Throw away Europa League MK2

[Adam-Utd]

In such a congested season, we really need to stop trying to stretch ourselves too thinly and concentrate on cementing our place in the top 4 again.

We havent managed 2 years in a row in the CL since Fergie, and that must change.

We made the error of trying to win the competition last time and suffered for it early this season, I hope we don't make the mistake again chasing too many competitions at once.

Yes playing in finals is always nice but we have to prioritise.

 

[RonaldoVII]

Should play the fringe players in the last 32/16 and re-evaluate the competition in March with where we're at in the league.

 

[Ballache]

Play the second team until the quarter finals if we get there.
Ole will want to have a go at it though, its a trophy at the end of the day. Whether we're consistent enough to win it is a different question.

 

[cyberman]

We have to take advantage of this with others packed schedules. Its gone from madness to 1 game a week on Sunday for a lot of our league campaign. Play kids and nobody else

 

[jamesjimmybyrondean]

Play the kids. I actually can't imagine this team lifting a trophy. Just focus on top 4

 

[Anybody's Guess]

Can't wait for another post group stage Europa journey! Great way of picking up some important injuries and fatigue, to then be able to throw it all away in the semi final due to some extremely questionable starting line-ups and in-game managerial (in)decisions! Expectations have never been lower, and I can't wait for them to plunge towards new depths during the second half of the season!

 

[Bobcat]

Not being the CL does not make it a Micky Mouse cup. Its still a decent competition with some good teams in it.

Considering we go straight to the last 32, and unless we get a tough draw i think we can get away with playing a 2nd string team the first couple of matches. Of course the PL takes priority, but if Pogba leaves and we get one or two decent signings in January i see no reason why we cant have a go at it

 

[El Zoido]

What’s the weakest team we can play in it? Can we just send out U23’s. I just want us out of this competition, I hate it, the only reason any of us celebrated when we won it was because it got us in the CL. I barely even remember the final. I don’t care if that sounds entitled, I don’t care. If I followed a league 2 club I’d still not want to watch this competition, it’s pure garbage. Hate it so bloody much.

 

[buckooo1978]

time to bring Lingard, Rojo, Jones in from the cold and give Pellestri, Fosu Mensah, Williams, James etc some football

 

[Bwuk]

I’d still go to win it. We should be able to play the likes of Mata, VdB and James in the early rounds to see us through.

We won’t finish top 4.

 

[Nevilles.Wear.Prada]

Many of us will eat our words in this thread as top 4 seems unlikely by March. Hopefully not, but i can see it.

 

[BlueHaze]

Don't want to hear anymore shite about this fecking top 4 and CL. What's the god damn obsession with it? It's been proven now that every single time we get it the Glazers spend less. Also look at what we have done in the CL since SAF left. We are clearly an embarrassment and don't belong there anyway. Fans so adamant about qualifying for this then have the owners spend feck all and get knocked out in the group stages.

Absolutely no point being in the CL until we actually have a shot at competing for the title and nothing anyone else says can change that fact. "Oh but it's financially important" half the caf says. Sure as feck it is, for the Glazers. The people who just took out £20m out of the club in a financial crisis to serve their own pockets. Give me a fecking break.

 

[K Stand Knut]

Jesus, some of you have a jumped up, entitled attitude.

We should aim to win as many trophies as possible.

Can you imagine fans in 1990 saying we should sack off the FA Cup? Or in 1991, sack off the Cup Winners Cup.

Should it be our priority? No.

Should we aim to win it? Yes.100%. Shouldn’t even be a debate.

Fixture congestion is going to calm after this month so we should just take each game at a time.

Who knows where Ole’s first trophy will come from. Or if it ever will. But it could be this or the League Cup.

Fans question players like Kane for staying at Spurs without winning a trophy. Soon we’ll have to say the same about Rashford/Martial/Fernandes.

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

Don't want to hear anymore shite about this fecking top 4 and CL. What's the god damn obsession with it? It's been proven now that every single time we get it the Glazers spend less. Also look at what we have done in the CL since SAF left. We are clearly an embarrassment and don't belong there anyway. Fans so adamant about qualifying for this then have the owners spend feck all and get knocked out in the group stages.

