Champions league and Europa league thread (General)

I don't think West Ham care a whit about this competition. Payet who is a great midfielder didn't play and of course their two strikers are out injured as well. Bilic only cares about how they do in the EPL.

 

Won't know until tomorrow. They are still playing qualifying matches tonight. Ajax will be a number one seed for the pool play so they cannot draw ManU or Internazionale.

 

Seedings for tomorrow's EL Drawing (Dutch teams cannot be drawn into the same group).

Seeded Pot 1: Schalke, Zenit St Petersburg, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Athletic Bilbao, Olympiakos, Villarreal, Ajax, Inter Milan, Fiorentina, Anderlecht, Viktoria Plzen

Pot 2: AZ Alkmaar, Braga, Salzburg, AS Roma, Fenerbahce, Sparta Prague, PAOK, Steaua Bucharest, Genk, APOEL, Standard Liege, St Etienne

Pot 3: Gent, Young Boys, Krasnodar, Rapid Vienna, Slovan Liberec, Celta Vigo, Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Feyenoord, Austria Vienna, Mainz, FC Zurich, Southampton

Pot 4: Panathinaikos, Sassuolo, FK Qarabag, FK Astana, Nice, Zorya Luhansk, Astra Giurgiu, Konyaspor, Osmanlispor, FK Qabala, Hapoel Beer-Sheva, Dundalk

 

Nobody watched the EL draw today????? I didn't either but here are the key groups for us:

GROUP A
Manchester United
Fenerbahce
Feyenoord
Zorya Luhansk

GROUP D
Zenit St Petersburg
AZ Alkmaar
Maccabi Tel-Aviv
Dundalk

GROUP G
Ajax
Standard Liege
Celta Vigo
Panathinaikos

Peter Bosz's head will roll if he doesn't qualify out of that group. Feynoord could ease through if they can handle the Turks. AZ should also progress as well. Let's hope for some coefficient points though maybe it really doesn't matter any more since the CL reorganizes.

 

Absolutely right. I don't have an issue with giving the big leagues extra places but look how Portugal does every year. Three decent teams that perform well. Arguably, they have done much better than Italy (other than Juventus) in recent years. Now they will be limited to competing for 16 spots in the group stage. I don't know if UEFA will keep the separate track for small country leagues open the way it is now but say they do and limit that to 4 or 6. This further limits the available spots. I would much prefer to see the big leagues only given 2 group stage spots and the next eight leagues by coefficient one spot apiece and then let everyone else fight it out for the remaining places. UEFA are cowards once again and they are doing this because they worry about a break away effort by the big teams to form their own competition. May they all dwell in Dante's Inferno together.

 

Isn't van Praag going to be the next head of UEFA? We can start by boycotting Heineken beer which I never drink.

 

Don't think I want Celtic in any break away league. They are just leaking goals against Barca.