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The Europa League


maqroll

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For us it would be about money, not necessarily prize money but let to fox do his magic with the exposure, said in the Lerner thread that crazily / unfortunately one of the worst decisions he made was to have a charity as our sponsor during the UEFA cup years rather than chasing huge deals, we already punch above our weight sponsorship wise, bet we could double it if we were group stage regulars

There was also the poor timing of being in the UEFA Cup before it became the Europa League and increased the money on offer.

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The balance is still not right but a second tier European competition has an important place still IMO. 

 

What is the point of being a safe mid table side in the premier league if you have no incentive to aim for at the end of the season? 

 

Finishing 6th or 7th needs to come with a reward or most clubs might as well all pack up and go home. We may as well leave this league to Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and the Manchester teams to draw straws to decide who gets something at the end of the season otherwise. 

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The balance is still not right but a second tier European competition has an important place still IMO. 

 

What is the point of being a safe mid table side in the premier league if you have no incentive to aim for at the end of the season? 

 

Finishing 6th or 7th needs to come with a reward or most clubs might as well all pack up and go home. We may as well leave this league to Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and the Manchester teams to draw straws to decide who gets something at the end of the season otherwise. 

Agreed, but the problem with the Europa league is it's not seen as a reward most of the time, unless you win it.

 

The champions league place for the winner is a start. I think it's too drawn out though as a competition so it becomes a hinderance.

 

Maybe a knockout format would suit better as others have suggested.

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Straight knockout tournament- East/West conference idea to minimise mid season bonkers travel arrangements and  no CL dropouts.

 

Winner guaranteed CL group stage entry the following season and the English FA to excuse participation in the League Cup for the teams that are entered.

 

Also :clap: for Maqrol for the best thread tag I have seen in AGES.

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Problem with a knockout format is that no club would take it seriously, as the prize and TV money would essentially vanish.

The Europa League is, under the current contracts, worth about 3 million pounds (1.3 million plus a roughly 1/3 share of the 5 million market pool for the UK) just for being in the group stage, plus whatever a club gets from matchday revenue (so for a club like Villa, that's 5 million pounds). For comparison, a Premier League club winning the FA Cup will get about 3.4 million, but probably only play 2 home games, so about 4.6 million. This does ignore possible facilities fees in the FA Cup and performance bonuses in the Europa League, but those will probably balance out. Financially, the Europa League is, especially for a club which can draw more than 35k to home games, more important than the FA Cup.

It's one of the bigger myths in football that the Europa League in general hurts league performance. It's a struggle for clubs which don't have the resources to invest in depth, but a club that's good enough to finish top 7 in the league is in general going to have that depth (the famous instances of clubs whose league fortunes declined precipitously in seasons where they participated in the Europa League are cases of clubs qualifying via the cups). Even then, the money for a club of Villa's size cancels out a drop of at least 4 league positions.

I do think that there's probably room for a relaunch of the UEFA Cup as a knockout competition. I'd personally take the cup winners out of the Europa League and make the new UEFA Cup a straight knockout competition with all clubs in the Europa and Champions Leagues participating.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Righto, so because Arsenal will be in the CL, have we just qualified for the Europa League today?

 

Doesn't look like it :(

 

"If the FA Cup winners finish in the top five of the Barclays Premier League, their UEFA Europa League group stage place goes to the sixth-placed team." - Source

Edited by Chewie
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Arsenal is a completely different team than Liverpool. Arsenal are on good form and their attacking/midfield options are considerably better than Liverpool's. We need our full team to win this. Hopefully they choke though. 

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Don't want anything to do with it. If we, somehow, win the cup then I hope we field a team of spotty faced teens in the qualification round.

Completely agree, we won't have a big enough squad to cope with Europe yet.

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Did they say why they changed the rules?

 

I get the feeling Wigan and Hull's inglorious contributions to the europa league which impact on the co-efficient have played a part in this.

It's a UEFA creation this rule change. Hull and Wigan devalue the Europa League product, while a team like Spurs would be more likely to be a bigger draw when they sell the TV rights. Understandable, and as a football consumer I suppose I'm happier this way, this season being an exception because it might affect Villa.

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