Bishop
Cecil Poynton
In 15 years time the talk will be about top 5 because like you say the qualifying line has been lowered again. But that obviously won't be accurate historically because top 5 in 2005 is very different to top 5 in 2025.I can only really remember one season where we threw the towel in on how high we wanted to finish in the league. We obviously got a trophy because of it.
The glass ceiling line is now 5th to be fair because of the UEFA coefficients. When you get 5th, you get access to the CL monies.
What I'd be interested in is how our recent history could have been different. With current UEFA coefficients, Spurs had 6 seasons in this millennium where they finished 5th and would have been competing in the CL on today's rules. They have had 7 seasons where they finished 2nd to 4th and got CL anyway.
So think about the impact of that. Because we would have been in the CL 50% of the time (on today's rules) then we would have probably not finished 6th-8th so much in another 6 or 7 seasons. It would have been slightly higher because of the access to more revenues and therefore better players, especially before the stadium opened.
I know it is all conjecture but in some ways I have found the CL glass ceiling so frustrating.