Originally Posted by
A N Mouse
Anyone that attended one of these events, as far as fans go were there many skeptics, or was it all choir?
Ok seems they had some nice charts and graphs this time, but I'm not hearing anything to change my initial impression that it's all a pipe dream. Ollie feckin Byrne with two whole leagues:
'if we can qualify regularly for CL group stages we're set'.
Yeah, how we going to get there?
'Money'
where's the money going to come from?
'Well I have a friend'
And what if the money runs out before we reach the promised land?
'...'
Well here's the thing in order to get anywhere near regular CL group stages partipication we need to first get to stage were all our European representatives are competitive, that is could be expected to win through at least one round. Now despite what's regularly on the European thread we're a way off that. We've been hovering between two and three competitive teams for last decade. In order to get three and four teams we need some stability.
Now the nifl has some stability, the same teams regularly qualifying for Europe helps the team coefficient, means seeding and 'easier' draws. Despite the ridicule about not taking europe seriously they're almost at two competitive teams, and is it this year they only have three teams so couple of results is bigger boost to country coefficient.
A joint league were somehow 50% of teams compete in Europe might conceivably produce regular CL qualifiers, but it would be at the expense of the rest of the league. It would never produce eight competitive teams, as the kind of stability you need - five or six teams for four places over four or five years - would make for a boring league, and the much more likely scenario would be getting on for 16 teams for 8 places over 5 years. Why would anyone give up the status quo for that? And that's assuming some all euro places are kept.