LOI In Europe 2021

[sbgawa]

Rovers draw Teuta from Albania or Inter Club from Andorra in third round of ECL.
On the face of it with no basis or knowledge its not the worst considering Dinamo Tiblisi were a possibility

Bohs draw Paok from Greece.

Dundalk draw Vitese from Holland

Double ouch for Bohs and Dundalk tough draws

[pineapple stu]

If Dundalk can beat Inter, Rovers can.

You always wonder with Albanian clubs how much they really want to win. Might be happy bowing out at that stage with a nice few quid earned from the betting shops. Assuming they want to win, they've no European pedigree at all (unlike other Albanian clubs who have reached the group stages and may still have a few quid rolling about) and lost 5-0 to Sheriff Tiraspol, who again lost to Dundalk last season, in the CL.

Sounds about as good as you could have hoped for really.

Edit - actually, it was only Skenderbeu who reached the group stages (twice), and they were given a 10-year European ban two years ago, which has hit them financially and they've fallen down the rankings since. So bit of a power vacuum in Albania since, and this seems a nice time to get them.

[2 Year Contract]

That’s Bohs and Dundalk gone by the third round (if they make it there) anyways you’d imagine.

Brilliant draw for rovers though. There was talk on here in the last week about Dundalk's draws last year being the best an Irish club has ever got. Depending on the playoff round draw, rovers could well run dundalk's luck close - a tie with an Albanian side and then one other club for a place in the group stages of European competition? I know it’s a lesser competition than the Europa League but that’s an amazing opportunity for an LOI club (very envious as a pats fan having watched us knock out 2 clubs in 4 European campaigns in a row between 2008-2012 without making group stages)

[pineapple stu]

Vitesse Arnhem v Dundalk and PAOK for Bohs, just for reference. Vitesse are the unseeded team in that first pairing!

[Kingdom]

I tried to work out who Rovers could face in that play-off, and unless I'm very wrong, the vast majority of any combination of ties look winnable. They could face the losers of Slovan's tie, which looked about the hardest.

[pineapple stu]

Yeah, it's a bit complicated alright. You're looking for a team to lose twice out of the draw below I think - that is, the ten losers drop into the Europa League to play each other, and the five losers from that are seeded teams in the Conference League play-off round.

The Gibraltar side are the obvious ones to get. Flora Tallinn of Estonia too. The losers of Alashkert/Sheriff. Maybe even Zalgiris Vilnius. I think the others all look tough, but even then, HJK/Mura would be great draws to get to qualify for a group stage.

Dinamo Zagreb Croatia v Cyprus Omonia
Slovan Bratislava Slovakia v Switzerland Young Boys
Legia Warsaw Poland v Estonia Flora
Alashkert Armenia v Moldova Sheriff Tiraspol
Olympiacos Greece v Azerbaijan Neftçi Baku
Kairat Kazakhstan v Serbia Red Star Belgrade
Lincoln Red Imps Gibraltar v Romania CFR Cluj
Malmö FF Sweden v Finland HJK
Ferencváros Hungary v Lithuania Žalgiris
Mura Slovenia v Bulgaria Ludogorets Razgrad

Don't really like the emphasis UEFA are putting on league winners in this - not Rovers' fault obviously, but it's a much easier path than the other clubs (Bohs/Dundalk would still have a round to win if they overcome PAOK/Vitesse, which could be against the likes of Roma, Spurs, although Bohs would actually be seeded it they won), and that can't help with the general problem across Europe of leagues becoming increasingly uncompetitive.

[A N Mouse]

But when we had three teams competing, so did lots of other leagues. You can't put our problems down to having a fourth team in the league when pretty much every other lower-half league in Europe also went from 3 to 4 teams at the same time.

But that's the point I'm making, forget about other leagues it's the relative strength of the domestic league. 29th was unsustainable, but we were almost at the point of the three teams we put forward each year being competitive, maintaining a low 30s ranking was almost within our grasp.

If you can pick any 4 from 6 in a league and expect them to do equally well or badly then one year to next the co-efficient should be sustainable. If it's 50/50 on expectations even before the draw then the co-efficient will be in a state of flux.

Also in the time since we were ranked 29th, only three countries have climbed higher, and only Hungary have stayed there, because they got back to their level.

Define the problem, yours seems to be we were ranked 29th, we're now ranked 47th - and your go to answer is we're rubbish

I'm saying that if we want consistent ranking, then we need consistent performances. And having all our teams of a roughly even pedigree allows for more consistent ranking, more resilient to the vagaries of the draw

The point about UCD's "bonus" round is in the context of purely counting the number of rounds our clubs won through (which is what I was doing). 2015/16 was the only year we had 5 teams in Europe, so it was a bonus result in that regard.

