All posts by h79snht.top

A difficult tour of the Championship last time out for West Ham; of course ending with a glorious last gasp Play-Off victory over Blackpool at Wembley; forced contrasting emotions but that’s nothing compared to what is to come. This time last season year I said that relegation could be a blessing in disguise and I stand by that.

Looking at the squad that was relegated, losing the likes of Scott Parker and Demba Ba was a blow, but numerous experienced replacements and more importantly a new manager that knows what he is doing arrived. Sam Allardyce has had his critics from the media and inside Upton Park over the past 12 months but I wouldn’t want anyone else in charge in East London going into this tough Premier League season.

Big Sam’s nous in the transfer market has been evident this summer with free signings Mohamed Diame and Jussi Jaaskelainen joining, as well as adding Alou Diarra, 31 and James Collins, 28 to his ranks.

One key aspect that runs through the entire West Ham squad for the forthcoming season is experience, and more importantly Premier League experience. It’s very rare, in fact I would say I’ve never seen a newly promoted squad that is littered with experience as much as West Ham’s is.

Jussi Jaaskelainen, James Collins, George McCartney, Kevin Nolan, Matty Taylor and Carlton Cole have spent the majority of their careers in the English top flight as well as the likes of Mark Noble, Mo Diame, Ricardo Vaz Te, Jack Collison and James Tomkins spending at least two years in the best league in the world.

New additions Modibo Maiga and Alou Diarra are yet to taste Premier League action, but have plenty of experience elsewhere and last season’s impressive defenders Winston Reid and Guy Demel seem more than capable of roughing it with the big boys.

It’s is in no way the be-all-and-end-all of Premier League football, but I can’t help but feel this wealth of experience could come to Allardyce’s aid during the long season and could earn the Hammers vital points along the way.

Whether it is being able to handle the pace of the league or simply not being overwhelmed by certain situations, using the word experienced rather than ageing about the West Ham squad would be the way to go for this season at least.

The likes of Swansea and Norwich showed last season that despite a lack of Premier League experience, if you get the right system and team bond you can succeed. However, both of those sides may now have been ‘found out’ to some extent and you wouldn’t expect either club to improve on last season’s performance, so their lack of experienced individual could be key this season.

Reading and Southampton both deservingly finished above the Hammers last season, but the step up can’t be underestimated and their summer recruitment so far hasn’t been particularly eye opening. Looking through both clubs’ starting XI it is hard to find many players that have more than 50 Premier League appearances and so it will be interesting to see how the naivety of their squads match up to the vastly experienced West Ham side as they all inevitably fight relegation.

Sam Allardyce himself is also a hugely experienced manager at this level having spent well over a decade at the helm of Premier League clubs. Vitally, Allardyce will know how to set his team up as massive underdogs. Last season the responsibility was with West Ham to push forward and go for the win week-in-week-out with most teams sitting ten men behind the ball, this season however most teams will go into the game favourites to beat the Hammers and so Allardyce can use all of his experience, mainly gained from success at Bolton, to overcome the underdog tag and cause shock results that was a trend in his time at the Reebok.

That may be something the likes of Reading and Southampton will fall down on. How to set up against the top six clubs. Admirable as it is, insisting on attacking from the off is a dangerous tactic in the Premier League that you may be able to get away with in the Championship.

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Like I said you need a lot more than just experience in your squad going into the Premier League season, but the fact that West Ham are smothered in it can only be positive. It is going to be a long hard season at Upton Park but looking at the current squads I feel confident that the Hammers can avoid relegation and build on their talented squad.

Will experience be that important for West Ham? Can they avoid the drop?

Let me know below or on Twitter: @Brad_Pinard

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The Champions League draw has been made and for the first time in 13 years only two Italian clubs will compete in the group stages.

Not since the tournament was expanded to 32 teams in 1999, has Serie A had so few representatives in Europe’s elite competition. And after losing its fourth Champions League spot to the Bundesliga, this surely serves as further evidence of Italian football’s on-going decline.

Juventus and AC Milan are the two sides who will be flying the Italian flag, but it would take a real optimist to truly believe either side can really go on and win the trophy. The bookmaker’s odds of 16-1 for Juve and 25-1 for Milan would seem to confirm this.

It’s quite possible that there has never been a season where Serie A clubs go into the Champions League as such outsiders for the title.

Juventus at least are a team which seems to be on the up. The Bianconeri are the reigning Serie A champions and went the entirety of last season unbeaten. What’s more, they have made some intelligent summer signings in Giovinco, Asamoah and Isla.

