Originally posted by Tribute
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It still feels like only a couple of seasons ago that Gerrard left us, and I still remember the first year of that Owen and Heskey partnership like it was only a few seasons back...weird how the memory works.
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strange alright.......... perhaps we all subconsciously cleared the entire H&G era from our memories!!! Rafa Benitez must look at how FSG have ran the club and be a little bit sore about the fact that he had H&G take over when we were a cunt-hair away from going to the levels we are at now.....
Regarding Istanbul, it's on again this year. Too many potential omens not to:
- Istanbul
- Ataturk
- Potential Chelsea semi
- Last time neither Messi or Ronaldo played in the qrt-finals of the CL was.......2005
- A Moyes team going for top-4
- Beat a German team in R16
If Ken Barlow gets hitched, then it's definitely on!!!Comment
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The pope must be getting nervous
It's easy to distract fat people. It's a piece of cake.Comment
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He will be if he was reading what was being posted on here a week or two backOriginally posted by memzey View PostThe pope must be getting nervous
The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.Comment
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It's not like we haven't been to 3 further Champions League finals since 2005
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It was supposed to be in Istanbul last season but we needed to be out of the top four. We were too busy for that so nature moved instead.
One tit for another.
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Utter wank. With this and VAR you wonder how many will be able to continue tolerating the sport. **** this.
[ame]https://twitter.com/martynziegler/status/1376813111961923585[/ame]
Ten-match Champions League group stage set to be approved
Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter
Tuesday March 30 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Uefa is set to force through a new Champions League format tomorrow despite opposition from the Premier League and others in Europe.
Even those who have been opposed to some of the reforms, such as giving two places to top clubs based on their historical record in Europe, have privately conceded defeat and are expecting Uefa’s plans to be approved in their entirety by its executive committee.
It will mean 36 instead of 32 teams involved using what has been termed the “Swiss system” and ten group matches instead of six. Each club will play five home and five away matches in the group stage against ten opponents of different strengths based on seeding. The results will feed into one 32-team league table with the top eight going through to the knockout rounds automatically and a play-off for clubs finishing between ninth and 24th place in the table to decide the other eight. However, there would no longer be a drop-down into the Europa League.
Uefa’s Club Competitions Committee — on which Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward and Manchester City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano sit — is set to recommend the changes today before the full executive committee meeting tomorrow.
The most controversial aspects of the new format are around the access to the tournament and the pressure on the calendar. Two of the extra places will go to the clubs with the best coefficient who have missed out on qualifying for the Champions League via domestic competitions but have qualified for the Europa League. It could mean for example Liverpool finishing sixth in the Premier League and getting into the Champions League but Everton finishing fifth and not doing so.
The extra European matches would put the fixture calendar under huge pressure. Although the new match calendar will not be decided tomorrow, the English FA has told Uefa it opposes playing Champions League matches in January and has concerns about the pressure on fixtures.
Steve Parish, the Crystal Palace chairman, has claimed there is a conflict of interest with the powerful European Clubs Association (ECA) pushing through the changes and that it will kill the English League Cup and “have a quite devastating effect on domestic competition in England”. Christian Purslow, the Aston Villa chief executive, has criticised the coefficient access plan as “grossly unfair”.
Uefa insiders argue that the new format will revitalise the competition and is a massive improvement on the ECA’s original plan to have 14 group matches with only a few clubs qualifying via domestic competition.
The European Leagues, which represents domestic leagues including the Premier League and the EFL, has been pushing Uefa to change the access plan to allow more national champions of smaller nations such as Scotland and the Netherlands. It also wants a maximum of five teams from any one country. Lars-Christer Olsson, the European Leagues president, admitted last week that its power was limited.Thanks very much for being ‘This Mornings’ Farmer’Comment
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The group stages are almost completely pointless as it is. Throwing in more matches is not an appealing solution. I don’t think any of the governing bodies realise how sick of football the average punter is becoming. There’s just far too much of it.
The only good and interesting thing they could do with the CL is get rid of seeding.Modifying post.Comment
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The big problems I have with this:
- There are enough champions league games as it is
- Any league competition has to have home and away games to be fair. Groups of 11 - so you play 5 home games and 5 away games is just bull****. So we could get paired with Dortmund and have to play them away from home......but to have to play someone else - say Juventus - at anfield in the same group. People will quite rightly say that "it would have been easier to play Dortmund at anfield and Juventus away"
- Also, how are there 36 teams then????!?!?? Each group would have to have 11 teams??? Betcha it will be more like 44 teams.
I would actually prefer if the super clubs said "**** you" to UEFA and started their own european super league. UEFA are corrupt as ****. Still are even after Platini.Comment
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Christ, he almost scuppered all our hopes and dreams
Joking aside, glad he is making a good recoveryComment
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It's complete bollocks, the idea of a massive league system where teams are ranked against one another despite having played different fixtures is stupid, also the play off system where a team who finishes 24th in a league of 36 potentially going through to the last 16 while a team who finish 9th could potentially go out is laughable.
That's before you get into any of the other details such as extra games, how matches are chosen who you play home and who you play away, it seems like they are trying to ruin the game. The fact that the group games can be over after 4 games tells you that there are already too many teams in there, expanding that is just money driven.
The only mildly amusing part is that we could potentially finish 6th in the PL and Everton 5th, and we could be in the CL and them not. I can already feel the fume from here
Last edited by Exiled_red; 30-03-21, 11:30 AM.The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.Comment
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When would this kick in?Comment
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You have to admire this as a tactic of manipulation: put in a totally unfeasible plan that everyone will reject and when you put your second ****ty plan in people accept it because it's infinitely better than the alternative despite the fact that it is still a ****show. Been screwed over by this tactic at work a number of times...Uefa insiders argue that the new format will revitalise the competition and is a massive improvement on the ECA’s original plan to have 14 group matches with only a few clubs qualifying via domestic competition.The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.Comment
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If they want to revitalise the competition then put it back to a straight knock out format.
Dinamo Tbilisi v Slovan Bratislava in the 2022/3 European Cup quarter finals would be refreshing.
I know this is going to happen because MonEh!Comment
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Actually...
Under the new format, the current group phase would be scrapped.
In its place, the number of qualifiers will be expanded from 32 to 36, with space for two 'wild card' entries.
The wild cards will be reserved for clubs with the highest Uefa co-efficient - points used to rank clubs based on past European success - who have not qualified for the competition through their league position.
If the format was being used now, based on the current table it would mean Liverpool would gain a Champions League spot despite being seventh in the Premier League.
Modifying post.Comment
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