You're being very selective with your statistics, if you can arrive at 29 rounds. On the pitch, so not including byes, or starting at a later round I make it a difference of 1 or 2. If we actually went by decades or eras then the last ten years are the most successful (duh), in terms of progressing through rounds, on the pitch.

AFAIK the stage is only for club points, the results are for country coeffiecient. In that regard I'm not sure what ucd's contribution lends itself to, a bit of a red herring. Maybe it makes the tallies a bit closer in your apples to oranges comparison. I note you don't seem to have included any later starting rounds for 12/13 on.

You say the dip in ranking is because of the loss of the 2016/17 points - I'd argue it's because we've done nothing at all of note in the past five years (again noting that this year is not over, and I've probably completely jinxed myself and Bohs will easily beat Dudelange. You're welcome, Bohs fans!) And that's the basic point I'm trying to make really.

I mean it's an objective fact we lost one of our best years ever. I'd say keeping the score with something to the left of the decimal point, over the last five years, is a sign of progress. There no way in hell we're recording a 2+ coefficient multiple years on the bounce.

The lowest year in the past 5 is 18/19 with 1.000, 15/16 scores 0.700 (did you realise, there were five teams that year). Oh and 13/14 we scrapped two draw for a grand total of 0.250 co-efficient points.

The IL being ahead of us is more because they've had two years in the preliminary rounds, which the LoI has bypassed. The points they've picked up in those rounds is what has them ahead of us. (The preliminary round is gone now, so I do expect us to start rising a few places now)

You're making my point for me they went backwards to go forward. Yes it will come out in the wash. But by the time we're looking at the 2026 rankings, and those two big years are gone how far behind us will they be?

Yes, club coefficients would help with seeding, for sure. But that wouldn't mitigate against my analysis of the leagues we've beaten - if we're getting the tougher sides earlier because there's variety in qualifiers and we're not seeded as a result, we're still not beating any of them (Brann aside)

And here's the rub. You can't look at it in isolation and say we should be beating teams from xyz just because we're ranked higher, if it always went to the seeded side we'd still be rank last. Progress is having all our participating sides having a realistic chance of winning through a round, and maintaining or preferably increasing the ranking score year on year. And currently we're meeting that definition.

[SPXcyan]

I watched PAOK last season and they are a vastly superior outfit, if Bohs can manage to reach the third round then they might as well enjoy playing PAOK, and that Greek weather will be a major issue too.

[Nesta99]

Vitesse Arnhem v Dundalk and PAOK for Bohs, just for reference. Vitesse are the unseeded team in that first pairing!

Irish club seeded v Dutch team unseeded, who'd have thought it. Hint of progress Stu

I'm not convinced we will get through QR2 mind.

[pineapple stu]

OK, there's a lot of stuff in there, and to be honest some of it seems like a bit of a scattergun approach of points. I don't want to get involved in a massive point-by-point analysis, so I'll just try pick a couple of items out. Mods - feel free to split if you want.

But that's the point I'm making, forget about other leagues it's the relative strength of the domestic league.

You can't forget about other leagues unless you're arguing that bringing a fourth team into Europe presented a unique issue for the LoI. How did it do that?

You're being very selective with your statistics, if you can arrive at 29 rounds. On the pitch, so not including byes, or starting at a later round I make it a difference of 1 or 2. If we actually went by decades or eras then the last ten years are the most successful (duh), in terms of progressing through rounds, on the pitch.

How am I being selective? I counted the number of ties that LoI sides won; that's an observable fact. (Byes have nothing to do with it - I've counted ties won). So the last ten years are not the most successful in terms of progressing through ties on the pitch, because I've shown that there were 21 in the 10s as against 29 in the 00s (or whatever the exact figures were). It's also why I flagged the UCD one as a bonus tie, and Dundalk's three rounds last year - they couldn't have happened in the 2000s, which was the period I was comparing to.

I mean it's an objective fact we lost one of our best years ever.

It is, but you've portrayed it simply as something unfortunate. My point is that it was inevitable we were going to lose that year, and the fact that the results replacing it have been steadily worse is a bad sign for the league. Sure, Dundalk's first El qualification was probably the best LoI performance in Europe in modern times. But did it just artificially inflate our standing for a few years and are we now back to reality?

There no way in hell we're recording a 2+ coefficient multiple years on the bounce.

Why not? That sounds quite defeatist to me. All 2.000 points requires is each team to win two games in a year, and lose the rest. That's with the CL team getting a reprieve even if they lose. Is that too much to ask?

