Villa’s Race for Europe 22/23

[Zatman]

2 hours ago, est1874 said:

Nice sentiment - not to shit on it, but isn't the Conference League just the Interjoko Cup? (In the same way the Europa League is just a reformed UEFA Cup)?

In which case, well, we won the Intertoto before and nobody gave a shit.......

No

[duke313]

58 minutes ago, Vancvillan said:

If we beat Fulham on Tuesday it's effectively then a four team mini-league for 5-8th, with only the bottom team not getting into Europe.

Us, Spurs, Liverpool and Brighton..

If you could go back to the end of October and tell any Villa fan that this is how the season ends, they'd laugh in your face.

Evidently not, as this thread was created in September 

[Guest av1]

1 hour ago, Vancvillan said:

If we beat Fulham on Tuesday it's effectively then a four team mini-league for 5-8th, with only the bottom team not getting into Europe.

Us, Spurs, Liverpool and Brighton..

If you could go back to the end of October and tell any Villa fan that this is how the season ends, they'd laugh in your face.

And if we do finish bottom of this mini league we need to remember this. 
 

The relagation thread was more popular that thus thread before Emery came in. The turn around has been remarkable. 
 

I’d have laughed at anyone that told me 8th was a possibility in August. 

[Vancvillan]

On 23/10/2022 at 08:26, messi11 said:

Its still on! The maths was simple
Get rid of Gerrard + Get new Manager = European Football

We have the players to do it! 

 

@duke313 few knew.

@messi11 I hope you age as well as this did mate.

[MrBlack]

Cons of conference league:

It doesn't have much (any) prestige and won't help us attract the top tier players we're looking for.

It's an increase to our fixture schedule, and means we need to sign a couple more players than we might do otherwise.

Well have even fewer home games played at 3pm on a Saturday.

 

Pros of conference league:

If they aren't getting attracted by the conference league, they weren't getting attracted to us by the Europa League either. So missing out on that doesn't matter. If they're attracted by the project then conference league definitely isn't going to hurt and be better than nothing to convince our signings of game time.

It will give us chance to play some fringe players (mainly youth prospects), which will keep the entire squad happier and the youth players getting more experience than Grealish (or indeed any of our youth prospects have) had in recent decades.

We'll earn more money directly from tournament prize money and tv money,  and indirectly through potential sponsorship increases.

It's a potential back door into Europa league if it does cause our league form to suffer.

Getting it,  over getting nothing, means finishing at least an extra position higher in the league, and more prize money there. 

It's European football and something we haven't witnessed at villa Park for longer than I care to remember.

 

Any others? For me it's a no brainer to want this over nothing.

[TomC]

19 hours ago, KMitch said:

This...  People acting like the Champions League was a possibility this week were delusional.  

I don't think it was delusional...unlikely, but not delusional. The hope was that our victory over Newcastle might cause them to go into a slump. Of course, after today's result, it's clear that isn't going to happen. It would be delusional to hope for the CL after today. The most we can finish with is 69 points. Given their far superior goal difference, Man Utd and Newcastle need only 10 points from 8 and 7 matches, respectively. That's almost a given at this end of the table.

I think our best hope for the top 6 and the Europa League is Spurs freefall (likely) and Brighton failing to win any of those 3 difficult games that they have in hand (very possible). Liverpool seem to be hitting their stride, but then, it's seemed like that many times this year, so you can't rule out that they will stumble too.

I think we need 2 wins and a draw from those 3 crucial matches against Spurs, Brighton, and Liverpool. And if we're really top 6 worthy, Wolves and Fulham are matches we should win. So if we're going to stumble, let's hope it's against Man U. (It pains me to say that.) 13 points from the last 6 matches, while denying points to our rivals, should do it. That would leave us with 64.

Spurs would need 11 from their last 6 to match that, which they probably won't get if we take points off them, and they may not have a superior goal difference by the end of the stretch, so they might actually need 12. Given their superior goal difference, Liverpool would need 14 from 7, which is doable but not guaranteed; an ideal result for us would be for them and Spurs to draw when they play each other. Again given superior goal difference, Brighton would need 15 from 9, which looks even more doable when looking just at the numbers, but they have some tough matches and a shallow bench to deal with fixture congestion. The chance of one of Liverpool or Brighton failing to reach that target is pretty good. We just need to reach that target ourselves.

 

 

[nick76]

4 hours ago, MrBlack said:

Getting it,  over getting nothing, means finishing at least an extra position higher in the league, and more prize money there. 

I think expanding this point is key.  

It means we finish 7th in the league, I can’t emphasise this enough, we finish 7th which 6 months ago was realistically unthinkable.

Yes we are in a position now that we still have our eyes firmly on 5th and 6th, and while tough it can happen but if we reflect on the season at the end and end up 7th it’s an amazing feat after the prior 18 months of….being poor.

If the trajectory we are on in the last six months, the manager, owners, infrastructure and plans, along with finishing 7th aren’t attractive to future players then I’m not sure they are the right players for us.  

Under Emery we have been CL form during his tenure and only the Gerrard period has stopped us achieving that because we started behind the pack but 7th is higher than we’ve been for too long and would be amazing.  

The conference would give us a chance to win silverware which so many on here crave, and yes it’s not CL or Europa League but neither is it the intertoto, it’s probably equivalent to the European Cup Winners Cup of old.

