Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

Quite right too, seems only fair to me.:D

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

Liverpool in 1st Round Qualifying for sure. Whoo... In at least :P

NFFC - Lay off Women's football, it fun, and women don't roll around on the ground forever. They just take the pain and get on with it. Kudos for that. I like to see that in the men's and also they don't bitterly complain to the referee!!! Kudos to that too. Keane should take note of that.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

How is this fair? The whole point of the Champions League is that the Champions of each league in Europe face each other in a competition not the 5th place side in the league who finished 37!! points behind the champions. I thought it was bad enough when they let Everton in for finishing fourth.

The comptetion should be renamed to the 'Champions and runners up League' in the future.

Bad decision Uefa :td:

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

to be honest i think the Fa have engineered getting 5 teams in and this sets a bad precedent.. what happens at the endof next season if a team in spain get to the final and they are fouth in their league.. they can win the final and then make themselves finish 5th in their league which doesn't finish till after the final and make sure they have 5 teams in the comp next season

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

Exactly how i feel mate. Now the TV revenue from the champions league has to be split five ways aswell so the original teams in the competition are set to loose £5 million each!!

Not good news

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

12th July is the first round! Fixture congestion hell.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

You don't do irony then? perhaps I should have used :rolleyes: instead.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

My feelings exactly. As much as I like Liverpool being able to defend the title, the rules were clear at the outset of the season, and the FA should have decided beforehand on the rules in this scenario (e.g. number four does not play CL). They didn't and possible saw it as an opportunity to get a fifth team in. Short term, opportunist thinking imo.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

If UEFA, and I mean IF, have any forward thinking in their single brain cell organism, they will put in a new rule that the defending champions is automatically entered as the 3rd/4th team of their league if they finish outside the top 2 or 3 or 4 of their respective league.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

not only has this ruined the TV money for the other clubs, although that is still being worked on.. Artemia of Slovakia have now been pushed out of the comp..

i agree they should be in the comp but at the expense of Everton rather than as a fifth placed team.. the FA should have decided this like the Spanish FA did a few years ago

also UEFA need to make sure that the finals are now always held after each UEFA league has finished to prevent collusion between clubs and league to get extra teams in..

mind you if Gerrard didn't dive to win a pen then they wouldn't have won anyway something no one in the press mentioned in any of the praise that was heaped on Liverpool after the win

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

more english clubs playing at the top can only be a good thing
so im happy.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

That's just plain wrong.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

They should play off with Artemia for the place in the qualifying rounds.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

Liverpool also don't have country status. So they could meet another English team in qualifying or be in a group with another english team.
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The team from Slovakia hasn't been pushed out as such. They only qualify for the competition if the winners are automatically qualified through their league. If the winners are outside the qualification places then the winners get the slovakian place.

Re: The Football Thread 2005/2006 Season
 

I think a problem with that is that some leagues run over much of the summer

As an example, only 7 out of 26 rounds have been played in the Finnish league.

http://www.uefa.com/FootballCentral/...Standings.html

I guess they only just cleared the snow :)