Can someone clarify.

Top 2 direct into CL. Next 2 CL qualifiers. 5th gets UEFA. Now what is next. Does 6th place getting UEFA depend on an Arse/Chelsea cup final (and them already being in European places). Say Arsenal play Fulham in the final and Arsenal win the FA cup but go into CL. Do Fulham get the Uefa place or does it go to 6th place?

Someone put me out my misery.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

Answers

I think 3rd place also gets you automatic entry. 4th is definitely a qualifying round though.

5th is definitely UEFA. If Chelsea win the cup and finish 5th then the runners up will get the UEFA spot. If the runners up are Arsenal I think the spot will go to Fulham as they were beaten by the winners. The FA Cup spot is certainly not transferrable to the league though.

Basically we need 4th place. I don't want to think about getting anything less.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

Thanks. Well I have to hope for a Arse/Chelsea final then, as back up in case we miss out.

BTW - see Liverpool are out of CL. That might shut the arrogant lot up for a while.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

Great news - I had a funny feeling the arrogant tossers would screw it up tonight.

BTW Lynda - thanks for screwing up my footy viewing on telly tonight - after carefully avoiding the news since 7pm! ;o{)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

OMG Sorry Clarky!!!!!!! that's the second time I've done that tonight. Spoke to my Dad on the phone and told him. I always do that. Sorry again!

(Still if you wanted to avoid football results, best not logging onto a football web site like! Albeit not a Liverpool one)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

From the FA website:

********** UEFA Cup

There are three places for English clubs

1 place to the Worthington Cup winners (Blackburn)

1 place for the 5th placed team in the FA Premier League

1 place to FA Cup winners (Arsenal, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Chelsea)

Here comes the science bit….

If the winners of the F.A. Cup had already qualified for Europe but the runners up had not, then those runners up would take the UEFA Cup place.

If both the F.A. Cup winners and the runners up had already qualified for Europe, the UEFA Cup place for the FA Cup would then revert to the next placed (sixth) team in the Premier League.

**************

So the FA Cup place can be transferred to the league.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

That's pretty much how we got into the UEFA a couple seasons ago, isn't it? We qualified by losing the FAC, but I think we'd still have gotten in as semi-finalists due some bizarre combo of teams above us winning things. I really do swear UEFA pulls the rules on qualification out of their behinds! ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

I didn't realise the 6th place team would get it if it's a Chelsea Arsenal final.

How did we manage it when we got in via the cup? I'm certain we had it secured before we even played Spurs in the FA Cup, as Spurs had won the League cup and the other teams would qualify anyway. I remember Harry Redknapp going mental on Sky Sports about it, saying it's not fair that a team that beats a few second rate teams can get into Europe so easily.

I also remember part agreeing with him and part laughing my head off at him.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

Paul - you should have been around when we won the Inter-City Fairs Cup. I can't remember how low we finished in our "qualifying" season, but the rule that only allowed one team per city (Inter-City - nowt to do with trains as some might have thought) only allowed one team from Lahndaan, Liverpool and Manchester (and I guess Bristol and Sheffield). Still, we were top of the rest, unlike the Mackems, Boro and almost every other team in the (old) 1st Division that wasn't in Lahndaan, Liverpool or Manchester.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

"Champions" league. Entry would be a humiliation.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

I see Screacher's senile dementia has got the better of his memory again. We qualified for the ICFC by finishing 10th in the League. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. But it couldn't have been yesterday because yesterday I was - erm, let me think now - what was I doing yesterday?

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2002

The teams that finished above us that year were two from Manchester, two from Liverpool, three from London, one from Leeds and WBA who had won the FA Cup.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2002

Just glad to be able to open up this conversation a bit more for you oldsters to make a meaningful contribution - well, Jacko anyway ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2002

10th isn't too bad.

If we'd got in via the Intertoto this season it would have been from finishing 11th.

Now it looks as if the 6th or 7th place team will take the Intertoto spot, unless another Spanish team pulls out.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Didn't we qualify by getting to the semi because Spuds had already won the Worthington cup & Manure & Arsenal played each other in the other semi, both being secure in Champs league spots.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Yeah that's right, but according to the FA website the place should have gone to the 6th place team.

The rules must have changed or something, very confusing, wouldn't like to be a victim of it.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Sounder, to be frank, I don't care if we get humiliated. Just making the group stages is something the vast majority of teams in England will never do.

Remember if you mess up the group stage you go into the UEFA cup to continue your European quest, so with the CL you can't really lose financially. Also the fact that you're seeded for the UEFA if you go via the CL group stages means you'll play the weaker teams rather than the big boys.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Sounder what are you on aboot man?

If humiliation means at least 20million squid Ill take the humiliation please

oh and of course leeds and chelsea having to get rid of some players cos they are going bust........thats not humiliation is it

J

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

Especially if we take the pick of them, namely Hasselbaink and Ferdinand.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2002

I've been away from the BBS and this thread may have gone cold - but I will reply. It would be a humiliation because it seems from the last 6 weeks that we really are a one-dimensional team and/or we have a really lousy defense - so we would look awful and get booted out in short time. I don't really agree with the argument, however cogently put, that if we get in then we get to attract some of the better players. Frankly I think we have too far to go. Holes in the defense, a mid-field that is very fragile in being injury prone (Dyer), very young (Jenas) or aging (Speed), and a forward line (apart from Bellers it does not deserve the epithet of 'strike force') that just doesn't cut it.

I want to see us as a top team - where we can rotate players in and out of the side and we still play attractive football and win. I think we will have to buy young players. The likes of de Boers won't join us (rightly), and the second raters, and I'd include Robert along with a number of others such as Farcelino always come with too many problems for them to contribute to us being a success. I know Robert has his moments - but they are just moments. Compare him with Giggs or the Arse bunch.

Consider Chelsea and Leeds. They have failed to make a real impact because, I think, they have bought without there being a true foundation to their teams. We still don't have that foundation and I fear that entry into the CL would make us buy in the same way.

Oh well. I'm sure I'm in a minority.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Interestingly (well, it was to me) SlySports showed the Opta Index for M/F assists yesterday in the light of the nation's tragedy (Beck's foot injury). Becks is in 4th place. Ahead of him? Robert, AN Other (Giggs??) and Pires. I've been as critical as many on here about LR, but that statistic surprised me. If only he would look as if he gives a toss.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Unfortunately he'll take on two men and try to slide the ball between them: when it works 38,000 ingrates mutter, "Well that's the least I expect for that money" and when it fails to come off and he is disposessed they gleefully scream blue murder at him. Clearly the collective memory for the veritable donkey-derby of sh*te we've had paraded in front of us has proved extremely short-lived or we would be delighted to have someone who can put passes like that through. Go and ask Bellamy what he thinks of Robert if you want a reason to keep the guy.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002