However, their widely praised manager Antonio Conte is currently serving a ten month ban for alleged involvement with match fixing whilst at former club Siena. Furthermore, Juve’s squad is relatively inexperienced at this level, with only Gigi Buffon and Andrea Pirlo having regularly appeared in the competition.

Factor in a tough group that contains Chelsea and Shakhtar Donetsk, and the quarter finals would look like a realistic target. Anything more would be a bonus.

As for AC Milan, the Rossoneri are now a pale imitation of the side which dominated the Champions League between 2003 and 2007.

Key players Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva, Alessandro Nesta and Antonio Cassano all left the San Siro this summer and leave a huge void for new signings Zapata, De Jong, Montolivo and Pazzini to fill.

On the bright side, Milan have been dealt a decent hand in the group stage. Getting past Zenit St Petersburg, Malaga and Anderlecht won’t be easy, but they should still make it through.

However, if they do make the knockout stage, it’s very hard to image this current Milan side getting the better of the Spanish giants, Manchester clubs or Bayern Munich in a two legged tie.

So with Champions League glory looking unlikely, perhaps the best chance of Italian success in Europe is the Europa League.

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Serie A clubs have been little short of awful in this competition in recent years and this is one of the main reasons why the Bundesliga was able to usurp the fourth Champions League spot.

Yet with decent sides like Inter, Napoli, Udinese and Lazio featuring this year, there is no reason why at least one Serie A club can’t go on and make a serious challenge for the trophy.

While Italian clubs have often chosen to overlook the Europa League and focus solely on the domestic front, doing so now would be shooting both themselves and Serie A in the foot.

The Europa League is still a prestigious trophy and winning it would certainly delights the fans. What’s more it could go a long way to getting that precious fourth Champions League spot back and that would be a huge benefit to Italian football as a whole.

Over the last two decades of Premier League football, the game has seen some popular players grace the sport. The ones who get the biggest cheer every time they take to the field from their own supporters and quite often earn the grudging respect of the opposition fans as well. Unfortunately, since football is a game of overpaid, overhyped children, there are plenty of players that nobody can stand in the slightest.

These are the ones that attract the boos wherever they go and quite often, their own fans can’t even bear the sight of them. Quite often, this unpopularity isn’t down to their playing ability, but their actual personality and for some footballers, those personalities simply aren’t curable. Others players are hated because of their actions on the field, indeed certain individuals go out there to merely wind the opposition up while others just play like morons. This doesn’t make them any better than those with the ugly personalities, indeed more often this draws the attention of the opposition supporters towards them. With this in mind, we bring you the 20 most hated footballers in the history of the Premier League.

Click on Dennis Wise below to get the ball rolling

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Saturday’s tough trip to MK Dons was made amongst a rhetoric of fearlessness and positivity, of how a young Crewe side would not be intimidated by the imposing Stadium;MK and the promotion chasing team that inhabits it.

Partnered with the Friday loan capture of Colchester midfielder  Andy Bond to vitally boost numbers and one would have been forgiven, especially with club running on the back of a 5 match unbeaten run, for signing up to the bold message the club were trying to transmit.

Unfortunately, the party-line didn’t seem to wash onto the players as MK Dons, as expected, triumphed over a slow-starting Crewe team with the help of an early goal. Charlie MacDonald got it within four minutes, the least the home side deserved for a dominant first half display which would have had travelling fans fearing it could have easily turned into a very handsome defeat. As it were, a much improved second half-display, in which Max Clayton and Ajay Leitch-Smith both missed two golden chances afforded to each, left the Alex coming away from Milton Keynes with a tinge of regret that they did not draw, or maybe even win, what was a very difficult fixture with a side residing in the play-off positions.

The 1-0 defeat spelt the end for the 5 match unbeaten run, but there was enough, particularly from a second-half display that bordered on the unfortunate, to reflect on during the journey back up the M6 to provide a viable feeling that it would not be long until another resilient unbeaten run would be embarked on. MacDonald’s back post finish was only the fourth goal conceded in six games as the defence showed further signs of improvement against a potent forward line that had battered Bury 4-1 away from home the week before. Plus, there was only a two day wait until the Alex were back at home with the prime opportunity to eliminate the defeat from the front of the memory.