And I'd say your earlier suggestion that the LoI should be ranked around 40th is equally defeatist. We're ranked number 31 in UEFA in terms of population, and population is a big factor in terms of league standard, as the rankings will show. Wealth is another one, and we're a wealthy western country. To say that we should expect to be ranked around 40th makes no sense.

And here's the rub. You can't look at it in isolation and say we should be beating teams from xyz just because we're ranked higher

What? I'm not looking at things in isolation, and I'm not saying we should be winning ties against xyz because we're higher-rated.

I'm explicitly looking at a series of results over a long time frame, and I'm saying we've stopped winning ties against decent countries, which is one sign that the league is going backwards.

[pineapple stu]

Irish club seeded v Dutch team unseeded, who'd have thought it. Hint of progress Stu

Just a factor of Dundalk qualifying for Europe more often than Vitesse unfortunately

[sbgawa]

Yeah, it's a bit complicated alright. You're looking for a team to lose twice out of the draw below I think - that is, the ten losers drop into the Europa League to play each other, and the five losers from that are seeded teams in the Conference League play-off round.

The Gibraltar side are the obvious ones to get. Flora Tallinn of Estonia too. The losers of Alashkert/Sheriff. Maybe even Zalgiris Vilnius. I think the others all look tough, but even then, HJK/Mura would be great draws to get to qualify for a group stage.

Dinamo Zagreb Croatia v Cyprus Omonia
Slovan Bratislava Slovakia v Switzerland Young Boys
Legia Warsaw Poland v Estonia Flora
Alashkert Armenia v Moldova Sheriff Tiraspol
Olympiacos Greece v Azerbaijan Neftçi Baku
Kairat Kazakhstan v Serbia Red Star Belgrade
Lincoln Red Imps Gibraltar v Romania CFR Cluj
Malmö FF Sweden v Finland HJK
Ferencváros Hungary v Lithuania Žalgiris
Mura Slovenia v Bulgaria Ludogorets Razgrad

Don't really like the emphasis UEFA are putting on league winners in this - not Rovers' fault obviously, but it's a much easier path than the other clubs (Bohs/Dundalk would still have a round to win if they overcome PAOK/Vitesse, which could be against the likes of Roma, Spurs, although Bohs would actually be seeded it they won), and that can't help with the general problem across Europe of leagues becoming increasingly uncompetitive.

I probably agree with you here even though Rovers benefit from it this year.
The draw is heavily weighted to reward Champions almost to a mad degree.
In theory it is to compensate for the fact that the champions now have almost no chance of making actual Champions league groups anymore where by comparison Dundalk were a crossbar away from 30 million in 2016.
So you trade off having a once every 30 years plus (Shels were one round away) opportunity to transform a club for a regular enough shot at a few million

[pineapple stu]

Yep - though I was surprised that the group stage prize money is almost the same for Conference League and Europa League (€3m vs €3.6m). So if you assume Champions League qualification is now impossible, then the new setup is effectively a second go at the €3m cherry, which is decent in fairness.

[Dalymountrower]

Bohs home game v Dudelange confirmed for Lansdowne. Capacity to be announced tomorrow.
Not getting ahead of ourselves or anything , but if Bohs do progress to play PAOK , Ross Tierney , Dawson Devoy and Andy Lyons may be playing against some of the PAOK under 19`s they narrowly lost 2-1 on aggregate to in the champions cup in October 2019.
Was a brilliant game in Dalymount, probably the best game I saw that season.

[sbgawa]

After seeing Rovers miss out on a bumper pay off (crowds/corporate) against AC Milan last year and Dundalk miss out on the same against Arsenal if any club make group stages this year or get an attractive draw in the playoff round (Spurs) please God by that stages bigger crowds are allowed (maybe use the covid passports?).
Irish Clubs need to be able to milk these opportunities in a safe manner

[Nesta99]

Just a factor of Dundalk qualifying for Europe more often than Vitesse unfortunately

Spoil sport!

[yurt]

Rovers now have a super chance at making the ECL group stage. Losing to either the Albanians or Andorrans in round 3 would rightly been seen as a disaster.

A certain amount has to happen first, but with the way this draw works Rovers should they win round 3 will be drawn against one of the 5 worst sides playing in the CLQ2. Looking at the possible opponents there are about 5 teams that I think Rovers would be competitive with and 2 (Gibraltar and Estonia) that they should be favorites for. So barring an upset in the ties before then, there's a 40% chance they will draw one of these two. Tasty enough prospect if it can fall in to place like that.

