League of Ireland in Europe 2014

[patrickccfc]

Are any of the second leg games on TV this week?
Pats vs Warsaw on setanta sports 7:30pm Wednesday

[Charlie Darwin]

Rosenborg sacked their manager this morning.
And going by their statement they don't seem to be in a hurry to replace him, so they'll fly to Ireland with a caretaker. You'd have to think that benefits Sligo. Very odd handling of the sacking.

[poster]

And going by their statement they don't seem to be in a hurry to replace him, so they'll fly to Ireland with a caretaker. You'd have to think that benefits Sligo. Very odd handling of the sacking.

They're after John Coleman.

[TonyD]

I'm trying hard to be optimistic about tomorrow night, but I fear a heroic failure is on the cards. Wish it was in Richmond.

[pineapple stu]

1-0 Celtic after 15 minutes.

So Murrayfield it (almost certainly) is. For one or other team tomorrow.

[pineapple stu]

3-0 Celtic now; 4-0 on aggregate. So that's over.

Climville 0-0 in Hungary after drawing 0-0 at home. TNS 1-0 down to Slovan Bratislava after only losing 1-0 in Slovakia.

[DannyInvincible]

McGovern's been sent off for Cliftonville. He was the last man and slightly pulled the arm of the attacker who was the other side of him and through on goal. They'll be under a lot of pressure now...

Sure enough, Debrecen score from the resulting free-kick just as I type.

[paykanti]

It's been a fairly shoddy performance from Cliftonville, somewhat hidden by an even shoddier performance from these Hungarians.

[PartySaint]

I thought Cliftonville were doing well up until the sending off, no chance after that.

All 11 seeded teams went through today.

[ger121]

I thought Cliftonville were doing well up until the sending off, no chance after that.

All 11 seeded teams went through today.

Generally you get one or two upsets per round. None tonight so I'm hoping it's Pat's tomorrow.

[DannyInvincible]

Celtic win 4-0 tonight and go through 5-0 on aggregate.

[sligoman]

Still a few tickets left for our game, if anyone wants to reserve one and collect it at the gate when they arrive they can here (http://www.sligorovers.com/news/14/jul/reserve-your-tickets-v-rosenborg).

[Duggie]

I'm trying hard to be optimistic about tomorrow night, but I fear a heroic failure is on the cards. Wish it was in Richmond.

i think thats part of our problem in this league, even if Pat's were 10-0 up from the 1st leg we would be afraid i'll bet you we will lose 11-0. let's hope for the best tho....

[Nah Nah Nah Nah]

Rosenborg are showing the second leg live for about a fiver......

https://rbk.solidtango.com/live

[pateen]

Rosenborg are showing the second leg live for about a fiver......

https://rbk.solidtango.com/live

Cool, I'll have a bit of that.

What about tonight's game?

[PartySaint]

Cool, I'll have a bit of that.

What about tonight's game?

It's on Setanta

[Acornvilla]

Cool, I'll have a bit of that.

What about tonight's game?

It''s on setanta, you can also get free streams of both matches I'm sure if you google about. If no one else has when the time comes I'll link some stuff up.

Edit: Yeah what PS said

[pateen]

It''s on setanta, you can also get free streams of both matches I'm sure if you google about. If no one else has when the time comes I'll link some stuff up.

Edit: Yeah what PS said

Please do Acornvilla, live in the UK so dont have Setanta

[Dodge]

If you're a Bet365 customer it's also being streamed there

Also live on Premier Sports, TVP and the Austrian webportal laola1.tv

Basically, stream won't be an issue

[DannyInvincible]

I imagine there'll be plenty of links to streams up on one of Wiziwig, LSHunter.net or FootballStreaming.info.

Hopefully, St. Pat's can do the business tonight and it won't be another typical "hard luck" story. Hard to know what game-plan Buckley should go with, but let's hope he has some magic up his sleeve. Sitting back and trying to soak up the pressure from the outset could be dangerous. The further back St. Pat's were pushed in the away leg, the more inevitable it looked like Legia would score and, sure enough, eventually something gave. Best of luck anyway to Pat's!

[Dodge]

We haven't got the players to defend for 90 minutes. Everyone knows that (no one better than Buckley).

[adamd164]

Look forward to seeing tonight's game, hopefully Pat's have a cut off them.

Out of interest, roughly how much of Legia's crowd will be Polish people based in Ireland and how many are travelling over?

[Dodge]

250 bought tickets in Warsaw. There'll be more Polish there supporting Pats than Legia apparently. They're not well liked by the rest of the country

[Charlie Darwin]

We haven't got the players to defend for 90 minutes. Everyone knows that (no one better than Buckley).
Yous couldn't defend for 45 minutes last week. It would have been brave but I think Pats would have been better off continuing the game plan they started with instead of running it into the corners with five minutes plus added time to go.

[ger121]

Yous couldn't defend for 45 minutes last week.

They did defend for 45 mins and indeed for 90. The problem was after that!

[MeathDrog]

250 bought tickets in Warsaw. There'll be more Polish there supporting Pats than Legia apparently. They're not well liked by the rest of the country

Yeah I was talking to a Polish friend and he said he had no time at all for Legia.

[Stuttgart88]

A return to the European Cup format is never going to happen so UEFA should regionalise the draws until the group stages. Small clubs like Irish teams shouldn't have to travel to Armenia or Kazakhstan unless they are in a group with teams from those far-away countries in the group stages.

