UEFA Champions League 2018-2019 qualifiers

All 4 teams in the preliminary start their season in August/September, out of the 15 automatic qualifiers who are unseeded in the 1QR 7 have started their league, who play a summer league. The countries who do are Faroe Islands, Lithuania, Latvia, Ireland, Iceland, Estonia and Georgia. If we draw winners of Faroes, Ireland or Iceland we should win easily no matter what, only the other 4 would worry me. However these teams could have other problems, injuries and fatigue in their players. Our team will be training from early mid June and I am sure will be in good shape.

 

I personally don't see the difference really in playing 2 competitive games against weaker than usual European opposition, as opposed to playing 2 friendlies. As long as the Champions play-off route remains, and seeding remains favourable, I'm alright.

I hope it's more comfortable than previous times, nights like Be'er Sheva/Astana/RBK etc are about as uncomfortable as you get these days.

Would love to see us really go out and build for these games, rather than building off these games. The mentality should always be speculate to accumulate.

We do seem to be doing this more now, but would love to see next level stuff, a proper risk for reward signing. An instant improvement or 3.

 

Agree with that, we need 2/3 first team players to really kick on. Especially at CL level, I think we're not far off getting some decent results.

 

Imagine we just thrashed our way to the group stages wiping teams out with 4 and 5-0 wins.

 

I think if we invested serious money, by which I mean at least three 8m quality signings and an adjusted wage structure, we would comfortably get past the qualifiers every season and with a decent draw, could reasonably expect to get out of the group.

The reason I still feel anxious going into these qualifiers, is that while I think we have the nucleus of a decent team, and am therefore hopeful of progression, we still don't have that type of quality which would make these ties a formality.

 

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at aswell... That kind of investment is what we need to progress further in europe

 

We are already the top paying side by about double. Restructuring the pay too heavily will only leave us in * when we fail to qualify and good sides who spend a vast amount of money do fail to qualify. When you start paying a few players heavily they all want it and it sky rockets out of control. In the long run it just is not viable and would only be worth investing in if we had a guaranteed place in the groups. Taking the risk and failing would be far more damaging than staying as we are and improving over baby steps. That crappy speculate to accumulate bollocks being thrown around is silly (just a stupid line thrown around by salesmen and conmen), good management is important and that does not necessarily mean spending much money. It is about risk management, is the investment worth the gamble and analysing that.

 

This isn't viable in modern football. Everyone taking baby steps gets left behind. MON, Strachan and Lennon's teams all went backwards because we failed to invest and kick on.

There are no financial issues. We have several high value assets and money in the bank. We have several parachutes if we spend good money and make a * of it.

 

All this time and all this money and we still have only one decent defender

Are we not playing a high risk strategy here with the most important part in our season?

 

That top is a belter.

 

Where’s the fun in that ffs, can’t beat those nights in Astana or Beer Sheva with your * making buttons.

 

If that was our top, with plain green n white hoops, i'd be delighted.

 

Happy days the draw on Tuesday .
https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/newsid=2562513.html

 

agreed .HH.

 

Trnava would be a bad draw for a 1st round tie. Would be better to avoid Alashkert as well as it’s a 6 hour flight and the temperature would be be in the high 30s, the rest should be comfortable.

 

The obvious response is the old cliche, if you can't beat these teams you don't deserve to be in the competition. We should be far too good for these teams. However there's a tricky couple of potential games there for an ill prepared team.
I'll take the Maltese, Estonian or Latvian.

 

Id take a dodgy handball, a dubious offside goal or an illegally registered player. Not picky at all.

Start of the season lately we seem to be playing some great stuff too with fresh minds and legs. Think we'll be fine. Avoid leiga warsaw for violence in later rounds. Dont think enough times passed since we thumped them.