Tottenham Hotspur

[leffe186]

47 minutes ago, HawK said:

Really appreciate the insight and time taken with your posts, @leffe186

Not sure if serious

 

Been protecting those scars (see above) and not posting too much about football - as a result when I pop the cork you get verbal diarrhoea. Also there is an absolute ton of shit going on in life and this is a welcome safety valve. And other mixed metaphors.

[Yorkie]

1 hour ago, leffe186 said:

Winning a Cup genuinely means a lot in itself. By God I hope you get that, because you’re a Toon fan of an age where I presume you’ve seen one of the best teams the First Division has seen win nothing at all. If you don’t get that now; after winning your first trophy since Altamont, then I genuinely feel sorry for you. And never, ever look up how you got into the Fairs Cup in the first place. Said it elsewhere, I’ve seen us win a fair few trophies but there are thousands of Spurs fans who have never seen us win one. Now they have.

 

I wasn't asking if the trophy win meant something/anything though, of course it does. I was asking for your take on the "would you take 17th and a cup win?" contemplation... 

 

1 hour ago, leffe186 said:

It was an absolute mess of a season. I don’t really care specifically where we finished - once we were safe I only cared about the Cup.

 

... which you've answered here. From your point of view, the ends justified the means and you could care less about the league. Fair enough.

 

The matter about the prestige of the Europa League is a separate discussion. I won't knock Spurs' achievement from the point of view of Ange et al identifying the EL as their principle objective and succeeding; but I will knock it from the point of view of it being less of an achievement in a European context.

 

To answer your question: when I was talking about the structural changes, I meant the wholesale shake-up of UEFA competitions to appease the ESL clubs (including Spurs), of which no CL dropouts is just one constituent part. Where previously the EL was Champions League B, I'd argue it's now moreso Conference League A.

[HawK]

9 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

Not sure if serious

 

Been protecting those scars (see above) and not posting too much about football - as a result when I pop the cork you get verbal diarrhoea. Also there is an absolute ton of shit going on in life and this is a welcome safety valve. And other mixed metaphors.

 

Nope, serious. Have a lot of respect for the likes of yourself and Froggy who can seem to rise above the common baiting and goading in foreign territory here.

 

Keep it coming, saves me trawling other fan boards to find other perspectives

[leffe186]

5 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

 

I wasn't asking if the trophy win meant something/anything though, of course it does. I was asking for your take on the "would you take 17th and a cup win?" contemplation... 

 

 

... which you've answered here. From your point of view, the ends justified the means and you could care less about the league. Fair enough.

 

The matter about the prestige of the Europa League is a separate discussion. I won't knock Spurs' achievement from the point of view of Ange et al identifying the EL as their principle objective and succeeding; but I will knock it from the point of view of it being less of an achievement in a European context.

 

To answer your question: when I was talking about the structural changes, I meant the wholesale shake-up of UEFA competitions to appease the ESL clubs (including Spurs), of which no CL dropouts is just one constituent part. Where previously the EL was Champions League B, I'd argue it's now moreso Conference League A.

Yeah, like I say, I was working backwards, I didn’t see the specifics of the contemplation

 

Just to clarify the nuances about not caring about the league, I only got to that point when the players were dropping like flies, the ones left were out on their feet and we clearly didn’t have enough of a squad left to compete on all fronts. There’s certainly an argument to be made that Ange could have done a better job managing the squad up to that point, but it wasn’t happening. Can’t remember if I’d ditched the league before or after we went out of the domestic cups tbh. I’d love us to have made a fist of the league and the cups, but we just didn’t seem capable of doing so.

 

As far as the dropout changes I didn’t realize that they had come from the ESL guys. What was their reasoning? I would have thought they’d have been to their benefit in giving them extra revenue, as they would be most likely to be the ones in the CL in the first place? 

