No Hoper League

So another whimper out of Europe’s 2nd tier competition. Another half-hearted effort from the serial failures, sloppy defending, toothless attacking and yet another dull turgid European campaign comes to a close.

These are all the problems with the Europa League-

We don't take it seriously.

The players whether 1st or 2nd string don't get up for it, they play it like it’s a training game going through the motions, we fumble our way through qualifying scraping past minnows, only to play weak sides business end.

We stock pile players to cope.

When I say players I mean a bloated squad of nobodies that take up wages so we can't buy top players for the first team hence weakening us all round with a diluted pool of talent.

Our league form dips.

Sunday/Thursday football the stats don't lie, we are useless in the league after Europa Cup football. Even if we play a totally different line up we act jaded and give a laboured performance, something amazingly which seems to have become acceptable. For a team whose main goal is CL football don't the powers that be realise you need to get results in the league to achieve this?

The majority of the teams and football is dire.

Travelling all over to play unmotivated with a reserve team just to struggle against the barrel scrapings of Europe is boredom personified. This would be acceptable if we gave it a right go after qualifying but we don't.

For a team that 'aspires' to play in the CL the carrot of winner qualifies should have been enough to take this competition seriously. Especially seeing as we've dropped points in the Premier league after taking part it's just totally detrimental to the cause.

Every season is the same a half-hearted attempt at everything deliver nothing. I hope we never qualify for the No Hoper League ever again what an utter waste of time.

Roll on Sunday and see how we approach our 'priority'.

 

Wrong team selection. The strongest XI should have started in UEFA, like we did earlier. We have no to little chance in other two competitions. The least of the two is on Sunday.

 

Soldado couldn't score in a brothel!! Fazio & Verts? What a pair of clowns!!

 

Fabio & Verts aka the Chuckle Brothers!!! To me, to to you, nah - to the opponent

 

Agree the game was turgid but have to say we need the EL at the moment in our development .
To think we will qualify for the CL and suddenly be able to cope with Wed/Sat and better than Thur/Sun is imo not going to happen. Totally agree that our games after the EL are worse than poor but we have to find a way to overcome this.
We are probably not going to be top4 year in year our in the near future so the EL will be played.
Imagine we reach the CL this year, do we play our best 11 in the CL and not in the PL ?
That would have us playing CL (if lucky) every other year and coming mid table every other year !
Yes, we need CL way more that EL but at the moment we cannot cope with the 'easier' of the two European competitions.
The EL would be way better as a straight knock-out in my opinion but the money men will not allow that to happen.

Onto players...the obvious suspects are still all there, now to be joined by players bought during the Poch reign, Benji. Fazio and to some extent Davis seem not to be up to the Poch way...
We are way more than a WIP but somehow are still in the LC and in with a shout ( abeit a small one ) of the Top 4 .

What will last night do to our confidence for the game Sunday...we will find out very very soon .