Slovan don't play a summer league.
Wouldn't underestimate them at all - they dealt with Dundalk fairly comfortably a couple of years back, and even beat the mighty UCD 1-0 in 2015. Not as bad as Legia, but maybe on a par with Malmö? They've beaten LoI teams every time bar one, which was a draw back in the 90s. One player at the Euros at the moment.
Where's our Icelandic football cheerleader these days?
Dundalk draw Newtown AFC who finished 7th in the Welsh league last season
Two Irish sides against Icelandic opposition, thats interesting!
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
You got to say not the worst draws in the world considering 3 teams unseeded. I know Rovers beat Stjarnan home and away a few seasons ago so will be interesting to see how we get on against them. I have bad memories of my last trip to Iceland
All in all, each one of the four presents a relatively winnable tie. Shamrock Rovers obviously with a pretty crap draw, but as said, could have been worse. If they click into gear and get bodies back from injury they'll have a go at them. The other three are all fairly winnable ties over two legs.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
The losers of the Rovers tie only will go into the 3rd qualifying round of Conference, the other losers will go into the 2nd qualifying round. So I suppose that's the good news from today's draw for them.
I really wish all four teams the best of luck in getting through a few rounds mostly because the games will all have to be moved to Tallaght, which will hopefully have a positive affect on getting all the current stadium plans up and running.
Hasnt happened in the other comps in recent years so i'd doubt it (which is obviouly an anti Rovers jealousy issue....ok I shall quit on that now).
Rovers getting a bye could in a way, work against them. If they are to have any chance of being seeded in next years CL they need to pick up at least a couple of wins in Europe. If they do lose over 2 legs to Bratislava they will go into ECLQ3 unseeded and will be up against it to come up with any co-efficient points.
Given that Sligo look likely to be involved in Europe next year a couple of wins would do their future European chances no harm at all.
Dundalk drawing poor teams in Europe is an honor they've earned from being consistently involved and successful. Both Rovers have important campaigns ahead of them if they want to emulate anything like Dundalk have done over the past 5 years.
That’s the thing, consistently qualifying and then progressing in Europe makes a big difference. That’s a real frustrating part of our self implosion over the last 18 months. With the coefficient we have built up we were set up to get winnable ties in the early rounds of Europe for the next few years.
And continue to improve our coefficient in the process and potentially be seeded in later rounds. On that front it was looking positive with group stages being a possibility more regularly - exactly what the owners wanted.
You can obviously tell that my club has never qualified for European competition because I've been following European results religiously for years and only ever paying attention to the national co-efficient.
Given this news it would mean that if Rovers were to go out without winning a game in ECLQ3 they'd get 2 points pushing their UEFA ranking to 6.5 which would give them (my guestimate) 80%+ chance of being seeded next year. So ignore my earlier comment, Rovers have done all the heavy lifting already.
Do ECL qualifying rounds get awarded full co-eff points, or the same as the 2 higher ranking competitions?
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