[Yorkie]

37 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

As far as the dropout changes I didn’t realize that they had come from the ESL guys. What was their reasoning? I would have thought they’d have been to their benefit in giving them extra revenue, as they would be most likely to be the ones in the CL in the first place? 

 

Everything about the shake-up boils down to appeasing the ESL clubs, particularly the six PL ones.

 

UEFA has engineered ways to maintain 'elite' club participation in the Champions League. Their first proposals in 2021 literally suggested two high-revenue-generating teams could qualify for the CL even if they underperformed domestically (i.e. that coefficient horseshit). I don't think it's far-fetched to say making the EL easier to win is just that, dressed up as meritocracy.

 

Surprise surprise that two of the three ESL clubs who didn't feature in the CL this season ended up in the EL final. The other absentee is in the Conference League final.

 

As for revenue; all of the clubs who compete in the Champions League get more revenue than the previous format, because there's more games. That probably covers the shortfall they might otherwise have achieved via finishing 3rd and having an EL run.

[Geordie Ahmed]

I think for years the common consensus has been that people don't like the idea of CL teams that failed in the group stages getting to drop into the Europa League

 

(If I was on a laptop and had the time I reckon a search on this forum would support that view)

 

I do think a lot of the criticism or downplaying of the Europa League is because the final was contested between 16th and 17th place in the league, to make sense of a unique situation it's easy for people to just say it's a poor competition now

 

I'd much rather hang fire and see how the competition fares in the coming seasons as I doubt very much we'll get to see the final contested again between two teams underperforming to such a level

 

It's a great win for Spurs and they should rightly celebrate it and will rightly dismiss anyone trying to shit on the achievement just as we rightly dismissed anyone trying to claim the League Cup isn't a proper trophy

 

 

[Yorkie]

2 hours ago, Geordie Ahmed said:

I think for years the common consensus has been that people don't like the idea of CL teams that failed in the group stages getting to drop into the Europa League

 

(If I was on a laptop and had the time I reckon a search on this forum would support that view)

 

I do think a lot of the criticism or downplaying of the Europa League is because the final was contested between 16th and 17th place in the league, to make sense of a unique situation it's easy for people to just say it's a poor competition now

 

I'd much rather hang fire and see how the competition fares in the coming seasons as I doubt very much we'll get to see the final contested again between two teams underperforming to such a level

 

It's a great win for Spurs and they should rightly celebrate it and will rightly dismiss anyone trying to shit on the achievement just as we rightly dismissed anyone trying to claim the League Cup isn't a proper trophy

 

I certainly used to hold this view but having seen the side-effect I think it was for the greater good of the competition.

 

Fair enough re the rest of the post. Palace will be an interesting case study. But if Chelsea are in there with them, I think the writing is probably on the wall.

 

That reminds me, I need to iron my Betis shirt...

[Optimistic Nut]

Think English teams will dominate for a while, but we weren't a million miles away from an Eintracht Frankfurt v Bodo/Glimt and Lyon v Athletic Bilbao Semi-Final this year which on paper sounds about right for the Europa. 

[WilliamPS]

Palace will be a competitive side in the Europa but their budget will be much more equivalent to the rest of the teams, unlike Man Utd or Spurs. Likewise Forest if it’s them.

[Norseman]

2 hours ago, Optimistic Nut said:

Think English teams will dominate for a while, but we weren't a million miles away from an Eintracht Frankfurt v Bodo/Glimt and Lyon v Athletic Bilbao Semi-Final this year which on paper sounds about right for the Europa. 

Tbh Bodø/Glimt doesn't really belong there. I don't know how they got as far as they did

[Joelinton7]

Really didn’t know where to post this but since it involves spurs, their biggest rivals and Arsenal hating us so much I thought here is best

 

 

[gbandit]

Arteta’s stolen Rodgers “we won the passing” meme. Need to see a lot more “we were the best team in the league / competition” memes in the next few years

[GeordieDazzler]

2 hours ago, WilliamPS said:

Palace will be a competitive side in the Europa but their budget will be much more equivalent to the rest of the teams, unlike Man Utd or Spurs. Likewise Forest if it’s them.

