Europa Conference League 2021-22: the Road to Tirana, Albania

[isaac94]

So who replaces villerael?

 

[isaac94]

Basically Roma is the only club we wouldn't be considered at least 80-20 favourites against in the whole tournament. This is incredibly winnable...

Considering we have been knocked out by zagreb and gent (who are in the comp) in recent years, I don't share the 80-20 optimism. Teams like Rennes, Union Berlin (who had a great season), Trabzonspor, Feyenoord, Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan will be tough to break.

 

[carpediem991]

Basically Roma is the only club we wouldn't be considered at least 80-20 favourites against in the whole tournament. This is incredibly winnable...

But thats also a major risk. Our players don't think it will be too hard and lack a bit of effort or motivation, while every other team is shit hot to play against us without any pressure.

 

[13VanDerBale13]

So who replaces villerael?

Not sure but I don’t think Spain will have an entry.

 

[jonnyrotten]

So who replaces villerael?

It will go to another country, not sure which

 

[Blackrat1299]

At least the final is being held at a historic stadium

You mean this one

 

[spursfan77]

"Each group stage victory (in the ECL) will be worth €500,000, with a draw seeing a club earn €166,000. Finishing top of the group sees a club pocket €650,000, and second place €325,000".

Prize money for new UEFA Conference League finally revealed

The prize money for European football's newest competition - the UEFA Europa Conference League - has been revealed.

www.newstalk.com

That’s surprisingly good.

 

[Cochraam]

Considering we have been knocked out by zagreb and gent (who are in the comp) in recent years, I don't share the 80-20 optimism. Teams like Rennes, Union Berlin (who had a great season), Trabzonspor, Feyenoord, Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan will be tough to break.

This is my concern. We are more talented than every or nearly every team in the competition. But, we've shown in the Europa League that an organized, hungry, and hard-working team can beat us when we don't care to turn up. Since this competition is even less prestigious than the Europa League, are our players gonna be motivated to actually show up and work to break down a stubborn team? If they do, we should go far; but if they think Gent, Union Berlin, Zagreb, etc. are beneath them, then we'll have an ignominious exit in the early knockout rounds again.

 

[fuzzylogic]

This thread title reminds me of the old Bob Hope films my dad used to watch, also some of you young ones will need to google Bob hope ?

 

[XIIIMPC]

The thing about this tournament is - and this is going to sound stupidly obvious but it's true - if we don't win it, at some point we will be eliminated from the competition. At this moment, as far as I'm aware, the only team in the competition that is on our level is Roma. There are other good teams but nobody we should be afraid of.

We have to go all out to win this thing, because there are almost zero "acceptable/understandable" loss scenarios. I'm not having that it's ok not to win the group stage or it's ok to lose to like, Astana, because we decided to play the kids. No. That is not a remotely acceptable outcome, so we have no choice but to try and win it.

 

[ronspurs]

Have to take this seriously for the sake of our coefficient

Remember reading something recently about how Redknapp not taking the europa league seriously and failing in group stage has implications if we ever qualify for the cl in future under the new model uefa have proposed

 

[JeremyPaxton]

Have to take this seriously for the sake of our coefficient

Remember reading something recently about how Redknapp not taking the europa league seriously and failing in group stage has implications if we ever qualify for the cl in future under the new model uefa have proposed

Correct. Winning every game will give us more coefficient points than we got in the year we got the CL final (30 vs 26). Yes winning every game sounds hard, but less so when you realise our opponents will be such luminaries as the Moldovan cup winners and the guys who finished 3rd in Gibraltar

 

[cyrilcyh]

Have to take this seriously for the sake of our coefficient

Remember reading something recently about how Redknapp not taking the europa league seriously and failing in group stage has implications if we ever qualify for the cl in future under the new model uefa have proposed

agree we need to take the conference league seriously for the coefficient and future champions league chance.

fortunately, the coefficient only counts the performance of last 5 seasons, so the damage of Redknapp not taking europa cup seriously was gone already.

 

[Saoirse]

agree we need to take the conference league seriously for the coefficient and future champions league chance.

fortunately, the coefficient only counts the performance of last 5 seasons, so the damage of Redknapp not taking europa cup seriously was gone already.

Indeed. At one stage they were talking about using the 10-year coefficient, but they've settled on the 5-year one. So European performances from 2018-2023 or 2019-2024 (not yet clear if it's on a one year delay or not) will be used to determine two places in the CL for the 24-25 season. Does still mean the coefficient is extremely important because of the 5-year long impact - for instance, Arsenal's failure to qualify this year means barring some exceptional performances (multiple runs to finals) they won't be able to qualify through this route until the 21-22 season isn't recent enough to count any more.

 

[barry]

Fuck it I thought this was a joke and didn't want to be in it, but until we get a less spend thrift owner we ain't winning shit, so we might aswell go for this. Tottenham hotspur europa conference league champions has a nice ring to it.

 

[bubble07]

Is it true that if Chelsea finished 5th having won CL, then 7th would have been europa league rather than conference?

 

[Erm33]

Is it true that if Chelsea finished 5th having won CL, then 7th would have been europa league rather than conference?

Does it matter even if it were? We finished 7th by beating Leicester on the final day that left Chelsea in 4th regardless. We're in the Europa conference league. Let's just do what we can control and that's win our own football matches.

 

[whitesocks]

Is it true that if Chelsea finished 5th having won CL, then 7th would have been europa league rather than conference?

you are probably right.
And arsenal would have been bumped into the europa.
and we'd still be in the conference.

 

[Clockspur]

This whole competition will be about mentality and will prove whether we have evolved into a team ready to win things. Chelsea never turned their noses up at the Europa League, they went out to win them. Man City don’t turn their noses up at the League cup.

We should be prioritising this competition as second to the league campaign and send out strong sides. And it need not be a slog, the group stages will allow plenty of margin for error so we can rotate and take risks at times, but come the knockouts it should be best foot forwards.

 

[spursfan77]

This is my concern. We are more talented than every or nearly every team in the competition. But, we've shown in the Europa League that an organized, hungry, and hard-working team can beat us when we don't care to turn up. Since this competition is even less prestigious than the Europa League, are our players gonna be motivated to actually show up and work to break down a stubborn team? If they do, we should go far; but if they think Gent, Union Berlin, Zagreb, etc. are beneath them, then we'll have an ignominious exit in the early knockout rounds again.

That’s mine too. We saw the fringe players, against Antwerp away, for example, not turn up. A team with Aurier, Sanchez, winks and Dele in it but also lloris, regi and bale. These were Mourinho’s words after:

“Blame me because I am the boss and it is my responsibility who plays and I am the one to blame. "But I have to admit that the game confirmed to me a few things, opened other question marks and will help me in the future with my decisions."I'm also learning every day. The performance was poor and the result is poor."

He identified what we all have. The attitude from some is poor and has been for a while. The only way to get round that is sell them or play more youngsters.