It’d be an easy stepping stone and experience of European competition and getting used to a heavy fixture schedule again rather than the low 40’s amount of games a season that we’ve become accustomed to because we are so poor in domestic cups.

If the conference is where we end up then I’d still be delighted because we are 7th and it continues the progression in the project and allows us to expand the squad and give fringe players regular game time.  Only positives from me.

Edited April 24, 2023 by nick76

[a-k]

7 hours ago, tomsky_11 said:

The legend for the solid black line

[Demitri_C]

8 hours ago, Kingman said:

If we qualify, The only negative for me is having another 30% of our games moved to stupid o'clock on a Sunday and having pay an extra 15% for the pleasure 

This is the sacrifice you pay of you want europe. Webetter get usw to it if we want europe 

 

[villa4europe]

6 hours ago, MrBlack said:

Cons of conference league:

It doesn't have much (any) prestige and won't help us attract the top tier players we're looking for.

It's an increase to our fixture schedule, and means we need to sign a couple more players than we might do otherwise.

Well have even fewer home games played at 3pm on a Saturday.

 

Pros of conference league:

If they aren't getting attracted by the conference league, they weren't getting attracted to us by the Europa League either. So missing out on that doesn't matter. If they're attracted by the project then conference league definitely isn't going to hurt and be better than nothing to convince our signings of game time.

It will give us chance to play some fringe players (mainly youth prospects), which will keep the entire squad happier and the youth players getting more experience than Grealish (or indeed any of our youth prospects have) had in recent decades.

We'll earn more money directly from tournament prize money and tv money,  and indirectly through potential sponsorship increases.

It's a potential back door into Europa league if it does cause our league form to suffer.

Getting it,  over getting nothing, means finishing at least an extra position higher in the league, and more prize money there. 

It's European football and something we haven't witnessed at villa Park for longer than I care to remember.

 

Any others? For me it's a no brainer to want this over nothing.

agree its a no brainer over wanting it over nothing, because of the fringe players (youngsters) id argue we'd be better in the ECL than the EL, i think we'd be more tempted to keep timbo and AJ around rather than loan them out again and try and buy more players, you look at west ham's ECL run this year - anderlecht, silkeborg, FCSB, AEK larnaca, Gent - we could easily play duran, archer, timbo, AJ, maybe one of the CBs, kadan young etc in those games, could be someone's saka moment under emery

disagree about the top tier players though, the PL is the draw, followed by the money, id fancy us as a PL to be able to take pretty much any non top table player that we wanted and thats not c&b specs or villa arrogance thats PL arrogance, this cliche of it already being the super league is true, carlos would be an example, the EL or the ECL wouldnt make a fat lot of difference IMO

[alreadyexists]

8 hours ago, av1 said:

And if we do finish bottom of this mini league we need to remember this. 
 

The relagation thread was more popular that thus thread before Emery came in. The turn around has been remarkable. 
 

I’d have laughed at anyone that told me 8th was a possibility in August. 

Imagine being told we’d be 6th with 6 games remaining after that 3-0 loss to Fulham… I’d never have believed it. We’ve done astonishingly well since Unai The Brave took over 

Edited April 24, 2023 by alreadyexists

[Demitri_C]

With europe unless you have  a big squad you could have a season like west ham

For me europe its a key platform tp implement some youngsters in the squad. Perfect opportunity for the likes of archer, kesler and some of our better players out on loan esp in conference league. Also a good opportunity for players like duran to be given starts.

For me its a win win. And that's on the assumption we wont be adding more players to the squad.

The good thing for us is emery is so experienced in european football he knows the demands and whats needed. This is the most positive ive felt about villa since the MON days

[villa4europe]

Another pro for the ECL for me

EL - was can have some fun here, hopefully get another ajax esque huge night down VP and do well in it

ECL - we can **** win this thing

It would be interesting to see the balance between the optimism and the cynacism, to me it's obviously more winnable which ultimately is what it's about

[duke313]

People turning their noses up at Europa Conference, we might not even get that 

[Kingman]

2 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

This is the sacrifice you pay of you want europe. Webetter get usw to it if we want europe 

 

Not really, I would rather finish 4th and play Wednesday-Saturday 

[The_Steve]

35 minutes ago, duke313 said:

People turning their noses up at Europa Conference, we might not even get that 

If we qualify: mickey mouse cup; fixture congestion 

If we don’t qualify: Mickey Mouse cup; didn’t really want to play in it anyways - need to focus on real European cup qualification 

Gotta cover both bases  

[Jareth]

Never felt more confident about getting Europe, after watching Spurs yesterday. 

[Sulberto21]

One advantage of the conference league is our scouts will get to see some of the players who they probably haven’t been able to see like that winger at Napoli who’s name I can’t spell. 

[Sulberto21]

4 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Never felt more confident about getting Europe, after watching Spurs yesterday. 

It might galvanise them though like it did Newcastle after our mauling. 

[PieFacE]

If we can make it into any European competition it would be incredible, even if that is the Conference. It gives us a great platform to keep progression and we're definitely not "too good" for that competition. 

I still think we might just fall short and finish 8th, but it's exciting that it's even a conversation at this point. Even if we do finish 8th and just miss out on European football it's still an incredible achievement and the lack of games next season will set us up well for another Europe push.