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Annus Horribilis 2011/2012 .............................

If it's the CHAMPIONS League, surely the Champions of the previous season deserve to be there.

But if you bring up "Champions"

why are the likes of Arsenal, Valencia, Malaga, Schalke etc. all allowed in the competition, they aren't champions?
 
1.03 The UEFA Champions League title-holder is guaranteed a place in the group
stage even if it does not qualify for the competition through its domestic
championship.
a) If the title-holder comes from an association entitled to more than one
place in the UEFA Champions League and qualifies for the UEFA Cup
through its domestic competitions, the lowest-ranked club of the
associationÔÇÖs UEFA Champions League representatives is automatically
transferred to the UEFA Cup
. In this case, the number of places to which
the title-holder's national association is entitled in the UEFA Champions
League and the UEFA Cup does not change.

I know its been posted before, but, he should count himself lucky we didnt challenge that wording. Doesnt actually say Lowest ranked by League position, and as previously posted, we are ranked one place higher than Emirates Marketing Project in the current Uefa Team Ranking 2012

Obviously we wont pursue a lost cause, but would have been funny to see a little panic set in at the thought of Emirates Marketing Project losing out and not us

If this is accurate, I really can't see why we wouldn't legally pursue this. I think we'd have a very strong case. It kind of looks to me as if the International football community collective may have misunderstood the rule, but that misunderstanding is just being accepted as fact!
 
If this is accurate, I really can't see why we wouldn't legally pursue this. I think we'd have a very strong case. It kind of looks to me as if the International football community collective may have misunderstood the rule, but that misunderstanding is just being accepted as fact!

I'm sure somebody high up at the Club would have already seen this and done some prelim work on the chance of success if we tried to pursue it, and maybe been told not to bother as Uefa would not consider demoting Emirates Marketing Project.

Otherwise I just dont see why we didnt try. Damn sure Liverpool would have done in our position
 
But if you bring up "Champions"

why are the likes of Arsenal, Valencia, Malaga, Schalke etc. all allowed in the competition, they aren't champions?

I completely agree. But I don't think that's reason enough to exclude the most recent winner.
 
I'm sure somebody high up at the Club would have already seen this and done some prelim work on the chance of success if we tried to pursue it, and maybe been told not to bother as Uefa would not consider demoting Emirates Marketing Project.

Otherwise I just dont see why we didnt try. Damn sure Liverpool would have done in our position

I very much doubt they'd demote City too. But that doesn't mean they can make up the rules as they go along. In a best case scenario, I'd foresee them squeezing us in as a fifth team, just as they did with Liverpool before as opposed to throwing City out.
 
I very much doubt they'd demote City too. But that doesn't mean they can make up the rules as they go along. In a best case scenario, I'd foresee them squeezing us in as a fifth team, just as they did with Liverpool before as opposed to throwing City out.

I know what you mean, but to include us as a fifth team would then be at the expense of another team from another nation. I'm sure whichever that country would be would have something to say about it too
 
I think UEFA have looked at this in the wrong way.

They should look to celebrate the strength of a league from whom the Champions League winner can come from, yet their league is so strong that they cannot even get into the Top 4. As rare as that might seem, I think - for that season - UEFA should permit 5 teams to enter. Because that is both recognising strength and also rewarding success.

What they've chosen as the 'solution' is wholly unfair to whichever team finishes 4th, and it causes this limbo situation whereby you don't know whether you've actually achieved anything, until the outcome of the Champions League Final. That's a total nonsense.

Why not make it so that, in such an instance, the team who finishes 3rd ALSO has to enter the qualifying stage? That's a work-around. Okay so it might be deemed 'unfair' on the team which finishes 3rd, but at least that team still maintains the chance to qualify into the competition.

Platini's comments don't help as they only serve to muddy the waters and confuse understanding; either take a decision and live with it, or don't - none of this flaky flimflam. To me, that just gives a sense of poor management; no strength, no conviction, no authority.
 
I think UEFA have looked at this in the wrong way.

They should look to celebrate the strength of a league from whom the Champions League winner can come from, yet their league is so strong that they cannot even get into the Top 4. As rare as that might seem, I think - for that season - UEFA should permit 5 teams to enter. Because that is both recognising strength and also rewarding success.

