Getafe (H) Thursday October 25 Hapoel (A) Thursday November 8 Aalborg (H) Thursday November 29 Anderlecht (A) either Wednesday December 5 or Thursday December 6 We should be scouting Ustari from Getafe in the first game.
Happy to avoid Bayern and Villareal - without them we should be aiming to win this group, and so get the easier draw in the first knockout round. Happy memories of the Anderlecht 'Tony Parks' final in '84. Unlucky pookspur, you'll have to be diverted to Israel to get in your european game.
yup. somehow, i just figured i wouldn't get lucky twice in a row (last year spurs were drawn at home after i'd already bought my [airline] ticket). oh well. so i'll do spurs v wigan on saturday and take a train down to portsmouth for pompey/man city on sunday afternoon. although now that i think about it, they may very well move the wigan match to sunday, since we'll be playing on the preceding thursday. that, then, would leave me a full slate of saturday matches all over england to choose from. i believe i'll go have a look at the league schedules now ...
Especially since Laudrup isn't keen on him at all. Good draw. Would've liked a Greek team, but whatever.
Wow I think we got a very favorable draw. We should win both at home... the away fixtures tricky as always. Was it Hapoel who had a decent run in Europe recently? Anderlecht is the last game at least... we handled Brugge easily so hopefully we'll do the same. Bolton got stuck with Bayern... and may not be good enough for even 3rd. Aberdeen certainly got a group of death.
Agreed. We missed all the apparent landmines. Anderlecht is always a tough match, though. Hapoel got to the quaters in 2001 but lost to AC Milan on agg so they aren't to be taken lightly. They did beat Chelsea that year.
Hapoel is a very tough side. And playing in Israel is very difficult, both for club and country. Israel's NT went undefeated at the Ramat-Gan for a long ass time, until Croatia and Eduardo da ******** came and beat us. I'm not a Tel-Aviv fan though so I still want Spurs to win that match. Tough one, though.
I just heard today that the Getafe game Thursday is live on FSC, for us in the States. Nice! Didn't know they had the rights to the group stages. Getafe play in La Liga tomorrow, so they have an extra day's rest over us. They are doing even worse than we are, 2 points from 7 games.
ok, then. getafe beat anderlecht today to close out the group stage in first. that means we've come second, and will face one of the champions' league group stage 3rd place finishers in the first knockout round of the UEFA Cup. our opponents will be one of the following: marseille rosenborg werder bremen benfica rangers sporting psv slavia prague gotta say, i suppose i'd prefer slavia of those eight. maybe rosenborg. they and rangers both had disappointing finishes to the CL group stages, and will, perhaps, be a little extra disappointed to be in the 'lesser' of UEFA's tournaments. we'll know soon enough. i believe the draw is friday.
Werder Bremen is a must avoid. The two Portuguese sides are always tricky The rest we should take care of easily.
I agree but they looked pretty bad after Beasley got hurt. I'd like to draw either slavia prague (but I know going there for an away match is like hell) or marseille. They aren't all that and they are doing pretty crappy in they league also.
I agree Slavia Prague or Rosenborg... but neither is a great away fixture. At least we played Slavia last time out so we know what to expect. Marseille looked like crap in that last game... but they looked great when they beat Lpool at Anfield... can't say I'd want to play them, they're too unpredictable. Rangers might not be a bad option... it would make a great matchup... I think we could take them and the travel isn't too bad. I was just watching the old highlights of Spurs v Rangers from the Cup Winners Cup the other night (an omen? )
Rangers would be good. They are a decent side and would be up for putting one over a Prem side, but this is the sort of game that would get a good amount of coverage.
Amazing how varied the quality of that group is. Could be easy or very hard. I don't want another trip to Portugal. How do Bremen look these days without Klose?
They are number two in the Bundesliga, tied on points with Bayern. Frings is out at the moment but Diego is in dangerous form.
Bremen are superb. Don't let their problems in CL fool you as they have dealt with injuries that would make us seem healthy. Klose is a distant memory as they have found a competent pairing in Hugo Almeida and Sanogo w/ Rosenborg as backup up top. Sanogo, especially could give our CB's an issue. Strenghts: 1) Diego of course. He is a master at controlling tempo and the attack usually flows through him. However Jansen has really blossomed with the injury to Frings and while typically the holder for Diego is dangerous springing the attack. 2) Strong on the counter Weaknesses: 1) the wings as Fritz and Panansen are not very good. Per Mertesacker and Naldo can compensate to a certain extent, but this is one of the big reasons they bleed goals. 2) they can not afford an injury to their #1 as their #2 is crap.
Anderlecht/Bordeaux v Aberdeen/Bayern Munich Rangers/Panathinaikos v Werder Bremen/Braga Bolton/Atletico Madrid v Sporting Portugal/Basel Galatasaray/Bayer Leverkusen v Zurich/Hamburg AEK Athens/Getafe v Benfica/Nurnberg Rosenborg/Fiorentina v Brann/Everton Slavia Prague/Spurs v PSV/Helsingborg Marseille/Spartak Moscow v Zenit St. Petersburg/Villarreal
A better draw than we had any right to expect. PSV in the round of 16 is an opponent should test us, but it is a relieving draw. This also gives us a let-off for the awful showing home to Getafe, which very well might have torpedoed our run. Finishing second rather than first in the group usually carries with it a big punishment, in the form of a much more difficult round of 32 opponent. But we've only got a marginally more difficult one. By the Spring, we might be solid enough to beat Bremen or Sporting Lisbon home-and-home, but in February it would have been a tough task. In this season's UEFA Cup run, at least, the early season problems under Jol won't be affecting our ability to progress any longer.