Oldham, as if to provide more optimism for the first midweek game of the season at Gresty Road, were housed in the relegation zone on a poor run of just one win in the opening eight games. Yet, football rarely sticks to the script and Steve Davis’ experimental unit were played off the park by Paul Dickov’s fully deserving side to the tune of a 2-0 defeat. Such a score-line may have even, without any attempt at sarcasm, been described as harsh on the visitors who created enough chances to score six or seven. Matt Derbyshire, still showing signs of his quality that saw him register the interest of Manchester United as a youngster, was a constant handful, having two goals disallowed before finally getting himself on the score-sheet with a deserved second which sparked soaves of Crewe fans to vacate the ground in due helpless anger.

A performance of Tuesday’s wretched standard still remains an anomaly however, and there remains a reassurance that the manager, judging by how animated he was on the touchline, will quickly resurrect the slide so a repeat will not occur so soon, but there were still alarm bells ringing loud enough to suggest that Crewe will be likely to be preparing for a relegation battle over the course of this season. That the home side saw one shot on target compared to Oldham’s ten, with the Latics managing a total of 17 shots to Crewe’s measly six was indicative of a grossly one-sided affair littered with error, a performance that saw Steve Davis’ decision to rest Max Clayton and inject a fresh look in the form of the returning Chuks Aneke and Mathias Pogba smashed to smithereens to raise unerring concern.

Captain Luke Murphy, full of endeavour in midfield saw his effort all in vein alongside Colchester loanee Andy Bond who was distinctly unimpressive, as was Aneke, Pogba, Gregor Robertson, Matt Tootle who continues his desperate search for form and rather uncharacteristically Kelvin Mellor. Murphy, Mark Ellis who was superb once more at the heart of the defence and goalkeeper Alan Martin, managing to produce a great display to limit the score at 2, were the only Crewe players to come away from the showing with any credit such was the destitution of the showing. It would be vacant of hyperbole to say that Dean Bouzanis, Oldham’s grateful goalkeeper, will not have an easier evening in his career.

News has quickly emanated from the club in the morning after the Oldham defeat to provide Steve Davis with a new long-term contract which, after the wonderful job the ex-Nantwich man has done at Gresty Road, is the only course of action to take. His achievements will to be too ripe in the memory for any Crewe fan to oppose this on the basis of a stumbling run of form that hit a nadir against Oldham, but yet it is a massive test him and Neil Baker face over the past few weeks, starting on Saturday against Hartlepool, to, whilst competing with the bad fortune of injuries and lack of resources, turn Crewe away from the storm that is threatening to engulf them in League One.

Davis is the man to do such a job and one poor showing should not be enough to convince anybody else otherwise, but there is no doubt that, with his short but spectacular tenure approaching its first year anniversary, to revive the fortunes of a struggling group of players in a tough league will be his toughest assignment yet.

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You can follow me on Twitter @AdamGray1250

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Wow, I’ve not been to Selhurst Park since the opening day defeat to Watford. On that day, another ‘Family Fun Day’ Palace threw away a two goal advantage to lose 3-2.

How times have changed; this Fun Day, despite dominating the early exchanges, Palace contrived to gift Burnley a 2-0 lead after only 29 minutes.

But Palace look good, really good. Well, seven of the players do, the back four looked borderline atrocious, hence the two early goals.

However, Palace are playing some great, expansive attacking football at the moment, and even at 2-0, the game didn’t look beyond them. Four minutes before the break Andre (get) Moritz (out for the lads) threaded a world class, pixel perfect through-ball to the accelerating Wilfried Zaha, who muscled his way into the penalty area and shot home a lifeline.

Seven minutes into the second half and Palace were deservedly level. It was Zaha again who weaved his way into the box before blasting the ball straight at a defender who edged the ball through his own legs and his goalkeeper’s for the equaliser.

Palace, now always in the ascendancy, pushed on and inevitably got the third. A scramble following a corner was put back into the penalty area by Jonny ‘Joniesta’ Williams, and Damien Delaney up from the back, banged the ball through a crowded penalty area.

When Dean Moxey crossed for Glenn Murray to add a fourth (a real number 9’s toe poke),  Palace looked home and dry. But this is Palace, and they did their level best to throw it all away, Austin grabbing a third for Burnley on 81. Despite a late bombardment, a bizarrely long injury time period and some spectacular lack of sportsmanship from Burnley, Palace rode it out to claim their 6th win in 7 games and climb to 4th in the table.

