zequist

Intertoto is 8th this year (or whoever is the highest finisher below 7th who entered it); 5th-7th are guaranteed UEFA Cup spots. As long as we finish 5, 6, or 7, we'll go straight into September's first round. If we ended up playing Intertoto we'd have to play that first and then (assuming a win) we'd be entered into the second qualifying round of the UEFA Cup in August. So we'd have to go through two steps more to get to the first round than we would if we simply finish 7th or better.

The draw for the first round proper is towards the end of August, a few days after the second qualifying round is finished. This season they held the draw on August 25. The two legs of the first round (where the 5-6-7 placed EPL teams would jump in the fray) are played in September. 80 teams go into the first round, and nobody gets a free pass to the group stages - the 40 teams with the most ranking points are "seeded" into one group and randomly draw opponents from the other 40 "unseeded" teams.

Here are the "magic numbers" - the combination of points that Everton need to gain and/or the other team needs to drop to guarantee finishing ahead of them. I'm assuming we win any tiebreakers since the lads are clobbering all these teams on goal differential. Bolton - 12 Tottenham - 10 Portsmouth - 7 Reading - 6 Two wins would basically get the team into Europe no matter what, and even a win and a draw would basically lock it up if the win was over Portsmouth. Anything less than that, and we'll have to count on these other teams dropping a few points. Reading and Tottenham have the easier closing schedules in this group, while Bolton has three games left against teams in the top half of the standings and Portsmouth has four (at Villa, Liverpool, at Everton, and Arsenal). Bolton-Reading next week is going to be huge. BTW, I forget who told me to Tivo the game, but I sure wish I had a Tivo after watching it. McFadden's game winner was absolutely gorgeous!

Oh, beautiful! Game is on over here on tape delay after the Blackburn-Chelsea game ends - can't wait to see that finish! 5 points up on Tottenham and Portsmouth and 6 on Reading, with four to play for everyone but Tottenham. And if Chelsea wins this game then 7th place is headed for the UEFA Cup too. There's still work to be done, but Europe is looking real promising right now!

I don't think there's really much to worry about. The UEFA Cup takes 40 seeded teams in round one and draws them against 40 unseeded teams, so as long as we're in the seeded half we don't have to worry about a preliminary with Milan - or Valencia, or Bayern Munich, or anyone else like that. Everton were still seeded for the UEFA Cup in '05 when they had no points except what being English gave them, and in the most recent club rankings their point total is 23.917 (21.917 for playing in the Premier League, plus 2 for the one win over Bucharest in '05), which would have been good enough to get them seeded again this year (the weakest seeded team this year was Livorno with a score of 22.020). I agree with MikeO, though. It's too early to be worrying about UEFA Cup placements when we're still far from guaranteed of even having one.

Greetings! As you can tell from my board name I am an American, living the Washington DC area. I've been following Everton since 2004. At the time I was creating a character for a short story who was from Liverpool, and I decided to make her an Everton supporter. So, not knowing much about them, I started researching the history of the team and watching some of their games when they came on TV over here...next thing you know I was hooked! Life imitating art is not always a bad thing, I guess. I found this board several months ago, and finally decided it was time to sign up. I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute except when I can catch a game on TV (like Friday's thrashing of Fulham, which I thoroughly enjoyed), but I shall do my best!