Absolutely no point being in the CL until we actually have a shot at competing for the title and nothing anyone else says can change that fact. "Oh but it's financially important" half the caf says. Sure as feck it is, for the Glazers. The people who just took out £20m out of the club in a financial crisis to serve their own pockets. Give me a fecking break.

Well said we are new Arsenal and fans accept it with Ole in charge as a much worse Wenger.
Get top 4 and people see him as a GOD. Fail in all cups is fine too for us.

Glazers are loving this I guess that the fans seem to have lowered the standards.

 

[Samid]

It's really not that simple. We need to go deep in Europe if we want to maintain our place in pot 2 long term. Look at the difference from the end of 2018/19 to where we our now just because our non-existing 14/15 got chalked off. Next year our best season (16/17) will get chalked off. We need points this season to compensate for that.

EL semi (19/20) gave us more coefficients than a CL QF (18/19).

I know pot 2 knocked us out this year but it was just bad luck that we drew last year's semifinalists from pot 3. Luck of the draw put us in a group of death. If we go down to pot 3 ourselves we'd regularly be in groups of death and that would be our own doing, not luck of draws.

 

[krautrøck]

United vs Spurs final please.

 

[cyberman]

Don't want to hear anymore shite about this fecking top 4 and CL. What's the god damn obsession with it? It's been proven now that every single time we get it the Glazers spend less. Also look at what we have done in the CL since SAF left. We are clearly an embarrassment and don't belong there anyway. Fans so adamant about qualifying for this then have the owners spend feck all and get knocked out in the group stages.

Absolutely no point being in the CL until we actually have a shot at competing for the title and nothing anyone else says can change that fact. "Oh but it's financially important" half the caf says. Sure as feck it is, for the Glazers. The people who just took out £20m out of the club in a financial crisis to serve their own pockets. Give me a fecking break.

Said this during the run in last summer. Theres no point in being in it if you arent contenders or dont use it to sign elite players.
Fred, Lukaku, Telles, VDB, Cavani. Those are our CL summer signings and not really worth the hassle in the long run.

 

[TheGame]

Jesus, some of you have a jumped up, entitled attitude.

We should aim to win as many trophies as possible.

Can you imagine fans in 1990 saying we should sack off the FA Cup? Or in 1991, sack off the Cup Winners Cup.

Should it be our priority? No.

Should we aim to win it? Yes.100%. Shouldn’t even be a debate.

Fixture congestion is going to calm after this month so we should just take each game at a time.

Who knows where Ole’s first trophy will come from. Or if it ever will. But it could be this or the League Cup.

Fans question players like Kane for staying at Spurs without winning a trophy. Soon we’ll have to say the same about Rashford/Martial/Fernandes.

Exactly this. Depending on draw, we could play half strength while focusing on the league. We should definitely look to win it - for the trophy and the CL entry.

 

[K Stand Knut]

Exactly this. Depending on draw, we could play half strength while focusing on the league. We should definitely look to win it - for the trophy and the CL entry.

Well, exactly.

We’ve mocked Arsenal and the like for years about celebrating ‘top 4’ and here we are with fans saying we should sack off an actual trophy for a double top 4 finish!

Things like this grate me more than results like last night

 

[groovyalbert]

In such a congested season, we really need to stop trying to stretch ourselves too thinly and concentrate on cementing our place in the top 4 again.

We havent managed 2 years in a row in the CL since Fergie, and that must change.

We made the error of trying to win the competition last time and suffered for it early this season, I hope we don't make the mistake again chasing too many competitions at once.

Yes playing in finals is always nice but we have to prioritise.

As disappointing as it is to be out of the CL, I disagree with this.

Reality is, this is the competition we're closest to in terms of performance consistency. Yes, we're able to beat the best on our day, but we're also capable of losing to the worst. Our CL group performances epitomised this perfectly.

We need to keep a decent UEFA coefficient score and ensure we've got as many pathways open to the CL next season as possible. Right now, I can't see us displacing any of Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool in the top 4, and feel confident in saying that City will finish above us.