Palace have really improved since the opening day of the season and Bolasie and Moritz look to be useful signings. One of the biggest gripes amongst the Palace fans towards the end of last season and the start of this was the lack of attacking flair and options. The attack now looks more balanced with Bolasie and Zaha operating on opposite flanks and Moritz off Murray. Not only does this create chances for those individuals it also creates space and opportunities for Murray as the striker.

The new signings aside, what has been really impressive has been the improvement from existing players. Jedinak and Dikgacoi are dominating the central midfield,  Zaha seems to have continued his development curve and Murray has already scored as many goals as he did in the whole of last season. Big pats on the back for Dougie and the staff.

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The main area of concern is at the back. The loss of Clyne and Gardner over the summer and McCarthy to injury has left the back four bereft of organisation and talent, no stat emphasises this more than 17 goals conceded in 9 games. I understand that Delaney has been playing well prior to Saturday, but he dropped a clanger against Wolves in the week and looked a little off the pace despite scoring. Blake and Ramage looked decidedly ropey today and Moxey has the odd kamikaze moment in him too. Hopefully this will improve as the season goes on and the players will get used to playing with each other. Last season’s successes were based on a rock solid defence, and it would be a shame if this was sacrificed, albeit for goals at the other end too.

Palace definitely have a touch of the “Keegan’s Newcastle” about them at the moment. More likely to win 4-3, than 1-0, but we’re now up to 4th place in the league and above Brighton, Charlton and Millwall. Who’s complaining?

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Republic of Ireland put their recent drubbing by Germany behind them by beating Faroe Islands 4-1 on Tuesday night.

Marc Wilson, Jonathan Walters, a Pol Justinussen own goal and Darren O’Dea were all on target in the convincing win for the Emerald Isle.

Giovanni Trapattoni’s future as head coach has been under question, but the Italian has stated that he is confident that his job is safe.

“We have in November another game. I expect. We started three games ago – we have won two games, we have lost one against the best team [in Group C]. It’s not my decision,” he told Sky Sports.

“I know what I can do, but it’s not my decision. I don’t have a problem. For me, it’s my job. I say always I am proud to be the manager of this team with these players.

“We have discovered many, many young players in the last three years and sometimes we can lose. Football is like this.

“In other countries, people know Trapattoni is a professional man, and that is a great honour.

“There is a very simple sentence in my history: the winners has 100 fathers, the losers are orphans.

“Football associations change like the wind, they can change in a second,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, Germany and Sweden met in Group C also, with a dramatic 4-4 draw in Berlin.

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The hosts went 4-0 up through goals from Per Mertesacker, Mesut Ozil and a Miroslav Klose brace, but spectacularly the Swedes scored four times in the last 31 minutes to grab a point.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Mikael Lustig, Johan Elmander and Rasmus Elm were all on target in the miraculous comeback.

By Gareth McKnight

Yohan Cabaye feels that Newcastle did well to secure a draw at Anfield this Sunday.

Cabaye struck the Magpies’ one goal of the match before half-time, his second so far this season, which made him Newcastle’s first goal scorer at Anfield in almost eight years.

However, Luis Suarez’s impressive goal gave Liverpool a draw, and Newcastle were not helped by the dismissal of captain Fabricio Coloccini following a lunge on Suarez.

Nevertheless, Cabaye feels that it was good the Magpies at least got a point from the game.

He said to Newcastle’s official website: “It was a good point from a very hard and difficult away game. In the first ten minutes they put us under a lot of pressure but we stayed solid and they didn’t have a really good chance to score. It was really important that we didn’t concede early on because it meant we stayed in the game. After 20-25 minutes we kept the ball better, played in their half and had a few chances before my goal. Going in 1-0 at half-time but the goal we conceded in the second half we could have done much better with. However, a point here is a good point.”

Cabaye also talked of how he felt happy at scoring, but would have felt happier if he had won the game for the Magpies.

He said: “Last season I touched the ball and Agger scored an own goal, so maybe I like this stadium. But I am always happy when we score, wherever we play, and I want to keep scoring to help the team get better and keep winning. I have scored away at Sunderland and Liverpool away this season, and now I want to score at St James’ Park. I saw the ball go in and was happy but I would have been more happy if the goal gave us three points.”

Newcastle are now in tenth position in the Premier League table with 14 points.

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As Rodger’s seems overly keen to stress his need for strikers in this coming window, so I will carrying on from a previous article, by offering a set of alternative targets  that Liverpool are more Likely to  achieve.