It's quite all right for wealthy clubs from England, Spain, Italy, and Germany to have to face the costs of travelling to the extremities of Europe but it's unreasonable for UEFA to expect Irish, Icelandic, Faroese clubs etc to foot that bill. A bad draw in Europe could very easily put a club from any of those countries into debt.


Chalkie
I personally think that the whole Europa League competition should be both (a) regionalised and (b) divisionalised.

The (b) suggestion would follow in the footsteps of the new UEFA Nations League competition.

While we all love the excitement of weeks like this I think it'd be in the longer run better interests of leagues like ours to have a realistic chance of continuous European exposure even if it is against the lesser lights of the continent. The current Europa League structure is too big, cumbersome and long. I'm not convinced the current structure is commercially optimal for UEFA either, but the key to a more widely spread competition would be for revenues to be distributed down the waterfall.

I'd envisage up to 8 regions and 3-4 divisions. Each regional winner or finalist would then go into a pan-European knock out round to determine the winner of Europa League Division X.

There'd be a system of promotion and relegation based on a league's representatives' performance. So, if a team won (did well) in its division, it's league's representative the next season could move up a division at the expense of a team from a league that was last, or did badly.

I haven't thought it out fully but the principle is clear and probably workable. A system of coefficients could be maintained, for example, or simple first X places go up, last X places go down.

The benefits?
A more realistic chance of continuous European football
Games to be against teams from closer to home - so cheaper and arguably more appealing to the public
Games to be much less of a mismatch
A possible additional revenue stream for smaller leagues' clubs

The negatives?
The opportunity cost of a rare but big pay day
Possible cartelisatipn of domestic leagues, I.e., regular Europa League participation = more money = likely dominance of domestic league

[Dodge]

Yous couldn't defend for 45 minutes last week. It would have been brave but I think Pats would have been better off continuing the game plan they started with instead of running it into the corners with five minutes plus added time to go.

That's a good theory alright but fatigue clearly played a part. It was over 30 degrees at kick off last week and the lads were working their balls off all game. I'm sure the gameplan was to play for 95 minutes but I can understand players being tired

[geysir]

Good luck to Pats this evening.
It's gonna take a huge effort to get past this warsaw team, but they have a decent platform of the away draw to start with.

[desaintsno.12]

Game sold out

[Pablo Escobar]

Any links for this?

[DannyInvincible]

Any links for this?

Should be a working stream here closer to kick-off: http://coolsport.se/stream10-mlb-live-streaming.html or http://cricfree.sx/live/watch/st_patricks_athletic_vs_legia_warsaw/47415

If not, there should be plenty of other links to try on the following sites:

http://www.footballstreaming.info/streams/todays-links/index.html
http://www.lshunter.net/
http://www.wiziwig.tv/broadcast.php?matchid=269900&part=sports

[WoodquayBoy]

Best of luck to the Super Saints, do the league proud!

[Pablo Escobar]

Should be a working stream here closer to kick-off: http://coolsport.se/stream10-mlb-live-streaming.html or http://cricfree.sx/live/watch/st_patricks_athletic_vs_legia_warsaw/47415

If not, there should be plenty of other links to try on the following sites:

http://www.footballstreaming.info/streams/todays-links/index.html
http://www.lshunter.net/
http://www.wiziwig.tv/broadcast.php?matchid=269900&part=sports

Thank you.

[DannyInvincible]

Decent quality Setanta stream here: http://hdfoots.com/watch/setanta-ireland-live-stream.html

Derek Foran starting instead of Oman. Sounds like Oman was injured in the warm-up.

[nigel-harps1954]

Derek Foran comes in for Ken Oman...blessing in disguise if you ask me.

[DannyInvincible]

Very positive start by Pat's.

[adamd164]

I like the electronic advertising boards- they're not usually in Tallaght right?!

[paul_oshea]

getting pushed off the ball
started well but again two instances being weaklings getting thrown off the ball.

[Pablo Escobar]

Any site to stream on an IPad?

[DannyInvincible]

Ger O'Brien very fortunate he wasn't punished there. Can't be giving away the ball like that at the edge of the box!

[Sheridan]

Thank this post if you want paul_oshea banned from League of Ireland threads.

[DannyInvincible]

I can barely see the ball when it's up Pat's end with the sun. It's nerve-racking.

Is it not drilled into defenders these days to direct a pass back to the keeper either side of the post rather than directly towards your own goal?

[paul_oshea]

awful defending.

slightly the better team up until then.well they more than likely needed to score anyway.

[DannyInvincible]

B*llocks.

[paul_oshea]

Thank this post if you want paul_oshea banned from League of Ireland threads.

you'd be better suited over on owc.good ladìn

[DannyInvincible]

There's a goal in this for Pat's but they need to be careful at the back. Legia look dangerous when they get the ball moving near the Pat's box.

[nigel-harps1954]

Pat's awfully sloppy at times, whether it's the heat, or the occasion, it's not doing them much favours. There's definitely a goal in it for them though, but there's definitely another goal or two for Legia.

[Stuttgart88]

I love seeing a midfielder drive forward with the ball like Brennan just did.

[nigel-harps1954]

Think that substitution needed to be made as O'Brien was starting to struggle badly.