I think you are vastly overestimating the budget of the teams in the Europa. Especially with no CL dropouts. Palace will have as much financial muscle as any of them.

[leffe186]

11 minutes ago, gbandit said:

Arteta’s stolen Rodgers “we won the passing” meme. Need to see a lot more “we were the best team in the league / competition” memes in the next few years

The meme potential after Wednesday is enormous. Somebody post the one with the managers and their trophies…

 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by leffe186

[Jonas]

Seems wrong for all kinds of reasons now but it seemed fair enough for Sevilla etc. to qualify for the CL this way and would have done with Bilbao this season. Equally it would have felt wrong back in the day for Italian clubs to win the UEFA and get CL. As now with the English clubs they're already advantaged to point where they should be winning that cup let alone getting the benefits of CL on top of that.

I guess its fine when its the underdogs.

 

What sticks in the throat more is that its not just two English clubs (Forest or someone would feel different) but two big English clubs, both in the cartel and that they've been so bad in general this season - partly deliberately to focus on this.

[Norseman]

40 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

The meme potential after Wednesday is enormous. Somebody post the one with the managers and their trophies…

 

 

 

This one?

[timeEd32]

The winner of a European tournament gaining access to the competition above it the following season just objectively makes sense. Removing CL dropouts from the EL was also a good change in the context of the old format.

 

However there are new problems both self-inflicted and complicated:

 

- Expanding the CL while removing EL consolation weakens that competition

- There are 6 clubs in Europe that match England's top 6 in revenue. There's another four around Newcastle / Villa. After that you have the likes of Marseille, Roma, Napoli, etc. who are effectively no different than any mid-table PL club. This means the CL is the only European competition that is even remotely financially fair when looking at England vs. everyone else. 

- The number of extremely rich English clubs now outstrips the number of European places available. It's already off-kilter that any PL club could financially compete with Tier 2/3 European clubs, but when Europa and Conference League spots are being taken by Man United, Tottenham, and Chelsea (all top 10 in revenue) then you've completely distorted the fairness of the competition.

 

All of that is why the ECL and even the EL feels like its lost its prestige. If you're looking at it from the perspective of an English club winning it I think you can absolutely argue that the domestic cups are more difficult at this point.

[McEwan]

8 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

The winner of a European tournament gaining access to the competition above it the following season just objectively makes sense. Removing CL dropouts from the EL was also a good change in the context of the old format.

 

However there are new problems both self-inflicted and complicated:

 

- Expanding the CL while removing EL consolation weakens that competition

- There are 6 clubs in Europe that match England's top 6 in revenue. There's another four around Newcastle / Villa. After that you have the likes of Marseille, Roma, Napoli, etc. who are effectively no different than any mid-table PL club. This means the CL is the only European competition that is even remotely financially fair when looking at England vs. everyone else. 

- The number of extremely rich English clubs now outstrips the number of European places available. It's already off-kilter that any PL club could financially compete with Tier 2/3 European clubs, but when Europa and Conference League spots are being taken by Man United, Tottenham, and Chelsea (all top 10 in revenue) then you've completely distorted the fairness of the competition.

 

All of that is why the ECL and even the EL feels like its lost its prestige. If you're looking at it from the perspective of an English club winning it I think you can absolutely argue that the domestic cups are more difficult at this point.

 

 

Not sure it obviously makes sense for a tournament winner to get access to the competition above it. 

 

I think it makes more sense for the winner to gain access to the same competition in order to defend their title without having to re-qualify. 

 

Also for the CL, there is no tournament above it, so the CL winner has to just get access to the CL again, and then the Europa winner does too, it's kind of asymmetrical.

 

 

 

Edited 2 minutes ago by McEwan
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