What they've chosen as the 'solution' is wholly unfair to whichever team finishes 4th, and it causes this limbo situation whereby you don't know whether you've actually achieved anything, until the outcome of the Champions League Final. That's a total nonsense.

Why not make it so that, in such an instance, the team who finishes 3rd ALSO has to enter the qualifying stage? That's a work-around. Okay so it might be deemed 'unfair' on the team which finishes 3rd, but at least that team still maintains the chance to qualify into the competition.

Platini's comments don't help as they only serve to muddy the waters and confuse understanding; either take a decision and live with it, or don't - none of this flaky flimflam. To me, that just gives a sense of poor management; no strength, no conviction, no authority.

In fact, what UEFA has done is to punish the Premier League for being successful.

Next season, the Premier League will lose one of its 4 CL places.

Chelsea will be in the competition, not as a Premier League representative but as UEFA's champion.

This rule which prohibits more than four teams from any one country competing in the Champions League in any one season is an entirely arbitrary rule. UEFA have to decide whether their coefficient rankings count for something or not. If they do, then Spurs should be in the Champions League next season, as per usual for the fourth placed Premier League team.
 
I don't understand why the winners of any tournament should enter the next season's competition automatically. Every tournament should have no connection between each other. They used to have it like that in World Cup but have changed it in recent years due to the poor performance of the defending champions. Only Euro and CL still have such a stupid rule. No team have managed to defend the Euro or CL successfully. So, why insist on giving the defending champions automatic entry to the next season ?

Of come on, last years winner getting back in is one of the only European Cup traditions Uefa hasn't destroyed yet. And lots of teams have defended the European Cup successfully and some of them wouldn't have been in it if they hadn't won it the year before.
 
Of come on, last years winner getting back in is one of the only European Cup traditions Uefa hasn't destroyed yet. And lots of teams have defended the European Cup successfully and some of them wouldn't have been in it if they hadn't won it the year before.

No issue with the Champion being given a shot at defending the title (they will be one of the few real winners in the champions league)

My issue is with a spot that is "kinda" promised based on a 38 game league season, except if one of your own is successful in CL but not league?

That said, CL for me should be a "Cup Winners Cup" if you win your domestic league, or major domestic trophy (Country coefficient could determine one or both) or UEFA Cup then you get to play.

- It would stop an attitude where finishing 2nd-4th in a league would be seen as an achievement
- It would put a lot more life into domestic cups
- It would minimize the chance of someone getting CL income 10 years in a row and therefore creating elite clubs in leagues.
- People might actually give a brick about UEFA Cup

Can't see the negative other than Platini and his cronies don't get a regular brown bag to protect the status quo
 
I think UEFA have looked at this in the wrong way.

They should look to celebrate the strength of a league from whom the Champions League winner can come from, yet their league is so strong that they cannot even get into the Top 4. As rare as that might seem, I think - for that season - UEFA should permit 5 teams to enter. Because that is both recognising strength and also rewarding success.

What they've chosen as the 'solution' is wholly unfair to whichever team finishes 4th, and it causes this limbo situation whereby you don't know whether you've actually achieved anything, until the outcome of the Champions League Final. That's a total nonsense.

Why not make it so that, in such an instance, the team who finishes 3rd ALSO has to enter the qualifying stage? That's a work-around. Okay so it might be deemed 'unfair' on the team which finishes 3rd, but at least that team still maintains the chance to qualify into the competition.

Platini's comments don't help as they only serve to muddy the waters and confuse understanding; either take a decision and live with it, or don't - none of this flaky flimflam. To me, that just gives a sense of poor management; no strength, no conviction, no authority.

I couldn't agree more.
 
