because they will cancell each other out over time and any one of them going a season without something shiny at the end of it would not go down well with supporters. The all need the chopping block leagues before over charging for glamour ties.
I agree its a poor format but surely it's what they are striving for, getting into Europe? Unlikely teams such as Swansea and Saints will break the top four, surely this is their goal.
And then it promptly becomes a distraction as the evidence from NUFC, Swansea etc who qualified via league position and cup respectively and struggled in the league the following season. Hull invested massively in forming a big squad for the Europa adventures and look where they are now, going back to the knock out format is the only answer, at least the games will be more competitive raqther than just ensuring qualifying for the last 32. I believe WHU could qualify this year through the fair play system, if they do it will be interesting to see how they approach Europe through the Inter=Toto quals. On the other hand Fulham got to the final some years ago but they had a manager with Euro experience.
Just finished watching the Arsenal game, a result out of nothing for Swans. You would be better off pondering your navel than work out results.
If West Ham get there their season starts on July 2nd! Jeff Stelling was taking bets on how many West Ham players would get themselves sent off to avoid it!!
If we are going to win this game we are going to need both the team and supporters on the top of their game from the very start..Our crowd were very quiet against Southampton until we went ahead in the 2nd half, then absolutely brilliant after that..We need to drive the players on from the word go and put the ****s up the Leicester players... Bring it on...Ha'way the lads...
