It’s scheduled for week starting 21st. It’ll be 22nd or 23rd.Just checked the schedule, we'll be shitting this one I reckon.
League Cup match is scheduled for December 21st. leading up to that, we play Liverpool - dec. 16 and then Leicester - dec. 19. Really glad we drew Stoke.
Can’t believe Liverpool missed penalties,what with all the practice they’ve had the last couple of years.Great draw. Brilliant from Jamie Redknapp. "north London doing well" having just seen arsenal win, praising spurs in the same sentence, would really grate me as a goon ?
This cup is amazing in that we had one bye, one penalty shoot-out without ET. Now we are a match vs a Championship side away from the semis. Compare that to Europa League: had to play 3 games, travel thousands of km and we've only just made the beginning of the tournament.
What I don't like is when people look back in the past and apply modern understandings of clubs to make a judgement about that run. Just by looking at that without checking I know instantly that Borussia Munhengladbach and St Etienne (historically the strongest french club) are two hard games.That’s true - but a cup’s a cup, right?
It actually makes me quite sick that for Liverpool to become European Champions in 1977 their entire route was:
Crusaders (from N. Ireland) - won 7-0
Trabzonspor - won 3-1
St. Étienne - won 3-2
FC Zürich - won 6-1
Borussia Munhengladbach - won 3-1
What I don't like is when people look back in the past and apply modern understandings of clubs to make a judgement about that run. Just by looking at that without checking I know instantly that Borussia Munhengladbach and St Etienne (historically the strongest french club) are two hard games.
Crusaders was first round, so am not going to look too much into that. Trabzonspor were the best team in turkey though rarely did that well in the EC. FC Zurich reached the Semi Finals, which was a particularly good run, but they regularly were in european competition, and reached the quarter finals of the Cup winners cup a few seasons before. They also were unbeaten in 12 european home games before facing liverpool.
St. Etienne and Borussia Munhengladbach were obviously champions of their respective leagues. Borussia Munhengladbach had one three german titles in a row and won the UEFA cup in 1975 and 1979 and finalists in 1973 and 1980. They under performed in the European cup but probably should have won one considering there ability. Especially considering they'd finish ahead of Bayern Munich most seasons in the late 70s yet Bayern Munich had won three titles in a row at this point.
St. Etienne, as I've mentioned before are the traditional big french club. Bigger than PSG, bigger than Monaco, way bigger than Lyon and, yes, bigger than marseille. Still now they have won more league titles than any other club in France. They were European Cup finalists the season before and semi finalists the season prior to that, both times to eventual winners, Bayern Munich.
To break it down Liverpool beat a first round walkover, In the second round they faced a perpetual winners from a lower, but competitive league. In the quarter finals they beat one of the favourites for the tournament and last seasons finalists. In the Semi's they played the unexpected package in the tournament, but a competitive team with an enviable home record and in the final they played the best domestic German team for three seasons, UEFA cup winners (which at that time was a big deal) and a team outperforming Bayern Munich who had one a treble or European cups.
Now, I know its a bit silly, but football was so different in the past. The money division was much less and transfers less common and harder to do. Zurich is a perfect example, that team was a team built out Swiss national team stars who wouldn't play in switzerland in the modern day. It was a time before the money came in and teams like Steaua București, Celtic and Red Star belgrade won the European cup, because they happened to be from a country which created a generation of top talent that pooled into these teams, and without the same level of money players would stick around a bit more, but you also had Malmo, Club Brugge, Panithinaikos and Partizan all get very close.
Football is different now, and a elite group of clubs around few countries has formed, and if you are not part of that group tough luck, your talent will be stolen early, you wont have the money to compete and all that. Inner league football has also changed negatively for the same reason, and so little differentiation. It's sad. But can we at least recognise football before clubs became brands, that route shouldn't make you sick, it's entirely normal for the time and they played two of the favourites, it's only now that it looks super soft.
EDIT: To further my point just look at our successful (and unsuccessful) cup runs it's a very similar story to Liverpool right. https://www.myfootballfacts.com/england_footy/tottenham-hotspur/tottenham-hotspur-in-europe/
We got Stoke away. Which, in the grand scheme, ain't so bad!In an ideal world, Everton and Le Arse win, as does Brentford.
We get Brentford at home. Arse lose away to Everton.
We tonk those Toffee licking shitsticks at Wembley! Hey-ho, first cup of the year won!
Liverpool's second leg against St Etienne was actually a hard game for them, IIRC they lost the first leg 1-0, led the home tie 1-0 and St Etienne equalised, leaving Liverpool needing to score twice to go through and this was when defending was a proper art. Ray Kennedy scored and sub David Fairclough scored the winner with about 5 minutes to go. That was the night he became known as supersub I think. This was before live football was a regular thing, although the final was live, again, from my hazy memory, I think the highlights were on Sportsnight (a massively popular BBC show shown midweeks) and it was an amazing atmosphere and a cracking game.Great knowledge you have - thanks for the insight into this.
Admittedly I wasn’t born to see the 1977 win, so my views were definitely short-sighted. I did expect it wouldn’t have been as easy as it looked on paper. Sadly, I got this info from my father in law and trusted his word that it was an ‘easy run’.
He is a Chelsea fan who hates Liverpool so that explains a lot. I will look forward to using your more detailed knowledge to tell him his info was wrong when I see him for Sunday lunch!