On top of this, we need to learn how to handle the big occasions where it's all on one game to perform. We have been utterly abysmal at this under Ole. The only time we've succeeded in one of our "winner takes all" matches was against Leicester on the last game of the season. We've bottled it against Sevilla, Chelsea and City in the cup semis, and again last night v Red Bull.

With Pogba seemingly off in January, we arguably need Europa this season more than we'd like to admit.

 

[TMDaines]

Don't want to hear anymore shite about this fecking top 4 and CL. What's the god damn obsession with it? It's been proven now that every single time we get it the Glazers spend less. Also look at what we have done in the CL since SAF left. We are clearly an embarrassment and don't belong there anyway. Fans so adamant about qualifying for this then have the owners spend feck all and get knocked out in the group stages.

Absolutely no point being in the CL until we actually have a shot at competing for the title and nothing anyone else says can change that fact. "Oh but it's financially important" half the caf says. Sure as feck it is, for the Glazers. The people who just took out £20m out of the club in a financial crisis to serve their own pockets. Give me a fecking break.

I have no idea what some watch United for any longer. What's this obsession with finishing top four over actually winning trophies? For what end? There's no more soul sapping experience to stress over qualifying for CL, when the only satisfaction you ultimately derive is a few hours of sheer relief, before next season you are back on the rat wheel again.

Is anyone really comparing the joy from finishing third last season with watching us lift the FA Cup in 2015/16, or the League Cup in 2016/17 or being in Stockholm that year?

 

[ti vu]

Don't want to hear anymore shite about this fecking top 4 and CL. What's the god damn obsession with it? It's been proven now that every single time we get it the Glazers spend less. Also look at what we have done in the CL since SAF left. We are clearly an embarrassment and don't belong there anyway. Fans so adamant about qualifying for this then have the owners spend feck all and get knocked out in the group stages.

Absolutely no point being in the CL until we actually have a shot at competing for the title and nothing anyone else says can change that fact. "Oh but it's financially important" half the caf says. Sure as feck it is, for the Glazers. The people who just took out £20m out of the club in a financial crisis to serve their own pockets. Give me a fecking break.

The thing is we can do a "current Arsenal" quickly, where even to qualify for EL we need to win FA Cup, if we're not care. We can attract players since we can pay. However, we may not attract good managers who want a proper structure, direction, vision. Managers are who shape the club. We can continue to pay money for players, but without a capable managers, we're going nowhere.

When a club is in a too bad shape, it would become tough to attract the best manager and the best next coming manager. Arsenal was not in very different from our situation just few seasons ago.

 

[Zlatattack]

Go all out for it now. We can't let this attitude appear that there are "less important" matches. Trophies are key to a culture of success.

 

[ti vu]

It's really not that simple. We need to go deep in Europe if we want to maintain our place in pot 2 long term. Look at the difference from the end of 2018/19 to where we our now just because our non-existing 14/15 got chalked off. Next year our best season (16/17) will get chalked off. We need points this season to compensate for that.

EL semi (19/20) gave us more coefficients than a CL QF (18/19).

I know pot 2 knocked us out this year but it was just bad luck that we drew last year's semifinalists from pot 3. Luck of the draw put us in a group of death. If we go down to pot 3 ourselves we'd regularly be in groups of death and that would be our own doing, not luck of draws.

The price to pay to get to Semi final of Europa League can be hefty in term overall fitness of the squad, and performance in the league. Last season mini tournament format was blessing. You can't expect same thing with Thursday football with potential higher level of competitiveness in the league this season. Without Thursday football for a final chunk of last season, we finished 3rd place with 66 points which is very low. It wouldn't happen very often to begin with, and unlikely this season.

 

[TMDaines]

Rafael Honigstein just retweeted this from seven years ago. Perfect for this thread.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[Adam-Utd]

@K Stand Knut @BlueHaze

Rafael Honigstein just retweeted this from seven years ago. Perfect for this thread.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

We are in very different circumstances.