Suarez has stormed the Premier League this term by scoring 10 goals so far, to put him at the top of the scoring charts. However this only papers up the cracks for Liverpool, as they have been sorely missing the striker they needed to sign in the summer. This time round Rodgers is rumoured to have been given 10 million to spend, which is still not a lot of money, especially for the amount of players he wants. So I think you can expect a lot of wheeling and dealing happening in January  as the manager looks to recycle some dead wood to fund his transfer activities.

Still I think the calibre of player that Liverpool can expect to get in this window, is probably future squad player material. He stated very early on that he was not one for snobbery and given the constraints at the moment, I could see Liverpool going in for a few surprise names. One of which i think will be reminiscent for the Anfield faithful.

At the moment Tom Ince represents the one that got away for Liverpool fans. Having scored 24 goals so far this season, Ince has made a fantastic impact at Bloomfield Road, earning him many plaudits. Which springs to mind the question, why did Liverpool let him go in the first place. Having left before Rodgers took in charge , Tom Ince’s departure in no part has any connection to Rodgers at all, which is why I think this deal will fly at all. Having already given such stars as Suso and Sterling a run in the team, Rodgers has opened the door to other talented young players by issuing the message “If your good enough, your old enough”. This coupled with the fact we command part of the fee already, hints that he may get his man. A much cheaper alternative to Walcott, especially in the wage department.

Now the next target would depend on many things. Apparently Giuseppi Rossi has been lined with a cut-price move to anfield,  as Villarreal look to ease financial worries. As no price is mentioned I can only assume it is a reasonable price, as the statement “cut-price” is only relative to the writer. However I believe if they were to sell it would in the region of 10 million pound. Obviously this would depend on sales, but for the player it would be a very good deal. The only problem is his injury, having purchased player before with injuries Liverpool may be wary of this deal. However it is a very temping one indeed…

The final player that I expect Liverpool to get is Jeffren. Having been linked with this player before, Liverpool will know all about him. Having had a very lackluster start to his Sport Lisbon career, Jeffren has been looking for an escape-route and he may find it on loan to Liverpool. Although he wouldn’t be the ideal choice for Liverpool fans, the possess skill and quality and would provide a cheap solution for the time being, as Liverpool look to ship out the Money grubbers Joe Cole and Stuart Downing.

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However Liverpool get, it will be interesting to see who Rodgers gets for his money.

Both Andre Villas-Boas and Brendan Rodgers were badly let down by their owners in the summer with concerns to Tottenham’s and Liverpool’s movement and dealings in the transfer market and a repeat performance in January, with both still harbouring very real hopes of a top four finish at the moment, must not be allowed to happen again.

With each manager enjoying their first season in their respective jobs, it’s interesting that both felt they didn’t quite have the stock to stand up to Daniel Levy and John W. Henry, as you’d have thought that  head coach never wields so much power and currency as when they’ve first been brought to the club.

The job on both of their hands is a similar one – negotiate the club through a period of relative instability and restore them on a consistent basis to the higher echelons of the top flight, with securing the Holy Grail that is safe passage into the Champions League group stages, with all the benefits it brings such as wealth, power and status the main aim.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop Levy taking control of negotiations during the summer and while many, rather strangely considering what a safe and solid financial footing he has put the club in under his stewardship, have taken to criticising him for their lack of movement in securing preferred targets.

With the side sat in fifth in the league table at present, behind Everton in fourth on goal difference, considering the sheer pace of change at White Hart Lane over the past few months, ranging from a new manager, coaching staff, training ground, style of play and departure of several key players, coupled with the media’s near obsessive agenda to try and paint the Portuguese man at the helm as some sort of clown, they are well on course for a good season at the moment.

The main critique often levelled at Levy is that he is a businessman first and foremost and that he doesn’t listen to the needs of the fans. It happened when he club let Dimitar Berbatov leave on the final day of the transfer window to go to Manchester United in 2008 and the dithering over the Joao Moutinho deal, even after an extension had been granted, left them just hours to complete a complex move. As a result, Villas-Boas has been robbed of the natural heir to the Croatian in midfield and they remain heavily reliant on Moussa Dembele.

They lack control in the middle of the park and unfathomably seemed to prioritise tying up a deal for France international goalkeeper Hugo Lloris instead, despite the club already possessing the very serviceable Brad Friedel, which has only served to create more problems further down the line than it has solutions.

