League of Ireland in Europe 2014

[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_pat...a_warsaw/47415

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

http://www.footballstreaming.info/st...nks/index.html
http://www.lshunter.net/
http://www.wiziwig.tv/broadcast.php?...00&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_pat...a_warsaw/47415

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

http://www.footballstreaming.info/st...nks/index.html
http://www.lshunter.net/
http://www.wiziwig.tv/broadcast.php?...00&part=sports

Thank you.

[DannyInvincible]

Decent quality Setanta stream here: http://hdfoots.com/watch/setanta-ire...ve-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?