The Europa Dilemma

[Rich]

Can you imagine the ****e if we were to lose to Doctor Robotnik! Roys stuck between a rock and a hard place, he needs to get his competitive record off on the right foot but try and not rush our World Cup players back.

[Charly]

Actually, winning it brings in a fair bit of money, at least as much as getting to the group stages of the Champions League (based upon what I remember our income from it when we won it last). So it would be naive to ignore it completely, and we have won **** all recently.

edit: Checking up, it seems that the club was able to negociate its own tv deal in the Uefa club, and the centralised deal may mean we far far less that we did, regardless, I would still like to see us win it. There is more visibility than the fa cup, if we want to make any impression with foriegn players.

[DannyMan2006]

Co-Efficient wise it would help us in the coming years if we were to progress far.

Money wise it would obviously helped. It may not be a lot of cash, but that's a LB if you want to look at it that way. Or look at how many times we have missed out on a future star due to a small amount of £2m or so.

And as someone else says, it's a trophy. And how humiliating would it be to go out to a team from Macedonia FFS.

Kids for the first leg, then big guns for Anfield if needed. The kids haven't been great, but they haven't looked like they'll ship a great deal of goals either.

[Nicey]

The Europa Offers nothing but woe to us unless we use exclusively kids .. much like Arsenal do for the Beer cup, disrespectful perhaps .. but with us facing the toughest lg in the world bar none in a matter of weeks can we really deal with Thursday night football in a Public park in the ****ing North Pole week in week out ... only to be playing Chelsea away two days later ... i think not .. **** the Europa I say **** it Roy ... you would have most sensible fans backing

[Baracus]

I would love to see if it would be possible to win something and play good football like Bob did back in the 80's with a 1st team select of no more than 16 integral players in the squad.

So I'm all for not concentrating on europa

[Exiled_red]

The value of the Europa League is questionable I'd like to see us go as far as possible but just using it as a chance to give the kids a chance.

[Darth Marty]

I think if we got past the opening few games then we will win it but we should not jeopardize our whole season by playing knackered players in such a tie. Play the whole reserve team if necessary and we should still win.

[Spanishfly]

I think we should force Torres and Masch to play... lets see who wants them then lol

[doogle]

I think we should force Torres and Masch to play... lets see who wants them then lol

I think that would cup tie them just for the Europa League, unfortunatly I think they may have slightly higher aspirations

[dww]

It a trophy so I'd like to win it personally. Particularly as we haven't won anything for over four years now.

I would really hate to see us being like Spurs/Villa and taking the piss by fielding a side of under 12s in the hope of getting knocked out.

[The_weatherman]

Nicked from the Independant on an article about Villa's participation last year

In short, the Europa League winners will get around £6.5m in prize money and TV cash. The Champions' Leauge winners get the thick end of £50m.

Teams that do not make it past the group phase in the Europa League make an average of £800,000 each prize money, amassed via payments just for being there (£531,000), for each group win (£106,000) and for each draw (£53,000).

Those teams reaching the last 32 get an extra £159,000, the last 16 get £270,000 more again, the last eight £319,000, the last four £558,000, the runners-up £1.77m and the winners £2.65m.

Peanuts.

I'm pretty sure we can double these amounts if we factor in ticket sales, ads and sponsors, we'd be looking at something like 10-12 million easily if we had a good run, I'd have thought. Still think we have to focus on the league though. Maybe a mixture of first team, squaddies and young players is the way to go.

[Nick77]

I would honestly sacrifice ANY silverware or cup runs if it means we had a chance of getting back in the top 4...

[Guest]

I'd happily lose the tie and dump this europa tinpot where it belongs.

[barnes10]

let the kids play. its pretty obvious isnt it. its worth about as much as the carling cup. a bit more glamorous as its europe wide. its still basically sh1t tho.

uefa turns the sport in europe into a money chasing machine. 4th place qualification sums this up as rather than getting broader participation along the simple lines of 'win your country's top league and you're in', its just looking for the best clubs across fewer leagues.

So on that basis alone, they cannot complain when 'top' clubs go chasing 4th at the expense of genuinely competing in the UEFA leaving that competition with the excitement its prize money deserves.

[PTP]

i personally think, as i said in another thread, if we pick a team that included the likes of Cavalieri, Degen, Kyriakos, Kelly, Ayala, Wilson, Lucas, Aquilani and ngog - and can't get a result against fc robots - then seriously....why the **** are those players even here.....

I’d like to think that those players would be capable of getting results against a few half decent sides, nevermind with all due respect, some part timers from Macedonia.

I don’t want us to go get knocked out, because i want us to use the europa cup for what it would be ideal for us.....get to the group stage, and guarantee that the likes of Kelly, Wilson, Shelvey, Pacheco, Ngog, along with whatever senior players aren’t regularly playing in the league (say back up keeper, skrtel, lucas, kuyt or whoever??) – get some game time, that will

1- Keep them match sharp
2- Give them a chance to prove themselves
3- Give them experience or help them find form or confidence or whatever is required to try and push on for the first team.

Take away Reina, Johnson, Agger, Carra, Gerrard, Mascher if he stays, Cole, Torres........those players need to be fresh for the league and not used in the europa cup unless desperate – we have plenty of other players that can be used for away ties in finland on a Thursday night.


If however.....hodgson or the club, are seriously contemplating playing those 7 or 8 key players on a Thursday night in the middle of ****ing nowhere against some bunch of blurts, meaning that they won’t be fresh for one of the vital 38 league games the following Sunday – then yeah **** it i’d rather get knocked out now