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Europa League - Round of 32: Fiorentina (ITA)

Gutter Boy

Gutter Boy

Tim Sherwood
"It's magnificent to be in Europe, and this club - a club like Tottenham Hotspur - if we're not in Europe.... we're nothing. We're nothing" - Bill Nicholson

Ok, so I'm old school about this, but I think being in the UEFA cup next season is really important:
- CL qualification will be easier through winning UEFA than finish 4th in the EPL
- It gives the new manager space to experiment and learn about his team
- We can afford to keep a bigger squad, which keeps us heading in the right direction for becoming top 4 competitors and CL regulars
- It's still prestigious in Europe and will help us attract players from the continent
- We get twice as many games to watch (midweeks are crap without Spurs games and glory glory European nights are great for fans)
- Anyone that disrespects the UEFA cup doesn't deserve CL - they are the same thing - the end not the means

We won't catch Everton/Arsenal and mathematically Southampton can't catch us. So it's now a two-way fight between us and United. We're 6 points clear of them having played a game more, but they have a 14 GD advantage

Remaining fixtures are:

Sat 26/4
Stoke - Tottenham
Man U - Norwich

Sat 3/5
Man U - Sunderland
West H - Tottenham

Tues 6/5
Man U - Hull

Sun 11/5
Soton - Man U
Tottenham - Villa

I think it is possible that United will get 12 points - that's some easy home games they've got.

That means we really need 7 points out of our final 3 matches. Stoke and West Ham are very poor but physical - the type of teams we traditionally do badly against. These are the type of matches we need to play a trio of Sandro, Capoue and Dembele (if Timmeh hadn't alienated them all and is going to have to play Chadli and Bentaleb), to give the attackers a base to work from. Villa should be more straight forward, but I've still got memories of Redknapp finally screwing up our 11-12 4th place campaign against them (subbing vdV and settling for a draw to get 4th, rather than a win to get 3rd).

Anyway - game on
 
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Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Is there a possibility that 7th could get Euro League next year ? IE **** finish 5th then WIN FA Cup ?

Personally I like the Euro games..I hope we qualify !
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Reggie_Mentalist said:
Is there a possibility that 7th could get Euro League next year ? IE **** finish 5th then WIN FA Cup ?

Personally I like the Euro games..I hope we qualify !
Click to expand...


No. They've changed the rules this season, so Hull have already qualified alongside whichever of Arsenal or Everton gets 5th.

The outside possibility is via the Fair Play, but IIRC England are not in one of the top positions at the moment, and even that would only generate a place in a lottery draw.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Wait GB....how can we possibly claim 6th if you also want us to lose every game as long as Sherwood is in charge? This is rather odd.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

If not 4th, which we wont, I want us to finish 5th or 6th for Euro footie.
Hopefully the club does to, the race for 6th will go to the last day now, could be a funny last day if neither United or Spurs want to play in El next season though...
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Gutter Boy said:
No. They've changed the rules this season, so Hull have already qualified alongside whichever of Arsenal or Everton gets 5th.

The outside possibility is via the Fair Play, but IIRC England are not in one of the top positions at the moment, and even that would only generate a place in a lottery draw.
Click to expand...

Not seen that .... do you have a source for us? There is a change from next year that losing finalists can no longer take up Winner slot when CL qualified. 1st of our EL spots is for FA Cup TMK.

Fair Play - Top Spot and lottery was dropped a couple of years back in favour of top spots only. Did this change back?.

I wish there was single resource to clarify these things, because even sports journo's don't keep up to date and/or are sloppy/over-simplistic with their lingo. I wonder how many pub scraps they've caused.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

I want us in the europa League...I want us to win the damn thing! I just wish Uefa would stop devaluating the competition by the letting the chapions league dropouts fall into the competition.

excellent bullet points GB..agree with most...come on uefa if you finish third in the ucl group then tough titty!
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Doesn't one of the EL qualifiers have to start their campaign in July? Is that 6th?
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Would've thought so, it was Swansea (league cup placing) who started really early last year wasn't it?
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

chancer said:
Doesn't one of the EL qualifiers have to start their campaign in July? Is that 6th?
Click to expand...

One of the spots will start in the 3rd qualifying round which begins on 31 July. That spot will either go to:
  • Hull (if Arsenal win the cup and also qualify for CL) or otherwise
  • the lowest league place that qualifies for EL (excluding any possible fair play place).
The lowest league place will either be:
  • 6th or
  • 7th (if Arsenal win the cup but do not qualify for CL)
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Clear benefits and disadvantages to being in the EL. I'm rather ambivalent and don't much care either way.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Gutter Boy said:
No. They've changed the rules this season, so Hull have already qualified alongside whichever of Arsenal or Everton gets 5th.

