Three qualifiers next season aswell

Already decided.

Nope.

 

Winning the Europa League would get us in as well.

 

The way the draw for the 1st qualifier we play is set up too means we have a 50/50 chance of drawing an Irish or Welsh team as we can only play 6 teams the champions of probably Wales, N.Ireland, Ireland, Latvia, Estonia or Iceland as they regionalise it and teams from those countries will almost always be the unseeded teams.

 

I worry about this season first.. If we wont bring another striker in very soon, we might not be playing european football this season.

 

Good point. I know we'll make money from the qualifiers etc, plus a couple of games thrown in like the Liverpool one, but surely pre season tournaments would be good for more exposure and selling our brand in other markets? Especially in the long run. Not that i'm an expert on such matters, was just a thought.

 

Is there any chance of us bringing in a striker before the Elfsborg away leg?

Or are we going to hope "profit" scores the goals?

*STOLEN PATTER* :bbpd:

 

We just need to take care of Elfsborg then if we win our play off we go into the Champions League group stage but if we lose we drop automatically into the Europa league group stage. Would seem like the end of the world but would be better than nothing I suppose.

 

Got that feeling that we could win the EL

 

Big Sammy and Super Joe will score our goals next week

 

If we ahve another 3 qualifiers I hope the board give at least the 1st two on the season ticket instead of a free game against Borussia M on a Sturday afternoon.

 

Haha dont be crazy its our board your talking about :smiley-laughing002:

 

they cant guarantee we will go through, they have to be sure we will play that game.

 

We were always going to have to negotiate 3 qualifying rounds (including the Play-offs) again next season anyway because of Scotland finishing 24th position in the co-efficient for last season. We entered the 3rd qualifying round last season because Scotland finished in 15th position for the co-efficient in season 10/11.

Only way we'll enter at the 3rd qualifying round instead of 2nd qualifying round is if/when Scotland gets back to a minimum of 15th position for the co-efficient, which could take some time.

 

Are you crazyyyyyy this would mean less revenue for the big guys at Uefa.. Youd have to hold a gun to Platinis head before he would! This is the guy that wants the euros or World Cup to be in so many different country's at once!

 

Well they can easily change it to a cup game! Did they not * it up one year and we got a free game against an alkmar and everyone went to the youh game instead

 

We've only had 12 opportunities to qualify for the group stage.

Of those 3 were automatic qualification so that gives us a 4/9 success rate.

The 5 teams we lost to were

Croatia Zagreb (1998)
Basle (2002)
Artmedia Bratislava (2005)
Arsenal(2009)
Braga(2010)

Zagreb were a brilliant team who were much better than us, Basle we shuda beaten, Bratislava was a fluke/crazy, Braga was terrible, but they were probably better than us, and Arsenal was an unfortunate pairing.

On the other side of the coin there is Ajax, Spartak Moscow in the greatest game ever, and a destruction Hungaria and Helsinborg.

Our qualification record is actually decent, and probably where it should be.

 

i think the extra round stood us in good stead for the games coming up,yes they are a potential banana skin but a couple of competitive games helps the players sharpen up

 

Basel qualified through the Group they were in that year and Braga got to the UEFA Cup final so they werent really shocks they were both as good as us.

That Basel team were quality as well. In the CL that season they had some great results like

Man Utd 1-1 Basel
Basel 2-1 Juventus
Basel 1-0 Deportivo
Basel 3-3 Liverpool
Liverpool 1-1 Basel
Basel 2-2 Valencia
Basel 2-0 Spartak Moscow
Spartak Moscow 0-2 Basel

Braga mind knocked out Sevilla in the next round after knocking us out. Then they went on to get 9 points in the Group and were unlucky not to go through to the Last 16

Braga beat Sevilla, Arsenal, Liverpool and Benfica in Europe that season.

Croatia Zagreb like you said that season they finished 2nd in their Group above Ajax and Porto and were a quality side too.

The only bad one is Artmedia, we should have beat them but even then they werent that bad. They knocked out Partizan Belgrade in the next qualifier then went on to get 6 points in the Group, infact neither Porto or Rangers beat them in the Group stage lol Artmedia actually beat Porto in Porto... the * won a * away game before us haha

 

Aye I remember them doing really well in Europe after they put us out. They put Liverpool out of their CL group which eventually led to us v pool in the UEFA cup QF.

But the match itseelf, us v Basle, we were in total control in the home leg and won 3-1. We played shocking in the first half in Basle and went down 2-0, and then we battered them for 45 minutes, and over the two legs were easily the better team. I still mind Tosh McKinley on commentry celebrating a Sutton shot that went just past the post in the 90th minute, because he thought it had gone in.

The Basle result was a really difficult one to take if you watched it, but it did spawn Seville.

I also remember after the match a paper reporting that we'd need to get the UEFA cup SF to make up the CL money, which seemed close to an impossibility at the time.