Jump to content

zequist

Members
  • Posts

    731
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    http://
  • ICQ
    0

Profile Information

  • Interests
    vintage arcade and pinball games, music, sports history, science fiction & fantasy novels, creative writing

zequist's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

47

Reputation

  1. 4 of the 6 are ahead of away games. Official site also has the match dates for knockout rounds if we advance...2nd leg of the round of 32 is right before our away date at Arsenal, 2nd leg of the round of 16 is right before an away date at QPR, and 2nd leg of the quarterfinals is right before our home tie with ManU. Just the way it goes when you're playing in Europe. Only way to avoid this problem is don't qualify, and I don't think any of us would choose that option. Personally, I'm just happy to see us getting that Russian trip out of the way early. And I'm rooting for all the Ukrainian squads to go home in the group stage, because I don't want any chance of us getting drawn against one of them later.
  2. Nope, was thinking of 1986. Y'know, the year all the English clubs were banned from Europe, and Steaua ended up winning the CL title that we would've been one of the favorites for if we'd been allowed to compete.
  3. Twente is out. 1-1 final. Unfortunately Sparta Prague (the last of our six best hopes) is up 2-0 at halftime at home - we still need them go out too, with the other three having already advanced. Unless either Grasshoppers or AEL Nicosia pulls off a miracle.
  4. But my correction was correct - we are in 13th place. You're the one who said we were in 12th place and needed 3 upsets to stay in the top 24; my miscalculation was based off your faulty numbers. So there!
  5. Correction. We are down to 13th - there are 12 teams already ahead of us. Sevilla, Napoli, Dynamo Kiev, Fiorentina, and Salzburg are locked into pot 1. Lille, Copenhagen, Steaua Bucharest, Standard Liege, Celtic, Besiktas, and Wolfsburg are guaranteed one of the top two pots. Of the 62 remaining teams in the Europa playoffs, 14 have higher ratings than us, so we need four of them to lose. 99% likely to advance: Inter Milan (3-0 up on some random Icelandic club) Villareal (3-0 up on Astana) Panathinaikos (4-1 up on a Danish club I'm too lazy to spell) Tottenham (2-1 up on AEL Limassol, 2nd leg at home) Borussia Monchengladbach (3-2 up on Sarajevo, 2nd leg at home) Very safe, but not completely safe: Trabzonspor (2-0 up on Rostov, 2nd leg at Rostov) Eindhoven (1-0 up on a club from Belarus, 2nd leg in Belarus) Club Brugge (2-1 up on Grasshoppers, 2nd leg in Belgium) Still in some doubt: Dnipro (2-1 up on Hajduk Split, 2nd leg at Hajduk) Twente (0-0 draw with Qarabag, 2nd leg in Holland) Metalist (0-0 draw with Chorznow, 2nd leg in Ukraine) Sparta Prague (1-1 draw with Zwolle, 2nd leg in Prague) PAOK (losing 1-0 to Zimbru, 2nd leg in Greece) Lyon (losing 2-1 to Astra, 2nd leg in Romania) Those bottom six are our best chance, but we'd need at least four of them to break for us. Agree with Mike that it isn't likely. Now you do know, of course, that regardless of whether we're the second or third seed, the draw WILL put us either in Napoli's (i.e. Rafa's) group or in Villareal's group. It's absolutely inevitable that we're going to end up paired with one of those two. If the soccer gods have an especially cruel sense of humor, they'll put Steaua Bucharest in our group too - ghosts of 2005 and 1986 all rolled into one.
  6. Facts are absolutes. If I give you a correct fact (e.g., "Tony Hibbert has never scored a Premier League goal") that fact remains absolutely true no matter how much anyone might try to spin it ("but he scored in his testimonial game!"), justify it ("but they don't need him to score"), ignore it ("not important!"), or even pretend the opposite is true ("He has scored 50 Premier League goals, comrade, and you will repeat that as often as the party tells you to.") Opinions are not absolutes. They are rooted in personal point of view, shaped and modified by levels of knowledge, personal experience, personal biases, and individual maturity. They can (and frequently do) evolve and change as we learn more and broaden our perspectives. Therefore an opinion cannot ever be 100% wrong, nor can it ever be 100% right. Some opinions can certainly be more wrong than others, maybe even as much as 99.9999999999999% wrong, but which ones reach that level of wrongness is naturally a matter of opinion. Of course, that's just my opinion on the matter.
  7. This is a good article on the work permit system - why England established such rules, how the system works (and sometimes doesn't work), the factors that are examined during the appeals process (when necessary), and of course the ways that clubs try to get around the criteria. Some good stats too (I found the graph showing how many players each EPL club loaned out to other clubs last season especially interesting). http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/competition-law/item/delayed-entry-the-fa-s-highest-calibre-standard-for-non-eu-footballers
  8. Non-EU players need work permit approval every time they change clubs, even if it's within the same league. Seems like overkill to me, but whatever. Atsu's had 26 caps over the last couple of years, so there shouldn't be any issues with him.
  9. I will also miss seeing him play. Not from his Galaxy stint, but from his stint with San Jose Earthquakes at the start of his career. There hasn't been much to cheer about over the years as a Quakes fan, seeing as they've generally been a mismanaged, cheaply run mess, and often as not treated not just by the league but even by their own management (when Anschutz ran them) as LA's second-class cousin. But for that run of four years and two championships, he gave us NorCal folks something to be proud of, and no matter how the rest of his career played out I'm still grateful for that.
  10. Coincidentally, I was just looking at the Telegraph's fantasy statistics for last season's Everton squad a couple of hours ago. Rather than just assists, they have a category they award players fantasy points for called "key contributions," which encompasses assists but also other play that directly results in a goal - affecting goals, in other words, just like you said. By the Telegraph's numbers, these are the stats for our main wide players last season (all competitions): Mirallas: 36 games, 9 goals, 13 key contributions (22 total) Osman: 42 games, 3 goals, 10 key contributions (13 total) Deulofeu: 27 games, 3 goals, 6 key contributions (9 total) Pienaar: 25 games, 1 goal, 6 key contributions (7 total) McGeady: 18 games, 0 goals, 2 key contributions (2 total) Pro-rated, that puts Pienaar on pace to affect about 11 goals last season if he plays closer to 40 games. That's down a bit from his historic rate, but still not terrible. Just the year before in 2012-13, he scored 6 goals and actually led the club in key contributions (per Telegraph numbers) with 12, for a total of 18 goals affected, which meets your standard and then some. But he was also healthy enough to play in 35 games that season.
  11. He appeared in 25 matches in all competitions last year, started in 21 of them, and went the full 90 in 7 of them. Don't know how much of that was tactical and how much was fitness, but either way he must have been one of our most frequently subbed players.
  12. I can see both sides here. I own two jerseys (one for ice hockey and one for American football), but they're not something I'd use for daily wear. I wear them to games, or to the pub on game days, but the rest of the time they're hanging in the closet. I'd feel a little silly wearing something like that when I'm doing normal stuff like going to the market or mowing the lawn. The football jersey has a name and number, the hockey jersey does not. I don't really care about names on jerseys because I root for the logo on the front, but as Joe said you can't buy blank football jerseys. So for that one I picked a player who I liked before he joined my team and who I knew I would still like even after he left my team, because if I was going to spend the money on a jersey I wanted to make sure it was one I'd be proud to wear for many years afterward.
  13. Latest on Cleverley's status from the Daily Mail (insert joke here): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2715565/TRANSFER-NEWS-COLUMN-Everton-consider-Manchester-United-s-Tom-Cleverley-Louis-van-Gaal-trims-squad.html
×
×
  • Create New...