Unirea build up

[Mattshark]

I knew you'd say that.

Of course they could get injured in a friendly or in training too.

You could have a car crash driving at 20mph and you can also have a car crash driving at 150mph - so why dont you go around driving at 150mph all the time?

Pretty poor analogy Craig, crashing at 150mph is VERY different to crashing at 20.

[Mattshark]

For the record, I would like to win this competition as it is the only one we can win!

[-V-]

How pathetic can our situation be that we are not confident about beating a romanian team that has not played a competitive game for 2 months and have since lost their manager and top players.

Stop being so negative for ****s sake. We are a top premier league team and should be very confident and for good reason.

[Craig_H]

Pretty poor analogy Craig, crashing at 150mph is VERY different to crashing at 20.

It wasnt a poor analogy at all, if you've actually understood the point of it.

Which was, whilst things can happen at any time, there's also such a thing as probability levels and minimising risks, which people do have some control over.

[Will]

i would rather finish 4th this year and get dumped out of the Europa Cup. We have to be playing CL footy next season. Its a sad day in football when 4th is nore important than a trophy but it is.

On a sidenote, it would be a nightmare if City get 4th with there deep pockets and the lure of CL footy they would get some real quality in.

I agree. 4th over the Europa League everytime. However,would you rather finish 4th and the mancs win the league or finish 5th and Chelsea win it? our last home game of the season is against Chelsea. Help them out or the mancs?

[BillobShaisley]

Isnt it based on 5 years worth of performance? I doubt one bad season will **** us up. Did the mancs ranking go downhill the year they finished bottom of their group?

Depends on how we did 5 yrs ago relative to this year.

Points for illustrative purposes only, guestimated on rough recolection of Champo points and how we did.
......Year - 05.......06.......07........08........09.......... 10
Co-ef pts -30.......20........23.......17.........23......... 12

As we won the cup in 05, we'd lose lots of points (30) and gain few (12) meaning our average over the 5 yrs would drop quite a bit. Doing **** again in 2015 wouldn't have a lot of effect on our ranking then as we'd be losing our 2010 points from the average.

[cream]

Word on the street is Aquilani is not starting.

Make of that what you will

[nineteen]

difference is that, to me anyway, the CL is the second biggest prize we can win behind the league itself. to prestige of being the best in europe is enormous. this game is different because it is in the europa league......the tourny for the also-rans.....the ones not good enough for the big stage. it's like celebrating being the best of the worst IMO. a trophy, that again to me, is as pestigous as the carling cup. 4th place is far more important than the europa league.

Don't kid yourself - we are part of the also-rans group this year, and based on performances I've witnessed, are clearly not good enough for the big stage.

No one's going to argue the importance of 4th place in the league over winning a cup competition, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. We should be able to compete well in both and there's no reason to suspect we can't achieve both goals. I find it amusing how snobbish some fans have become, turning up their nose at European football. All you have to do is look at the quality of sides in the last 32 to know that this is still a worthy competition. Given that we haven't won a trophy since 2006, I think it's important that the club wins something to boost it's image and help with the ongoing marketing and revenue generation efforts.

[Mattshark]

It wasnt a poor analogy at all, if you've actually understood the point of it.

Which was, whilst things can happen at any time, there's also such a thing as probability levels and minimising risks, which people do have some control over.

I didn't say I was taking it in context did I? I actually have no idea what the context was, I was too lazy to read it all.

[Exiled_red]

Depends on how we did 5 yrs ago relative to this year.

Points for illustrative purposes only, guestimated on rough recolection of Champo points and how we did.
......Year - 05.......06.......07........08........09.......... 10
Co-ef pts -30.......20........23.......17.........23......... 12

As we won the cup in 05, we'd lose lots of points (30) and gain few (12) meaning our average over the 5 yrs would drop quite a bit. Doing **** again in 2015 wouldn't have a lot of effect on our ranking then as we'd be losing our 2010 points from the average.

All we need though is to stay in the top 8 (to be first seeds if we make it to next years group stage). So while we'll lose alot of points and gain a few, we have to compare our record with other teams over the same period.

[Exiled_red]

Word on the street is Aquilani is not starting.

Make of that what you will

What's the word on the team then? Is there anything going around yet?

[-V-]

Supposedly Martin Kelly will start at RB

[Reece]

Supposedly Martin Kelly will start at RB

[little dave hedgehog]

rock on, reece.

rock the **** on

[Craig_H]

As decent as Kelly was in his ONE game, i find the kerfuffle over him to be strange to say the least. Takes a bit more than one game to prove anything.

That said, i hope he has another stormer tonight.