Potential opponents after Willem II

DoubleWhopper said:
No, we did well to qualify. The danish champions certainly was tricky for that stage.

But yeah....for the play off round....UFA and Legia in consecutive seasons? We were fortunate there. Im not saying they were gimmes but compared to the other teams we could have faced.....we were practically jumping with joy when we got Legia.
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I can’t argue here, I just don’t remember that.
 
ICA_86 said:
It won’t be a popular viewpoint but I can’t help agreeing. Gerrard has surely exceeded the financial expectations of the board with a group stage and a last 16 in the last two years - has he theoretically managed to afford himself a year of no group stage football?

I appreciate it’s about a lot more than money, but you just need to look at Leicester and Chelsea down south in recent years to see how no European games helped them.

Nobody knows what’s happening with COVID, but as the poster above says, we can’t really afford to be a handful of points behind at any point and the last two seasons suggest that the extra European games contribute to our post-break fatigue.
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No you just have to read his comments about how vital European football is to the club. The club is run based on us making at least the europa league as well so its important that we do qualify. We had a £10m deficit last season and we're lucky that we have have directors who will help cover the losses but the club has to start running itself at some point.

Covid has effected the club the players deferred their wages for 3 months for example so they will have had to be paid back. We've spent a lot of money on transfers and bringing in others on free transfers. That will be offset with season ticket money, retail deal and what we make from that and then the uptake from RTV outwith season ticket holders getting it.

We dropped points once in the league after europe last season and that was St Johnstone away after the Braga game otherwise we won every league game after we played in Europe.
 
bkerr72 said:
No you just have to read his comments about how vital European football is to the club. The club is run based on us making at least the europa league as well so its important that we do qualify. We had a £10m deficit last season and we're lucky that we have have directors who will help cover the losses but the club has to start running itself at some point.

Covid has effected the club the players deferred their wages for 3 months for example so they will have had to be paid back. We've spent a lot of money on transfers and bringing in others on free transfers. That will be offset with season ticket money, retail deal and what we make from that and then the uptake from RTV outwith season ticket holders getting it.

We dropped points once in the league after europe last season and that was St Johnstone away after the Braga game otherwise we won every league game after we played in Europe.
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I’m looking at more collectively than specific games.

We had 14 games in Europe in Gerrard’s first season and 18 in Europe last seasons. I don’t think there can be any doubt that it contributes to the collapse(s) that we’ve suffered.

With the kit sales, MyGers and several high earning fringe players now gone - as well as the income from last year - I’m not expecting as big a gap this year.

It’s an odd debate as I fully see where both sides are coming from, but I can’t deny that I’d miss Europe this one season if it helped us to the league.
 
ICA_86 said:
I’m looking at more collectively than specific games.

We had 14 games in Europe in Gerrard’s first season and 18 in Europe last seasons. I don’t think there can be any doubt that it contributes to the collapse(s) that we’ve suffered.

With the kit sales, MyGers and several high earning fringe players now gone - as well as the income from last year - I’m not expecting as big a gap this year.

It’s an odd debate as I fully see where both sides are coming from, but I can’t deny that I’d miss Europe this one season if it helped us to the league.
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I think last year the break came at the wrong time for us especially after beating that lot but for some reason the 3 weeks just killed the momentum we had gained. The year before it came at the right time as we were dead on our feet but we never kicked on.

Yeah you could be right and while fringe players have gone their wages will have gone to the likes of Balogun, Defoe etc but we will see. I think we're waiting on what happens with europe before anymore transfer business as well similar to last year when we brought Kent in after we qualified.

Looking at the who the scum can get then if both teams are in the group stage it will help as we will both be playing the same amount of games.
 
bigy said:
Tottenham Hotspur ** Eng 85.000
Standard Liège ** Bel 20.500
FC Basel ** Sui 58.500
Besiktas @2 Tur 54.000
FC København ** Den 42.000
VfL Wolfsburg ** Ger 36.000
Viktoria Plzen @2 Cze 34.000
APOEL Nicosia * Cyp 27.500
BATE Borisov ** Bls 24.000
Galatasaray ** Tur 23.500
Malmö FF * Swe 22.000
Partizan Belgrade * Srb 22.000
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Thats our potential opponents? That's an absalout fecking joke!!!
 
brain said:
That’s not good. Spurs and Standard Liege are teams to avoid. Galatasaray finished 6th last season so they aren’t the Galatasaray of old. Obviously APOEL would be good.
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Liege finished 5th last season. Decent option no?
 
I'd personally love to play Spurs, I live down in Kent and a good group of my mates are Spurs fans and I have a soft spot for them myself. Would be a cracking game.
 
Wouldn’t be at all surprised if Gala went out to Split. Far from a major force now, I’m quite surprised to see they are the bookies favourites at around 2/1 to win that League - it’s probably the most competitive League in Europe with 5 Clubs in with a shout.
 
None of those teams will want to draw us.Sorry for being positive in advance.We,re well into the league,playing well,not conceding ,creating loads of chances.Any team who draw us home or away will be very fearful.
 
Group 4
Seeded
1 Galatasaray (TUR) / Hajduk Split (CRO)
2 Shkëndija (MKD) / Tottenham (ENG)
3 Standard Liège (BEL) / Vojvodina (SRB)
4 APOEL (CYP) / Zrinjski (BIH)

Unseeded
5 Rostov (RUS) / Maccabi Haifa (ISR)
6 Willem II (NED) / Rangers (SCO)
7 Fehérvár (HUN) / Reims (FRA)
8 FCSB (ROU) / Slovan Liberec (CZE
 
tottie beck said:
Not going to tempt fate. One game at a time for me. I get a feeling Willem II away won’t be a walkover.
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It certainly won’t be but we’ve had great performances and results away against Porto, Feyenoord and Braga. I’d be disappointed if we don’t get through.
 
mandingo said:
How is it possible for Motherwell to have a much easier draw than us?
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Because they play Sporting in the 3rd round so its assumed Sporting will win so their seeding is used for the draw.

Its a quirk of the qualifiers that being unseeded in round 3 can be an advantage.
 
EndOfDays said:
Because they play Sporting in the 3rd round so its assumed Sporting will win so their seeding is used for the draw.

Its a quirk of the qualifiers that being unseeded in round 3 can be an advantage.
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Aberdeen play Sporting not Motherwell.
 
Watchibg the Spurs game last night, if we got them at Ibrox and that side turned up, I'd have full confidence in us qualifying.

I know it's not as easy as that and are probably the team we want least, but if we did they them, I wouldn't see it as impossible.
 
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brain said:
That’s not good. Spurs and Standard Liege are teams to avoid. Galatasaray finished 6th last season so they aren’t the Galatasaray of old. Obviously APOEL would be good.
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Liege aren't as good as they once there. Would be fairly comfortable with them - provided we go through of course.
 
Seen a few comments regarding the craziness of the seedings. Why? We aren't seeded for this round because we don't deserve to be. Same with AC Milan.

Seedings are calculated over 5 years previous performance in European football. If we hadn't shat the bed in the 2016 Scottish Cup final and missed out on europe and not to mention the Progres debacle, we very well could have been seeded in the PO round this season.
 
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Take out spurs and I would fancy us against anyone. But if we got spurs early enough and at Ibrox then you never know.
 
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