On the point of the Euro competitions being stacked in favor of the champions, I think it's a good thing. These places in Euro competitions were before being taken by teams coming second or third in mid rank leagues, now they've essentially reserved 5 spaces in the ECL for the best champions of the worst leagues. It means that Dundalk's kind draw last year isn't actually going to be that much of an anomaly if the Irish champions actually have a decent co-efficient and can be seeded for that later rounds of the draw.

[A N Mouse]

OK, there's a lot of stuff in there, and to be honest some of it seems like a bit of a scattergun approach of points. I don't want to get involved in a massive point-by-point analysis, so I'll just try pick a couple of items out. Mods - feel free to split if you want.


You can't forget about other leagues unless you're arguing that bringing a fourth team into Europe presented a unique issue for the LoI. How did it do that?

I can't speak for other leagues, and I'm not claiming that it was unique. I can say it weakened our position as we almost had three competitive teams. Now other leagues may have been in a similar position, some could field a fourth team without ill effect. But the point is going from three to four entires coincided with the poo-poo hitting the fan domestically, and we went from almost having 3 of 3 teams competitive to 1 or 2 of four pulling their weight. Simultaneously diluting the co-efficient, and the ability of teams to contribute to it. Now you can choose to ignore that but I see the things as intrinsically linked and without relation to the situation any other country may or may not have found itself in.

How am I being selective? I counted the number of ties that LoI sides won; that's an observable fact. (Byes have nothing to do with it - I've counted ties won). So the last ten years are not the most successful in terms of progressing through ties on the pitch, because I've shown that there were 21 in the 10s as against 29 in the 00s (or whatever the exact figures were). It's also why I flagged the UCD one as a bonus tie, and Dundalk's three rounds last year - they couldn't have happened in the 2000s, which was the period I was comparing to.

Are you counting the inter-toto or something? You're being selective when you pick seemingly random dates 2003-2011 and 2011-2020 I mean there not even the same length of period, and I've no idea where 29 comes from. By my reckoning there were 20 rounds of progress 01/02-10/11 and 25 in period 11/12-20/21. That's just were a tie was won.

It is, but you've portrayed it simply as something unfortunate. My point is that it was inevitable we were going to lose that year, and the fact that the results replacing it have been steadily worse is a bad sign for the league. Sure, Dundalk's first El qualification was probably the best LoI performance in Europe in modern times. But did it just artificially inflate our standing for a few years and are we now back to reality?

I don't think I've characterised it as anything other than a fact. And what have the results been steadily worse than? The best co-efficient year ever?

As I pointed out the co-efficient hasn't dipped below 1.00 in the current 5 year period, and the one to be lost next year has already been matched. 18/19's 1.000 required 3 wins and 2 draws with 1 rounds progress to just match the 1.00 from the halcyon days of 07/08, when recorded 4 draws and 1 round of progress.

Why not? That sounds quite defeatist to me. All 2.000 points requires is each team to win two games in a year, and lose the rest. That's with the CL team getting a reprieve even if they lose. Is that too much to ask?

And that's happened exactly how many times in the past? I mean it should be a goal, and how would it be acheived? By having all our teams be competitive!

And I'd say your earlier suggestion that the LoI should be ranked around 40th is equally defeatist. We're ranked number 31 in UEFA in terms of population, and population is a big factor in terms of league standard, as the rankings will show. Wealth is another one, and we're a wealthy western country. To say that we should expect to be ranked around 40th makes no sense.

I'm not suggesting that 40th is where we belong. I believe that around 40th is a fair reflection of the current state of the league. And how do we improve that? By having all our teams be competitive!

What? I'm not looking at things in isolation, and I'm not saying we should be winning ties against xyz because we're higher-rated.

I'm explicitly looking at a series of results over a long time frame, and I'm saying we've stopped winning ties against decent countries, which is one sign that the league is going backwards.

Which, absent the context of strength of our represenitives, the draw, changes in competition or other leagues, the nature of football matches, or simply everything else not standing idly by is looking at selected fixtures in isolation.

I look at the last decade and compare it to the one before and choose to see progress. Who's defeatist?

[placid casual]

Delighted that Rovers seem to have finally inherited some of the outrageous good fortune in draws provided to dundalk in recent years.
Hopefully the gut wrenching experience of failing to get past Slovan will drive the Hoops players on to succed.
If boez and dundalk get past round 2 I'd have to assume that's as far as they'll go.
I have a Greek mate who's an absolute PAOK FANATIC, and if they get to play boez we'll have to get a ticket for the game if it's in the Aviva. Loads and loads of fun in store!! 😁 😁
Don't be surprised if an absolute load of PAOK fans turn up to that game...

[Straightstory]

Excuse my ignorance - but is it possible for an Irish club to play in the Europa League any more? It seems to be Champions League or Europa Conference only.