The league is very tight this year, and we're going to struggle to fit in every match.

We had exactly the same problem last end of season, we ended up trying to chase the league, cup and Europa and ended up with nothing - luckily JUST scraping into the top 4.

Cementing ourselves as a regular CL team isn't being "arsenalisation" as we aren't just setting for top 4 - but it's what's required to push on to reach the top.

If you think finishing 6th/7th every year and trying to scrape the Europa league trophy is a sign of improvement? wow OK. THAT is the definition of accepting average.

Once Corona moves on and the seasons go back to normal we can aim to challenge for more things more often, but right now the squad just CANNOT stretch that far. We don't have 2 team strong enough to compete.

Every time we end up relying on bringing on Bruno or Rashford etc and they end up burning out.

People can take this atittude of fighting for everything if they want, but they'll be the first ones complaining when we struggle towards the end of the season again.

 

[TMDaines]

Once Corona moves on and the seasons go back to normal we can aim to challenge for more things more often, but right now the squad just CANNOT stretch that far. We don't have 2 team strong enough to compete.

Our squad is so big that we couldn't even register all our players to play this season. This is just utter nonsense.

 

[Adam-Utd]

Our squad is so big that we couldn't even register all our players to play this season. This is just utter nonsense.

Quantity doesn't mean quality does it?

We've got about 6-7 players who are absolutely not good enough for this level.

By all means we can throw together a team that can play the Europa league matches, but don't expect to be relying on bringing on Rashford and Bruno every time they can't score.

The same thing will happen again and we'll end up with no CL and no trophy, Ole will get sacked and we'll repeat the cycle.

 

[LuisNaniencia]

What we saying? We looked awful tired today and we're going to be playing a lot of teams who have a week off in the coming weeks.

 

[Bojan11]

What we saying? We looked awful tired today and we're going to be playing a lot of teams who have a week off in the coming weeks.

No, because top four in the league isn't even guaranteed.

 

[Judas]

I am properly worried about the rest of the season with how tired and simply off it we look and now the gruelling Europa schedule getting thrown into the mix.

 

[Bwuk]

Have to be honest like I said earlier in this thread, I don’t think we’ll get too 4 so we should go all out for it.

 

[LuisNaniencia]

No, because top four in the league isn't even guaranteed.

Very true. However I can see a similar performance against Newcastle if we don't rest a lot of players on Thursday.

 

[Leftback99]

Because of the recent results we'll need to go all out in this. Top 4 is far from a certainty.

 

[Maluco]

What we saying? We looked awful tired today and we're going to be playing a lot of teams who have a week off in the coming weeks.

No way we should throw away the only real chance we have at a trophy just to guarantee getting into a competition next year that we have no chance of winning.

Honestly, I think this season is just going to fall away now in any case

 

[Crustanoid]

I would actively try to get knocked out of this ASAP. We’re in danger of not getting top 4 and we wouldn’t win this anyway, just subject our already knackered players to more games then go out down the line

 

[LuisNaniencia]

No way we should throw away the only real chance we have at a trophy just to guarantee getting into a competition next year that we have no chance of winning.

Honestly, I think this season is just going to fall away now in any case

There's more to it than that, financial reward, attracting players and not playing Thursday nights if we miss out on Champions league.

 

[TMDaines]

I would actively try to get knocked out of this ASAP. We’re in danger of not getting top 4 and we wouldn’t win this anyway, just subject our already knackered players to more games then go out down the line

This thread always delivers for your ignore list.

 

[Maluco]

There's more to it than that, financial reward, attracting players and not playing Thursday nights if we miss out on Champions league.

Players aren’t stupid. They can see how the team are performing and know that we could well be out by the group stage again.

Its not the be all and end all and giving up potential trophies just to secure it isn’t the way forward.

A trophyless top 4 season is a step backwards with a player like Bruno in the team all season. It hasn’t been good enough recently.

 

[Ekeke]

More games mean more chances for players to step up and win a first team place. That includes young players who need gametime to carry on improving fast enough to be useful to us long term. Getting the right balance between picking the right teams and getting results is what is difficult