Conference League 25-26

[TheDonbytheDee]

16 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Away from the Strasbourg thread, just wondered whether anyone has actually bothered to check the league table in this pish? I haven't checked it once. It just doesn't feel like an actual competition. It could be to do with the ridiculous format, or perhaps that the whole thing is so pathetically contrived. Even if we were winning every game, I still wouldn't have been looking at the league. I regularly check the premier league (nae religiously, but every couple of fixtures). I suspect it's just the sheer volume of fixtures. I remember when we were last in it with Robson, and it ruined the entire season. The saturation of games took a long time to get over. Again, it's not really for the fan that goes to games. Those that appreciate a wee break but feel obliged to go. A return to the old format would be amazing. Three brilliant competitions of knockout format. Fuck the telly.

Dave C winna be happy when he reads it.

I'm sure he reads the AFC forums.

Agree with you. If going back to the old way, can we play everything on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and cut back on the Sunday games. A big bugbear of mine.

[TheDonbytheDee]

The zombies play the Hungarian team tonight, who are managed by Robbie Keane and assisted by Stephen Glass.

I'm sure they will both be hoping to skelp the zombies.

 

Fingers crossed.

[OrlandoDon]

48 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Away from the Strasbourg thread, just wondered whether anyone has actually bothered to check the league table in this pish? I haven't checked it once. It just doesn't feel like an actual competition. It could be to do with the ridiculous format, or perhaps that the whole thing is so pathetically contrived. Even if we were winning every game, I still wouldn't have been looking at the league. I regularly check the premier league (nae religiously, but every couple of fixtures). I suspect it's just the sheer volume of fixtures. I remember when we were last in it with Robson, and it ruined the entire season. The saturation of games took a long time to get over. Again, it's not really for the fan that goes to games. Those that appreciate a wee break but feel obliged to go. A return to the old format would be amazing. Three brilliant competitions of knockout format. Fuck the telly.

Bring back the original 3, to be generous make the European cup for top 2. Make football interesting again!

to me it’s been 6 European friendlies, obviously want us to do well but no great appeal. If anything I’d prefer we used the squad and kept key players fresh for the league, obviously an ass backwards approach.

Edited December 11 by OrlandoDon

[tlg1903]

4 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

Away from the Strasbourg thread, just wondered whether anyone has actually bothered to check the league table in this pish? I haven't checked it once. It just doesn't feel like an actual competition. It could be to do with the ridiculous format, or perhaps that the whole thing is so pathetically contrived. Even if we were winning every game, I still wouldn't have been looking at the league. I regularly check the premier league (nae religiously, but every couple of fixtures). I suspect it's just the sheer volume of fixtures. I remember when we were last in it with Robson, and it ruined the entire season. The saturation of games took a long time to get over. Again, it's not really for the fan that goes to games. Those that appreciate a wee break but feel obliged to go. A return to the old format would be amazing. Three brilliant competitions of knockout format. Fuck the telly.

Never going to happen sadly

[RicoS321]

48 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

Never going to happen sadly

Why? Why do we need those UEFA cunts anyway? Just dee our own tournament. You get in touch with the lads at Real Madrid, and I'll speak to the Copenhagen boys and we'll get something up and running by the start of next year. Get the Russians back in for the away trip jeopardy. 

[tom_widdows]

Invent time travel, ignore such trival things like assasinating certain historical figures or risking having a teenage relative fancying you, go back to july/august 1987 and take out the guy who drew Real Madrid Vs Napoli in the first round of the European Cup just before he sticks his hand in the bowl

It is alleged the sponsors were banking on that being the final and were pissed off. That really set the ball rolling to create the champions league (which to be fair, was made up of actual champions when it started).

Alternatively have Franco's magic middens kicked out for their fans behaviour the previous year.

Of course if Rick and Morty are to be trusted such an act would immediately lead to the Nazis taking over the world

 

Edited December 11 by tom_widdows

[tlg1903]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

Why? Why do we need those UEFA cunts anyway? Just dee our own tournament. You get in touch with the lads at Real Madrid, and I'll speak to the Copenhagen boys and we'll get something up and running by the start of next year. Get the Russians back in for the away trip jeopardy. 

God loves a trier Rico 

Thanks btw, I've had a grade A cunt of a day and that made me chuckle.

[BigAl]

1, 2, 4, 6, 10 & 17

Says it all really 

[swaddon]

1 hour ago, BigAl said:

1, 2, 4, 6, 10 & 17

Says it all really 

Is that tomorrow's lottery numbers?

[BigAl]

11 minutes ago, swaddon said:

Is that tomorrow's lottery numbers?

Nope, but might be the Euromillions ones 

[swaddon]

It's been a gey bad campaign, but just imagine if we had beaten FCSB and played in the Europa League?

It doesn't bear thinking about, really. So I don't know why I mentioned it.

[OrlandoDon]

Wonder if I’d feel differently if we’d advanced, but what a shit format. Not a complaint because we faced 5 of the top 8 teams, but I just find it rather uninteresting. No clue why we had to have 36 teams, if you insist on something different instead of the regular knock out rounds, why not 32 team, 8 groups of 4, play everyone home and away so you get your 6 games, but the games are now likely more meaningful. Top 2 advance to a round of 16.

the format of the European tournaments are getting worse and worse. As has been said before, I certainly miss the original 3 tournaments.

[RicoS321]

9 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

Wonder if I’d feel differently if we’d advanced, but what a shit format. Not a complaint because we faced 5 of the top 8 teams, but I just find it rather uninteresting. No clue why we had to have 36 teams, if you insist on something different instead of the regular knock out rounds, why not 32 team, 8 groups of 4, play everyone home and away so you get your 6 games, but the games are now likely more meaningful. Top 2 advance to a round of 16.

the format of the European tournaments are getting worse and worse. As has been said before, I certainly miss the original 3 tournaments.

To understand the change to this format, you have to understand what they're trying to get to. The final goal is a European league(s). This gets everyone used to the idea by creating the format first, and then slowly increasing the number of games you play within the format. It doesn't make sense now, but in a couple of years, you'll maybe have 8 games in Europe rather than 6. Then 10. The closer you get to the final format, the less pronounced are the differences in fixtures but, paradoxically, the effects become more visible (team X played exactly the same fixtures as team Y, bar one fixture which they lost and finished three points behind them, missing "promotion"). At that point, the calls are then switched to shouting for a full round of fixtures for everyone rather than questioning the tournament itself. 

It's basically using the sunk cost fallacy to get what you want. Governments, businesses and football cunts do it all the time. The most obvious example is VAR. Your goal is to remove all refereeing errors from football, so you introduce a shite system. You then slowly chip away at each type of decision until you get what you want. At a certain point, people stop questioning the existence of the system itself and they are the ones saying "well we've got this system, why aren't we using it for throw-ins?". Aided and abetted by morons in the media who have discussions about "how we can make VAR better", rather than "how can we organise to get rid of VAR", not realising that the former discussion doesn't mean impartiality, you've already agreed with Thatcher's TINA (there is no alternative). 

It's not just football. Every single town and city on the planet is setup in the most ridiculous fashion to accommodate car travel, for example. We must bail out banks, and so on. 

We don't have a say. We all know that the correct answer is to rip it up and go back to knockout tournaments, unseeded. We all know that what makes European football magical is its scarcity.