The outside possibility is via the Fair Play, but IIRC England are not in one of the top positions at the moment, and even that would only generate a place in a lottery draw.
Click to expand...

Hasn't it always/(long) been the case that the losing FA-cup finalist gets the EL spot if the winner has already qualified for Europe?
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

jaysea67 said:
One of the spots will start in the 3rd qualifying round which begins on 31 July. That spot will either go to:
  • Hull (if Arsenal win the cup and also qualify for CL) or otherwise
  • the lowest league place that qualifies for EL (excluding any possible fair play place).
The lowest league place will either be:
  • 6th or
  • 7th (if Arsenal win the cup but do not qualify for CL)
Click to expand...


Thanks for that. So I guess we're cheering for Arsenal to win the Cup! Being back playing in July would be awful.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

With the size of our squad we absolutely need to be in Europe next season.

It's suited Liverpool this year because their squad is very small and they've managed to get through the majority of the season avoiding injuries. However we have a heavy squad that's built for the extra strain European football brings, without Europe we'll see a lot of unhappy players not getting any playing time and also even less of an opportunity for the youngsters to get time to impress.

Also I want to see us winning competitions, the more we're in the more likelihood we've got of winning one
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Kingdawson said:
Wait GB....how can we possibly claim 6th if you also want us to lose every game as long as Sherwood is in charge? This is rather odd.
Click to expand...

Because he's gone now. That battle is over. Now it's time to salvage something for the next guy.


Whiffler said:
Not seen that .... do you have a source for us? There is a change from next year that losing finalists can no longer take up Winner slot when CL qualified. 1st of our EL spots is for FA Cup TMK.

Fair Play - Top Spot and lottery was dropped a couple of years back in favour of top spots only. Did this change back?.

I wish there was single resource to clarify these things, because even sports journo's don't keep up to date and/or are sloppy/over-simplistic with their lingo. I wonder how many pub scraps they've caused.
Click to expand...

Someone clarified on here a while back - I can't remember the original post or references. No idea about changes to fair play.


braineclipse said:
Hasn't it always/(long) been the case that the losing FA-cup finalist gets the EL spot if the winner has already qualified for Europe?
Click to expand...

No. It was. Then it went to winners only. Now it's back to beaten finalists.


Ryan said:
With the size of our squad we absolutely need to be in Europe next season.

It's suited Liverpool this year because their squad is very small and they've managed to get through the majority of the season avoiding injuries. However we have a heavy squad that's built for the extra strain European football brings, without Europe we'll see a lot of unhappy players not getting any playing time and also even less of an opportunity for the youngsters to get time to impress.

Also I want to see us winning competitions, the more we're in the more likelihood we've got of winning one
Click to expand...

Totally agree. Liverpool completely fluked this season injury-wise. It wouldn't happen to us if no European football causes us to reduce our senior squad size by 4 or 5 players.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

chancer said:
Thanks for that. So I guess we're cheering for Arsenal to win the Cup! Being back playing in July would be awful.
Click to expand...

Still a no for me

We normally would be playing a few friendlies then anyway. If we finish 6th and have to play in the 3rd quals I would be disappointed if the club thought we needed to play our strongest X1 to get through.
I would think instead of playing the usual 5 or 6 pre-season friendlies the 2 potential EL 3rd Qual ties could become part of our pre-season schedule, and has been suggested before, they would probably be just as good, if not better, preparation than playing the likes of say Stevenage,Orient,Peterborough, etc; like we usually do
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

paxtonwolf said:
Still a no for me

We normally would be playing a few friendlies then anyway. If we finish 6th and have to play in the 3rd quals I would be disappointed if the club thought we needed to play our strongest X1 to get through.
I would think instead of playing the usual 5 or 6 pre-season friendlies the 2 potential EL 3rd Qual ties could become part of our pre-season schedule, and has been suggested before, they would probably be just as good, if not better, preparation than playing the likes of say Stevenage,Orient,Peterborough, etc; like we usually do
Click to expand...

Agree, and we would have a few players who aren't in the WC anyway, plus some of the younger ones.

We will have to play our last few games well, as United are going to get the dead cat bounce now.
 
Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place

Raziel said:
Agree, and we would have a few players who aren't in the WC anyway, plus some of the younger ones.

We will have to play our last few games well, as United are going to get the dead cat bounce now.
Click to expand...


Yeah - I'd definitely rather Hull win the cup and we have to play a qualifier.

I do think our U21s could easily navigate the qualifying round, or just treat the games as a normal pre-season friendly.

This is the second thing the decision to sack Moyes has potentially screwed us up on.
 
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