Interesting discussion between Carragher and Neville about everyone's favourite European tournament. On Thursdays. [video=youtube;AiQx8EDbKkU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiQx8EDbKkU[/video] For once, I actually think that Carragher makes the better points. The host seems to either ignore or fail to understand one of them, which is that the Champions League can be Tuesday/Saturday, Wednesday/Sunday, whereas the Europa's always a short gap. Probably shouldn't be doing as much damage to us, as we've got loads of players, but Pochettino still played a bunch of them in multiple games. Villas-Boas did the same, even once we'd qualified from the group and were playing nothing games. The pair seem to want something done about it, as it's clearly costing teams more than it's financial worth, but what can be done? Other than removing the ridiculous drop down, which UEFA won't do, as it would be seen to harm their favourite clubs, how can it be improved? The fixtures can't really be helped, unless they were to rotate it with the Champions League and the money won't increase, so what to do?
Thursday - Monday - Saturday - Thursday The games are usually every 2 weeks aren't they? Doesn't really work when other midweek fixtures are about though due to the monday game. Even if the player travels, and doesn't play, he's gonna be affected. We need to be leaving players behind, but then they go extra time without manager and prep for prem opponent.
Too many games, too much travelling. This is what causes fatigue. The EL is the straw that breaks the camel's back for many clubs, especially those in the PL (and some other major leagues). The game is more physically demanding than it once was. International players at a club like Spurs can potentially be asked to play or be sub or travel if not playing in 70-80 games per year. If some of those players are used to half those number of games - which is the case for many of the younger, up and coming players like Kane, Lamela, Mason, even Chadli, Eriksen and others - it's a huge extra burden. It shouldn't be surprising when performances dip in the second half of games played three days after EL games. The solution UEFA could provide is to revert back to a knockout contest like the old UEFA Cup. The solution for the clubs is to manage the players' workloads better - and that probably means many players just not featuring at all in the EL. We've seen the bigger clubs take this approach with the League Cup, resting 15 or more first team players. They were heavily criticised to begin with, but now there is tacit acceptance that they have to do so to avoid key players burning out or getting injured.
I agreed with most of your post, to be honest, but I couldn't resist that one! I don't think that removing the group stage would be that helpful, but stopping the dropdown would be. Villa didn't even make it as far as the group for two seasons on the trot, as they were beaten by Rapid Vienna and... Rapid Vienna.
I think a lot also depends on mentality, if a team truly wants to excel in both the League and European competition then they have to have that desire to do it. Sometimes, I feel like our lads are like "ah s**t, it's Europa League on Thursday" and then come Sunday it's "ah s**t, playing again, I'm knackered" - with the standard of facilities available to Premier League footballers, especially ours who have a world class training facility, they should be able to handle a Thursday - Sunday football week easily. Though, having said that, I do also think that Poch should rotate the squad for the early stages of cup games, purely due to allowing others game time so they're not rusty should they be needed to jump into the team if an injury occurs. Take Vorm for example, he's played one game since joining... Why? He's a great keeper and more than adequate cover for Hugo. Paulinho, as bad as he's been, why completely leave him out? Stambouli has played like 2 full games since joining, again, why? Lennon has also barely featured. These are good players who need game time, Poch should utilise them. I don't like using Europa as an excuse, it's a prestigious competition and in my opinion a privilege to be apart of, especially if you don't make the CL. I'd take a Europa trophy over top 4 all day long.
"The host seems to either ignore or fail to understand one of them, which is that the Champions League can be Tuesday/Saturday, Wednesday/Sunday, whereas the Europa's always a short gap." And the group stages usually entail at least two away trips to God knows where. The CL is not immune from it (Russia, Turkey etc) , but at worst one such trip. None of this however excuses Spurs over the past 2 seasons. This is all about professionalism, from manager down to players. I will forever hold the 1981-82 season up to the face of any modern Spurs manager/player who whines about fixtures etc. We know the answer is to revert to the old UEFA competition formats, and a lot more "wealth distribution" to the lesser clubs who could get put out in the first draw etc. I don't call the thing "Champions greed" for nothing.
It's not just the games. Tues-Friday is all spent on travelling to, playing the game, travelling back.
How dare anyone take a cheap shot at LDL's team other than the one I took some time ago? I think for the greater good of football, either the Europa wouldn't exist at all, or it would lose 1/2 or 2/3 of the team and consist of one game KOs. This round and the qualifying shouldn't exist, and we should be playing, say, Seville, to get to the round of 16, or maybe even Everton should be playing Seville to get to the round of 8. The problem, of course, is that everything in football happens due to filthy lucre, not the greater good of football.
I don't mind that especially now that EL winners qualify for the CL. Otherwise there would be an incentive for the 17-32 best teams to throw the CL playoffs or even their league positions so they could get into a competition they could win.
Possibly but I've never got everyone else's dislike about this point. In both the UK domestic cup competitions no-one bats an eyelid at the fact that you qualify at different stages by virtue of your position in a compeletely different competition. That's all that happen in the Europa league - you qualify for the last 32 either by being first or second in the Group stage or by being 3rd in the CL group stage. In the League Cup you qualify for the last 32 either by winning in the 2nd round or by having qualified for Europe the previous year. So the runner up in the FA cup final sometimes gets 'parachuted' into the 3rd round of the League Cup. No-one calls that barmy or rewarding failure. Innovation in the design of competitions is a good thing. Look at the LV Cup in Rugby where the teams in one group of four don't play each other but instead play the teams in another group of four. That means they both get two home games and two away games against the same opposition but never play each other. That's a really brilliant idea to reduce fixture congestion as it reduces the number of qualifying matches by two without disadvantaging anyone.
You qualify for the 3rd round of the FA Cup or the 2nd round of the League Cup by doing well. You qualify for the knockout stages of the Europa League by either doing well, often against 4 or 5 other teams or by doing badly and being beaten. Teams should not have to fight their way through numerous ties to meet a side that's had lots of bites of the cherry, been massively financially rewarded and still ****ed it up.
Add to that the number of teams in the Europa League who got there by blowing Champions League qualification, such as Napoli, Lille, Feyenoord, and serial cherry-biters Celtic. How can UEFA pretend that the Europa League is a serious competition when numerous teams in the group stage got there by failing to qualify for the Champions League, followed by seeing teams that failed to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League reach the latter stages of the competition after being parachuted in?
Every club in the Europa gets there by failing to qualify for the CL! As did every club in the UEFA cup and the Cup Winners Cup previously. I don't see why the exact route matters really.... It would be better though if the group stages could be combined somehow into groups of 8 or more with the top two going through to the CL and the next four to the Europa.