Seikh and Yossarian, lets be honest

- no they haven't
- the one league in Europe that the 6th place team could potentially win the CL is the EPL
- Platini and his cronies have had a hard on for English clubs for years
- The rule is to make sure there isn't "another" English club playing in Europe
 
I know what you mean, but to include us as a fifth team would then be at the expense of another team from another nation. I'm sure whichever that country would be would have something to say about it too

How was it done with Liverpool? I realise I contradicted myself earlier, saying that UEFA can't make rules up as they go along, then suggesting they bend them to let 5 English teams in! But that's the way I would see it going. Let's face it, City are NOT getting thrown out, even if possibly by the letter of the law that's what should happen here. I think (& hope!) that the possibility exists that UEFA have screwed up again with their rules, and there's been very widespread misunderstanding of what the rule actually is. On the assumption this suspicion is accurate, I'd love to see what would happen if we pushed it.
 
it's down to the individual FA of each country to nominate their teams for european competitions. in 2005 the FA put forward our 4 teams as chelsea, man united, arsenal and everton leaving uefa with egg all over their face and a big problem so they put liverpool in the 1st qualifying round. if the FA had put forward liverpool as the 4th team i don't think everton would have had a leg to stand on.

it has happened once before in 2000 when real madrid won it and finished 5th. unsurprisingly the spanish FA slung out zaragoza who finished 4th. they almost got relegated the following season.
 
How was it done with Liverpool? I realise I contradicted myself earlier, saying that UEFA can't make rules up as they go along, then suggesting they bend them to let 5 English teams in! But that's the way I would see it going. Let's face it, City are NOT getting thrown out, even if possibly by the letter of the law that's what should happen here. I think (& hope!) that the possibility exists that UEFA have screwed up again with their rules, and there's been very widespread misunderstanding of what the rule actually is. On the assumption this suspicion is accurate, I'd love to see what would happen if we pushed it.

They had to start in the qualifiers, might even have been the 1st qualifying round. No country loses out too much then as it just means there is an extra game in that round.
I know they arent the right figures but just for exmaples sake, instead of having 80 teams playing in the 1st Qual round with the winners joining 24 teams already exempt to the 2nd Qual rd, you then have one less team exempt and have 82 teams playing in the 1st qual with 23 'byes' (if you catch my drift). Extra team is included without another country having their allocaton reduced
 
^^ That's correct - it was the 1st Qualifying Round. I believe FC Petrzalka from Slovakia were the team that would otherwise have been in the 2nd Qualifying Round but had to start in the 1st. They still made it to the group stage, knocking out Celtic on the way, so it didn't do them too much harm.
 
When they first started expanding the CL it made sense, then the money just got too big. 20 years ago a meeting between two big clubs in one of the european cups was an event, something you looked forward to. You didn't have the amount of coverage you get these days, where you can follow all the big leagues live on television or on the internet. Players move between the leagues in much higher numbers, there just nothing exotic about it anymore.

There's no fun in watching the same teams play each other season after season, you have your domestic league for that. And there's absolutely no fun watching the top clubs fielding weakened sides against some minnow. That's what has happened to most leagues across Europe, they've become minnows. There's no chance of getting any real upsets anymore. You need to fudge up monumentally to not advance from the groups if you are an established CL contender, though United seems to manage it from time to time. By the QF stage it's usually down to the select few: Bayern, Lyon, Inter, AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal. At least 5 of them have been in the quarters for the last 4 seasons, before that you'd regularly have Liverpool and Valencia.

The only solution for me is to reduce the CL. League and Cup winners from the biggest leagues, league winners from the rest. It will give domestic cups more status and it will improve the Europa League as well and make for a more even distribution of money as you won't have the same teams taking up the spots every season.
 
When they first started expanding the CL it made sense, then the money just got too big. 20 years ago a meeting between two big clubs in one of the european cups was an event, something you looked forward to. You didn't have the amount of coverage you get these days, where you can follow all the big leagues live on television or on the internet. Players move between the leagues in much higher numbers, there just nothing exotic about it anymore.

There's no fun in watching the same teams play each other season after season, you have your domestic league for that. And there's absolutely no fun watching the top clubs fielding weakened sides against some minnow. That's what has happened to most leagues across Europe, they've become minnows. There's no chance of getting any real upsets anymore. You need to fudge up monumentally to not advance from the groups if you are an established CL contender, though United seems to manage it from time to time. By the QF stage it's usually down to the select few: Bayern, Lyon, Inter, AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal. At least 5 of them have been in the quarters for the last 4 seasons, before that you'd regularly have Liverpool and Valencia.

The only solution for me is to reduce the CL. League and Cup winners from the biggest leagues, league winners from the rest. It will give domestic cups more status and it will improve the Europa League as well and make for a more even distribution of money as you won't have the same teams taking up the spots every season.


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