Will we qualify for the CL?

[Pat Mustard]

Or how we will need 66+ points to finish in the top 5.

[Duncan Shaw]

It's really quite unbelievable that we are still 4th despite our shite run of league form.  It's still in our hands to improve and secure it and can blame no-one else from this point on if we don't.  I think we can assume ManUre are going to get 3rd now. I'm still worried give the poor form of the supposed only teams in the hunt (us, Liverpool, Chavski) that someone comes through from below and nicks 5th.

[paul_e]

Looking at the draws I don't think it's possible for both Spain and Germany to get the wins they'd need to overtake us. If we assume a Spanish or German team wins every game they play against any other opposition and only the games against each other are always a positive result.

In the CL one of Real or Bayern and Barca or Athletico have to go out in the QF. The winners of those are in separate Semi-Finals so they'd meet in the final.

In the Europa they have 2 teams each. If they all win tonight Freiberg and Celta would play in the QF and the winner in the Semi before facing Stuttgart in the final.

In the Conference you have Mainz and Vallecano who would meet in the semi-final.



I've tried to go through the combinations and I haven't found one where they can both get the 18 wins thge BBC article suggests.

[PaulWinch again]

To be honest I’m pretty much convinced 5th place will get Champions League, but I’m not all convinced we’ll be in the top 5. I’m not saying we won’t, but there’s plenty of work to do.

[Dave]

I've tried to go through the combinations and I haven't found one where they can both get the 18 wins thge BBC article suggests.

Think I read that the next win by any English team makes it mathematically certain. So probably tonight.

And as you say, even if every English side loses all the rest of their games, it still requires a near-impossible sequence of results for that to matter.

[eamonn]

You'd hope that Everton will be fired up for the game v Chelsea this weekend, given the different nature of the punishments meted out to the two clubs by the PL. Everton have hardly turned their new home into a fortress though, as yet.

Dwight McNeill is as thick as pigshit so i doubt he could join the dots plus he wanted to move to Palace in January. I doubt the rest of them give a fuck, either.

[ADVILLAFAN]

I think we're all hoping that Rayo Vallecano win the Europa Conference League. Forza Rayo!

[cdbearsfan]

Not if you can't even be bothered to source an upside-down exclamation mark to start the sentence.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Forza Rayo!

It will never catch on.

[cdbearsfan]

UEFA now considering allowing teams from same country to draw each other in the Group Stage. An absolutely terrible idea. The whole point of European football is to play exciting teams you don't normally get to play, not those you play ever year.

[Monty]

UEFA now considering allowing teams from same country to draw each other in the Group Stage. An absolutely terrible idea. The whole point of European football is to play exciting teams you don't normally get to play, not those you play ever year.

They literally sit around thinking 'how can we make this sport worse'.

[Somniloquism]

Not really. Being drawn against teams in the same league is going to happen at some point in the competition and might reduce leagues with 5-6 teams from being the majority of the knock-out stage level and then stinking it out.

It will only really affect selections for pot 1 for us if we qualify next season as three of them will probably be Arse, Liverpool and Citeh. Of the others in the pot, Real is probably the only team we have never played IIRC.

[cdbearsfan]

It is unbelievably shit drawing teams you play all the time. They shouldn't be able to meet until the quarters, IMO.

Look at Brest last season (stop it). Qualify for Europe for the first time ever, bravely battle through Group Stage. What's their reward? Getting absolutely twatted by a team they have been absolutely twatted by fifty times. Load of shite.

The idea of sitting down to watch a draw wondering which of Real Madrid or Bayern Munich we are going to play, only to find out we get to lose at Old Trafford again would be the most miserable anticlimax ever.

[Monty]

Not really. Being drawn against teams in the same league is going to happen at some point in the competition and might reduce leagues with 5-6 teams from being the majority of the knock-out stage level and then stinking it out.

It will only really affect selections for pot 1 for us if we qualify next season as three of them will probably be Arse, Liverpool and Citeh. Of the others in the pot, Real is probably the only team we have never played IIRC.

Your point is good, but it's a point in which I hear a lot of keyboards and the jingling of machines. I'm talking about romance, dreams.

[Somniloquism]

So if teams from the same countries fell into 9th/10th and 23/24th positions, the whole system of seeded/non-seeded should be thrown into disarray so they don't play each other. I know you don't like that draw system anyway but even on a "random" draw, you then need to piss about with removing teams from the pots/redrawing them. In theory, without having to worry about same countries, they can go back to drawing the initial league games manually rather then some computer program doing it so conspiracies go back to which one was put on the radiator before hand.