We had to play from the second round of qualifying this season. Plus, last summer there was the Euro's and Olympics to contend with too. Our youngsters got us qualified.
Bad PR again whatever side of the fence you sit on. Couldn't we have just kept our mouths shut and then made a decision IF we qualified via this route?
But why does it have to affect our league performance? Use the youth players and fringe first teamers for the qualifiers and early rounds. There are plenty of players who have hardly played since xmas and need games. Use it as a shop window for anyone we want to shift. Use it to experiment with players like Kelly at CB. Use it for the manager to get European experience too. If he can't build a squad that can cope with Europey and the league what chance has he got of building one where we have to play two serious games a week?
i went straight to lfc website. no news on it so fair is fair. billys points above on the europa are very good. if we did god for it then coates, kelly and wisdom for one set then jones and robinson could play early... lets be fair, i think we could put a team together but i think we see it as disruptive to preseason hard training when theres far east tours.
We could put a team together so that it does not disrupt the players however, it is impossible for it not to disrupt the management staff. Maybe we should enter and use the youth squad and put Carra in charge of them?
if it was a case of just fringe players or youth players playing i would agree, but what worries me is key players will play in it, and knowing our luck will get injuries or tired from a lot of travelling and bugger us up for the league push for top 4 finish. reason why i am happy not to be in it for now is to get top 4 asap whilst we are in a good position to and hopefully keep our key players and build on it with a better quality of player we could get for CL football and the extra revenue will help and certainly keep the owners happy, and never know if we did maybe they would dig that bit deeper into their pockets. like i said before, for one season i am happy to see if we can get that top 4 finish without distractions, if we don't then it needs looking at again as we shouldn't be turning down any route that gets us into Europe, but for the more realistic chance of top 4 finish, could do with out the distraction of the Europa. get the point about use it to experiment with players etc, just are we good enough to go far in it and possibly win it and hope it doesn't harm our league push for top 4, i just see first team players unnecessarily playing in it, which i would rather was used for a top 4 league finish. always good to get dif opinions on things even if we don't agree
I agree that if we were in it I wouldn't want to see first team players involved at all early on...apart from Suarez as he won't be playing in the league for weeks anyway. However I could easily name 15/16 players we could use without it affecting the first team. If we went out early then no real loss. If we got through and had games after xmas we'd have had two more transfer windows to strengthen anyway
Watch your piles on that fence,mate. I agree with Billy and others that have said we should be able to cope with it easily. Would we be trying to pull out if we'd qualified "legitimately"? Is our poor league position actually part of a master plan to keep us out of Europe? Seriously, we need as much experience as we can get- players don't get better by sitting on their arses watching others play.
I'd say it should be good practice for a manager with only half a seasons worth of experience. I wonder if this is more about Rodgers not being ready to cope with those demands yet and less about the players.
Totally agree. not sure if you realise but I'm against this decision, I want us to play in Europe at every opportunity
What I dont understand on this thread is everyone saying its an outrage declining it, then saying we should just play our kids surely if we play our kids then we are devaluing the competition anyway.
We played the kids/reserves this year until we got to the harder games. It gives the players experience and puts the Liverpool brand in the European window too.
Not at all simply because I believe our fringe/youth players are good enough to get us through the qualifiers and group stage
