I think after 1963 we became a "Cup winning team".So we should go after all of the Cups. This business of the Champions League is really "out of our league" so to speak. We are never,it seems,going to get the players to make a successful charge at the Premier League title or go far in the Champions League so....lets make the League Cup,FA Cup and Europa League a priority and try not to be knocked out by inferior teams like West Ham for example!
As others have said the coefficient points could be very useful in the future, and this is good prep for Champions League if we ever get there again. I do think AVB made mistakes with team selection in early rounds, most notably Rose and Lloris, but from now on we should be able to juggle depending on injuries. From now on the distances should decrease as well.
I started writing a long reply to this but there's not much to say except "no". I don't like the idea at all.
It just all depends on injuries/opponents for me. If we have lots of injuries I would not want to see, say, Ade play if Soldado is injured. Unless maybe it's against strong opposition but even then I'd feel nervous about it. Hopefully with the depth of the squad ATM simply putting out decent second teams should not be too hard and sufficient for most oppositions so that's what I'd do. BTW - so if the Europa winners get a CL spot next year and, as we now know, the CL winners get an automatic spot AS WELL as that country's league-position qualifiers is it possible there could be six English teams in the CL if the winners of the EL and CL are both English teams outside the top four? Cos if not then I would put some money on Spurs finishing 4th next season only to not qualify for the CL cos Everton or someone won the EL and we can only have five English teams qualify. On addition to squads post-January. Isn't it a sort of "start again" situation where you re-register basically a new squad of however many the limit is? This may well be total nonsense, but sort of rings a bell.
I think you're allowed to make three changes, Lenny. Pretty sure you can piss about with the U21s as much as you like, though.
We've been in this comp just about every year since Jol! some of our younger players eg. Walker don't know a different schedule other than Thur/Sun. We've been doing it for a number of seasons so I don't see it as a hindrance, we're used to it by now surely. Probably better to answer this evening as my opinion is we should be able to try seriously for one cup, two is a bit much with the open league this season.
I refer you to Toss Job Spanner's thread. ' The Arrogance of Spurs.' I mean by this; not Champions of England, not FA Cup Winners, not good enough for the laughably named Champions League and struggling to make a Europa Cup place for next season. The Europa Cup is the only thing which we might get Chelsea lucky and win and we have a thread on here which suggests that we shouldn't bother! To concentrate on what? Does anybody truly think we are up for fighting for 4th, 3rd or whatever? We have 5 teams above us at the moment - drawn 2 lost 3. Goals for 1, goals against 13. What's going to change? Posted in a drunken strop but still can't believe anybody thinks this season is going to be anywhere near as good as the last 3!
Well according to the poll he's in a minority of 2 so hardly a popular opinion amongst our own fans is it. I don't see why we can't challenge for top 4 at the moment. We're 2 points off 4th despite being told we've been terrible so it's far from impossible. That said it's very difficult to see how the rest of the season's going to go for us at the moment.
I was simply taking the clubs objective, which is a top 4 finish, and highlighting the fact that the Europa league seems to cause a hinderance in achieving that. Binning off a competition is never going to be a popular opinion, but the fact that no club seems to fulfill their potential domestically when they are in the competition was why I raised the point. Unfortunately now, we're out of both of the domestic cup competitions so this is the only one left to go for, put part of me does wonder how well we might do if we had substantial amount of less games to play compared to our rivals if we weren't in this. It's a long season, and less chance of injury and fatigue would benefit us massively toward the end of the season. We're still only 2 points behind 4th and are now getting better. I just hope the Europa doesn't hinder what could be a decent end to the season; one where we are still in the mix despite all the criticism early on.
With this comp at least its two rostered games a week you can plan for, the FA cup throws up replays, the potential there for a 3rd game in a week chucked in when you least want one. Lets put it this way, i look at the PL table today, and there is a possibility of the top 7 separating into two little groups. The Goons, City, and Chelsea are away with it. Leaving the Merseyside duo us and United who I include despite being 3 pts adrift of us. We can forget surprise packages from Soton and Toon, they won't be bothering us, its 5 euro footy places for 7. So, we now have as I see it, one CL place, and 1 EL place for four clubs. Lets take United, and looking at the table now, if you offered Old Trafford (3pointford if you're a Spurs fan. ) 5th place and EL or nothing what do you think they'd do...sack it off? To have no Euro footy whatsoever is something United may find a problem attracting the top players, the ones avoiding them with the CL they've got atm! As brought up earlier, its important to go far in this comp and keep the co-efficient up, the last thing the premier league needs is to have a CL place chopped back to 3, so 4th place is for EL.
I don't mind us being in the Europa League. The only ones who diss it are Arsenal and United fans. The latter, of course, will be singing to a different tune when they find their club out of Europe for the next few seasons, as 'Pool have been an so will learn to relish the Europa, on those rare occasions that they manage to scrape 5th spot in the league. As for arrogant Gooners, most fans see their boasts as nothing more than a joke. After all, where's the pride in making the CL every year, only to see it as an achievement to go out in the quarter finals? And let's not forget their debacle against Barca, undoubtedly the blackest day in English football, when the Gooners could not muster even one shot on goal, and the entire world had to witness the humiliating sight of Bentner tripping up over his own bootlaces when faced with his one and only chance to score. Therefore, I believe none of us need be overly concerned at the views of Gooners.
I´ve had a look at Wikipedia and if it is to be trusted, we in England, shouldn´t have to much to fear in near future with losing places in Champ League as Italy have done pretty badly this year. As for Spurs we sit one place behind Man City, so would be great to do better than them in terms of Coefficient points this year, qualify for champ league and be seeded ahead of them! Only slightly behind PSG as well.. Lack of recent European football seems to have cost Liverpool as no longer near top. This is the problem if we start not qualifying for Europe nor trying once we are in it as if we ever get back into the Champ League we would be shafted in seedings.
Apart from Arry ditching the Europa in 2011-12, Spurs have been doing their bit these past 4 or so years to keep the PL league ranking coefficient high (as well as the team one) . And yes, the ranking pts are important so if you get into the CL you don't end up in pot 4. Spurs were lucky in 2010 to get a "pot 2" ranking with less than 60 pts. Citeh missed pot 2 this season by less than one pt this season (and that was on 70 odd pts) . And the Poool showed the cosy clique interests of the CL. It took over 4 consecutive seasons with little/no UEFA football before their rankings even dropped below Spurs. It takes a serious PL slump out of the top 4 to compromise the PL incumbents in the CL.
To be fair, they were the best in Europe around 2005-2007, winning the Europa in 2001, and winning the CL in 2005. We've done naff all but participate every year, except reach the quarter finals in the CL - they had quite a way to fall.
It has taken 4 consecutive seasons of Spurs toiling in all UEFA competitions while the Poool did very little, just to get ranking parity. Which shows how the ranking system operates to ensure the same clique don't suffer too much even if they miss out the odd year. I cannot see any others in the Sky 4 suffering the same fate for a while.
