Rose is a winger, not a full back, he should be used as such. He'd make a pretty good winger. Now let's forget the last couple of matches and move on. And if you can't: In this great future you can't forget your past, so dry your tears I say. Robert Nesta Marley
trouble is,we have a lot of wingers,true we could have used him ans saved money on Siggy and Chadli,then with that money we could have got a top L/B,then again Terry Cooper was a winger,and became an England full back
I have always enjoyed Tommy Cooper. all our wingers are pretty poor and central midfield is blandsville. Dembele is the new Jason Dozzel.
yeah, there is that I suppose, but it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. It's not like it's a strict tuesday-sat or weds-sun. there's plenty of games played on a weds and then a sat. The psychological element could play a factor, I suppose. if our opponents are often playing on a saturday, there's more pressure on us the following day? To be honest, the reasons don't carry much weight and it just sounds like us making poor excuses. But whatever anyone says, the EL is a burden. How or why, i don't know. I just refer to it as "The Curse of the EL" these days, as so many clubs fail to perform domestically when they are in the EL, not just us. That's why next season, i don't want us to qualify for it, and instead, try to win the FA cup or League cup instead.
Yeah this could be massive. If they win then there is pressure to keep up and if they lose there is pressure to take advantage.
we'll deal with that problem when/if it arises, tots. Let's just focus on trying to win a trophy first, yeah?
The kicker is that doesn't next years EL winner get into the CL? So we do actually want to qualify for the EL this season. Right? Winning a trophy to get into the CL is much better than coming 4th.
so far this decade (2010 onwards) we have less trophies than Swansea and Wigan. More alarmingly we have the same number as Arsenal
but is the EL route the best one to go down for CL qualification? We put in all the hard work traveling to the furthest places in Europe, in freezing weather, playing on **** pitches. Just as we advance to the next stage, a load of CL dropouts join us (who are decent teams), who haven't had to deal with all that. it's such a kick in the nuts and makes it very difficult to win. Is all the bullshit worth it?
Who ****ing knows any more? Don't get me started on UEFA/FIFA, they piss me off more than Spurs. My usual opinion is that if we aren't good enough to compete in the EL while maintaining a challenge for 4th in the league then we aren't good enough or ready for the CL anyway, as this season is showing. If you offered me 4th or EL win + mid table i'd take the EL win though
which makes this conversation go full circle, and back to where we were a minute ago. (Tues- sat/weds-sun, playing a day after anyone else, travelling distance etc). I seem to recall that when we were in the CL we made it to the last 8, despite being told that we wouldn't even make it out of our group. And we finished 5th in the league, IIRC. - And that was when we had NO depth. So, again, would we not be able to handle both now? (forgetting the football we're playing)
LOL, I knew what I meant, but I can see how it was confusing. I'll try and simplify it. we've been giving reasons as to why the EL and a successful domestic campaign combined, seem very difficult. I personally don't like using the excuses of: Thursday-sunday matches, distance travelled, always playing a game a day after everyone else in the league etc. etc. However, there must be something in it. Maybe a combination of lots of things, including the above (in bold). As I've said, you can look at the form of serveral teams in recent years to see that the EL has some sort of affect. My point in the previous post was a reply to your comment about "not being able to handle the CL if we can't handle the EL". what I was trying to say, is that when we were in CL, we had much less depth in our squad, yet we managed to reach the 1/4 finals of the CL and still finished 5th. - so saying that we wouldn't be able to deal with the CL/prem, just because we can't deal with the EL/prem, isn't necessarily true. Ok, our first team performed much better back then, but we have far more depth now. So, if we now take into consideration that the CL usually involves less traveling, playing on a Saturday (not always under pressure after seeing everyone else's results), and extra day's rest potentially (tues-sat), AND the fact that we've got more squad depth, perhaps we would be ok dealing with a CL and prem campaign? To write one off (CL), just because we find the other difficult (EL), may not actually be at all accurate, especially if some of those things above in bold have some truth to them.
tl;dr? The Europa League/UEFA Cup clearly has an effect upon the teams playing in it which doesn't appear to transfer when the same teams play in the CL. There must be something more to it than just playing some extra games.
Am I right in saying that if you made it to the final of the Europa, you'd only play 1 more tie than if you made it to the final of the CL?
