I voted yes, I know are squad depth isn't good enough yet. But this could force the hand of the owners to spend and try and cement us into the 6/7th position as a club!
I fully concur with Mauricio's views...can badly affect your season and makes no money...but I still voted yes because it either means we won the FA Cup or we finished the season very strongly. I don't value the Europa Cup itself, but I do value what it stands for.
We will have to strengthen our squad in key areas but we would have to do that anyway. Playing in Europe will be great experience for our youthful team and can only be a good thing. Obviously the Europa League does not have the appeal of the Champions League but I think the club is hungry for some silverware, and the FA Cup, followed by the Europa League, would do very nicely (to start with).
The Europa Cup is hellish to win though...endless pointless games, then they drop the losers from the CL into it.
It has its drawbacks but I think its down to a good sized squad. It never really hurt Spurs but has Swansea for instance. I agree with Chilco we should be strengthening anywaty.
CL is the place to be but the players are here to get better and they can only do that by playing European opposition. So yes, but we need to make sure we rotate with youngsters or new signings - preferably the former.
I'd take the killer Thursdays if we had a shinny cup to show for it, hell yeah. I think it would hurt us though.
The trouble is that we are asking Katharina to put money in for a competition that doesn't earn money...only a little prestige. We need investment anyway...and there should be some money if Osvaldo is sold...but doubt it will be massive enough to mount an assault on the Europa. Mauricio will probably play our younsters and get us out as quick as he can. His new motto will be win every game (except in the Europa).
At first I was going to vote no. But now thinking about it if we wanted to challenge the top in the next 5 years we need to get used to playing Europeans games. Great experience for our kids and we will be able to give the whole squad a game. Extra games would be great for the us the supporters! It will be like being in the championship again lol
I've voted yes as I still believe it to be something which should be regarded as an achievement rather than a punishment. The Europa League definitely needs to be shaken up a bit in order to revive it. I think it should revert to a straight knockout and should definitely not have the CL also-rans joining at a later date.
We're talking about either sixth or an FA Cup win(/final against top four) though right? Put it this way, we would need several new players. If KL wants to pay then great. I agree with Mauricio that the EL should be scrapped or combined with the CL.
Would be great experience for the kids though. I think we fans would accept that we had to play developmental players if the club made it clear from the start.
I think Europa will help us get some of the players we want that we have been missing out on. We can add to the squad sufficiently without going overboard and many of our academy youngsters will be 1 year further on and our current 1st team youngsters like Shaw, Prowse, Gallagher, Chambers, Reed will be 1 year more experienced as I expect that they will all get more game time before this season ends.
No. Do away with the tournament, or get rid of the group stage or something. Basically every team who has qualified for it in England has had a horrible league season because it kills squads. As we won't win the Europa League (sorry guys) we'll just have to put up with a horrible year because of our dangerously thin squad and it's not worth it. Would just stall our progress.
No way!!! No! No! No! Let's just concentrate on domestic stuff first. Concrete our top 8 status and go all out for the two cup competitions that we are normally in. We will be biting off way more than we can chew. I hate the Europa Mickey Mouse Cup with a passion.
I voted yes. Otherwise it is like not wanting to get to the cup final in case you lose. Progression in steps please. No pain, no gain.