Sligo can get one of these, nice group for them
Celtic FC (SCO)
Legia Warszawa (POL)
IF Elfsborg (SWE)
Molde FK (NOR)
HJK Helsinki (FIN)
FK Ekranas (LTU)
Sligo can get one of these, nice group for them
Celtic FC (SCO)
Legia Warszawa (POL)
IF Elfsborg (SWE)
Molde FK (NOR)
HJK Helsinki (FIN)
FK Ekranas (LTU)
2nd Qualifying Round. 1st Round is just 4 teams (Champions from San Marino, Andorra, Faroe's and Armenia)
please dont let them get Celtic
Cyril The Judas
I hope they get Celtic.
The Dublin decider then the Sligo decider.
Sligo after getting Molde from Norway. Think Ole Solskjaer still manages them!
Wrong thread, move along.
For Drogs it's one from
Breidablik (ISL)
Tromsø IL (NOR)
Malmö FF (SWE)
SK Liepājas Metalurgs (LVA)
Linfield FC (NIR)
FC İnter Bakı (AZE)
Celtic vs Cliftonville. All British tie...
Hope for Drogs sake they dont get Inter Baki.
Drogs got Malmo.
Who did Rovers get.
Im fucking gutted Drogs could play Hibs.My friend is moving to Edinburgh in mid July and Id have loved a trip over there!
Apparently Sligo will be the only team to play in the Champions League with an English manager this season
Unbelieveable stat that, sure wasnt it just 2 years ago that 7 out of the 20 Premiership managers were Born in Glasgow?
English people make shit managers!
If Sligo lose to Molde do they go into the Europa League?
I think everyone got a shit draw this year
Decent article from the Indo:
http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...-29455725.html
We are going to keep declining in Europe until the FAI work the fixtures around the European competitions. They know who the qualifiers are and when they will be playing but continue to schedule fixtures for European weekends. I'd say a lot of people including myself are relieved that we're out of Europe as we cannot play two games a week without the League form being affected. It wouldn't take too much planning to pull the European participant's games back to some midweeks earlier in the season. It worked well with the UCD game. As long as Europe remains a pain in the arse for clubs fixture wise we're not going to get the best out of teams. Having to play away in Sligo less than 72 hrs after our European game is just crazy. Pure laziness from the guys compiling the fixture list as they just seem to repeat it year after year. I'm surprised they haven't got rid of relegation and promotion to save themselves work.
Might sound good on paper but it's wildly impractical. You'd have to plan a gap of 4-5 weeks without a domestic fixture to allow European participants play only one game a week if they made the third round (as we had on four consecutive European campaigns before this season). If they then get knocked out in the first round you'd have players sitting around scratching their arses and more importantly no income for the clubs for 3 or 4 weeks - the clubs themselves would never agree to this.
We are at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
I agree that euro teams should ahve 1/2 games pulled forward (similar to what we did with UCD - great foresight)
also- didnt realise the €€ for Champs league was so amazing.
look at Karagandy (who got a fortunate draw) - they will get at least to the final qualifying round and earn at least €900,000 from UEFA, they they go into the group stages of the europa nd will get €1-2million from that.
this is in the context of our playing squad probably costing 400k pa
shame Irish clubs ahve struggled past the first round alst few years, even getting through in reound will get you over 600k in CL money and another 100k in europa.
being seeded is the key you gotta feel.
how would we be fixed IF we got CL football next year? would we be seeded?
big drop in co-eff for ireland, 2 years ago we were on the cusp of top 30, after this season it looks like we will drop to 42nd.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, we had the worst co-eff return in europe this year behind san marino and faroes
admittedly, (other than us) - everyone got bum draws, and even eh draw we got was the toughest one possible (not for the first time)
I was listening to Stuey Byrne and Pat Dolan assessing LoI teams' performance in Europe this year compared to the recent past and it got me thinking... When exactly was the peak of the league's performance over the last 10 years, and have we been improving as a whole, or getting worse?
So, the only way to find out the answers was to look at the facts. I've analysed all LoI teams' games in European competition (UEFA Cup, Europa League, Champions League and Intertoto Cup) since the 2002-2003 season and worked out the average points per match each year, not by team but rather aggregated across all results. (I initially thought I would be covering 10 years, but of course when you include this year's results, it makes 11).
Average points per qualification year is a good way to compare performances in different seasons, as the amount of total games played varies. It also quickly shows what years were the best for Irish teams (2006 and 2008) and what were the worst (2013, by far, and then 2002). I got all the data from Wikipedia, so while it's generally reliable, it's still not 100% official and may be prone to error.
Anyway, here's a brief summary:
Total Games Played 168
Won 44
Drawn 42
Lost 82
Goals Scored 161
Goals Against 255
Total Points 174 (3 for a win, 1 for a draw)*
Avg Points per Match 1.04
*A draw in a second leg is still 1 point even if the Irish team progressed on aggregate
I tried to attach an excel sheet with all the data but the file is invalid. Therefore I'm going to include the summary by year below, even though it looks ugly and is a bit difficult to read. Keep an eye on the Avg Points column, which starts with 0.70 in 2002-2003 and ends with 0.25 in 2013-2014
PL W D L GF GA Total Points Avg Points Avg GF Avg GA Avg GD
2002-2003 10 2 1 7 9 23 7 0.70 0.9 2.3 -1.4
2003-2004 12 3 0 9 9 20 9 0.75 0.8 1.7 -0.9
2004-2005 18 4 7 7 18 24 19 1.06 1.0 1.3 -0.3
2005-2006 14 5 3 6 16 20 18 1.29 1.1 1.4 -0.3
2006-2007 18 9 4 5 22 16 31 1.72 1.2 0.9 0.3
2007-2008 12 2 5 5 8 15 11 0.92 0.7 1.3 -0.6
2008-2009 16 8 4 4 26 21 28 1.75 1.6 1.3 0.3
2009-2010 14 3 5 6 12 17 14 1.00 0.9 1.2 -0.4
2010-2011 12 2 3 7 12 26 9 0.75 1.0 2.2 -1.2
2011-2012 22 4 4 14 15 37 16 0.73 0.7 1.7 -1.0
2012-2013 12 2 4 6 9 20 10 0.83 0.8 1.7 -0.9
2013-2014 8 0 2 6 5 16 2 0.25 0.6 2.0 -1.4
Grand Total 168 44 42 82 161 255 174 1.04 1.0 1.5 -0.6