Europa League Campaign 2018-19

[kkong]

It's *at least* 5% plus 200.

[ragnarok]

Gleeson clearly jinxed the draw when he said that he joined us for the oppprtunity to play in Europe.

[Gogsred]

We have booked to Birmingham for under £100 return Wed to Fri.

Add £43 for a flexible return train ticket Birmingham Airport to Manchester.

Always pays to think a little outside the obvious options!

Excellent. Good thinking. I have booked Flybe to Birmingham on 2nd August - single for £29.99. That is me down. I'll figure out how to get back later. Just need to ensure that I get a ticket. Will 170 loyalty points be enough?

[Gogsred]

Oooh. I've just checked. I seem to have 234 loyalty points so I suppose that makes me a top red. I should hopefully have enough to get first dibs on a Burnley away ticket.

[GASC1980]

Madchester is the preferred choice for us oldies......not long in the train and guaranteed a good laugh.

SF

Aye but i'm after a quiet trip ha ha. Booked last train back to Preston after the game. Staying there then train up the road so £38 return from Glasgow. Holiday Inn Express in Preston.

[GlezgaRed]

Very uninspiring draw for both sets of fans, i'm sure when the games come round the atmosphere at both games will be superb !!
No reason why we can't give them a decent game, suspect it will be tight in both games.

Two nights in Manchester looks like the plan for us, ground near Burnley Manchester Rd train station for getting back into Manchester after the game.

[Don_Corleone]

Tough draw for so early in the competition, but it’s not an impossible task. Are they as good as Celtic? No, probably not. Can we beat Celtic? Yes, on our day we can. Therefore if we’re at the top of our game we have a chance.

Also, getting a big tie like this early on (even if we get put out) will likely make us more money than going two or three rounds against unknown teams from Eastern Europe before getting put out - fact we get the money in early might mean some of it can be spent on players before the window shuts

[ragnarok]

I wouldn't count on Burnley not being up for this. They may never have the opportunity to play in European competition again so there will be significant expectations from their fans to progress to the group stages.

Still, it's another British team so I think we've got as much of a chance of pulling off an upset as your average League 1/Championship club in an FA Cup tie.

The performance of English teams in Europe outside of the top 6 has been pretty underwhelming in recent years which demonstrates that outside of the big teams the league is largely overpaid and overhyped.

[blowupsheep]

Can you get a pass just for those games?

Sign up, pay your 8.99 for a month then after the games cancel your subscription (that can work)

SF

[LammyTS1]

Out of the 7 groups and 37 seeded teams, 4 of the top 14 seeds were in our small group of 10.

7. AZ Alkmaar (25.000)
12. Burnley (15.921)
13. Atalanta (15.249)
14. Molde (12.5000)
29. Zalgiris Vilnius (5.500)

Placing teams into groups of 10/12 was only introduced 10 years ago so teams could be grouped together by geographical areas and then by a fair distribution of seeded/non-seeded teams. In the past few years, UEFA have only loosely followed this rule due to limitations. In the 1st rnd, Hibs were grouped geographically but Sevco in the depths of far Eastern Europe.
In the 2nd rnd, we got geographic seeds but by a totally unfair distribution. A fair one should be 1 team from seeds 1-7, then 8-14, 15-21, 22-28, 29-37.
It's time for UEFA to abandon this nonsense and resort to a plain simple draw, 37 seeds & 37 non-seeded.