Moreover, you sense that the signing of Gylfi Sigurdsson was very much a pre-meditated move by Levy and that Villas-Boas was simply forced to give a tacit agreement to the deal upon signing on the dotted line as manager. While it’s difficult to doubt Levy’s ability to get great deal for the club, with the ‘financial partnership’ agreements involved with the Modric to Real Madrid switch sure to benefit the club financially for years to come, on top of the £33m fee, the 35-year-old boss needs to be given more of a say and more control over player recruitment and Levy needs to sanction early deals in several ears of the side that need addressing; namely a replacement for Modric, a new centre-back, cover at full-back and perhaps even another centre-forward, with string case to be made for either Klaas-Jan Huntelaar or Fernando Llorente in January.

Switching back to Anfield, though, and the constraints placed on Rodgers are equally as frustrating but for entirely different reasons. The focus from Fenway Sports Group (FSG) and chairman Tom Werner and owner John W. Henry in particular has been to drastically reshape the club from within, with an emphasis on reducing the hefty wage bill of paramount importance.

This has seen useful fringe players such as Dirk Kuyt, Maxi Rodriguez and Craig Bellamy all leave, while Andy Carroll and Jay Spearing were farmed out on loan and Charlie Adam moved on to Stoke on deadline day. It’s fair to say that the 39-year-old has held up his end of the bargain and the situation whereby he has had to rely on a number of youngsters to pad out a threadbare squad has been foisted upon him, all while trying to engineer some sort of Europa League campaign at the same time.

The balancing act always meant that things were likely to slip through the net, though, and with Rodgers speaking about ‘operational issues’ after the travesty that was the summer transfer window for the club, he was left with just one senior forward to rely upon for six months, with managing director Ian Ayre once again proving that he’s simply not cut out for this sort of level.

Quite why Andy Carroll was allowed to leave on loan without a replacement already in the door is anyone’s guess, and FSG’s refusal to go above £3.5m for Clint Dempsey was ill-advised at best, seemingly trying to make up for the ruinous excesses of the previous 18 months with one flail swing to get themselves back into the game. Rodgers torpedoed any move for Chelsea forward Daniel Sturridge due to a reluctance to part ways with £15m for a player of questionable temperament, with the player refusing a loan deal. That despite all of this, the club sit just four points outside of the top four is somewhat impressive, even if they sit as low as 10th in the table.

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Neither club can claim with any sort of certainty that they have a top four place all but sown up at this stage in the season, and negotiating a fair price for any player can often prove tricky in January, but the extent to which both managers were hindered in the summer by their owners, therefore creating the conditions by which their jobs were made much more difficult for a number of months means they are owed a debt of gratitude.

Nobody is asking for silly money to bandied about willy nilly, but sensible, long-term purchases to improve both squads in key areas where they lack depth is a necessity, and it’s time for both Levy and Henry to back the men at the helm that they have emplaced so much trust in to shepherd them through this period of transition with the sort of support that is not only required, but should be mandatory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m40pMwmvOME

Each season it appears as though at least one club supposedly falls victim in the face of the demands of the Europa League.  Is the competition an unwelcome distraction? Or just one in a whole line of excuses teams use to justify poor league displays?

There is certaintly a haziness over the value of the cup with sides not knowing how to approach it. Platini himself even appears confused as to whether it works after suggesting a 64 team Champions League to try and add some impetus to European football as a whole.

The blurred lines between the two European competitions already has been created at the knockout phases of the Europa League when 3rd place teams from the Champions League groups enter the trophy. Whilst finishing 3rd in the initial phases of the most elite option is frustrating, rewarding failure surely is a farcical idea, and should be scrapped immediately to restore dignity to the Europa League.

Thursday night football certaintly does not help the cause, it isolates the competition. If the trophy is not to become stale, then surely playing all European football all on the same evening would make sense.  It would help psychologically help the players, and give them an increased rest period. They could then treat it with respect and the fans would still watch their team play, even if given a variety of options. Just because Barcelona may be playing AC Milan does not mean Tottenham fans suddenly have a dilemma whether to watch their team if they are on the same evening.

If we are to put the issues with the competition to one side, does the competition actually prove detrimental for the teams that enter it? There is no escaping the fact that is has an effect, with squads being tested to breaking point.

Newcastle this time round have had their squad tested to its very limit and have been littered with injuries as a result. Alan Pardew was quick to thank his supporters for their patience following Monday night’s 3-0 victory over Wigan, with the side suffering four league defeats in a row prior to this. It is not a mere coincidence that they happen to be in bad form as well as being in the Europa League, it has weighed down Newcastle. Pardew was quick to say as much in his post-match interview with Sky Sports saying about the Europa League “It’s really difficult puts us at a major disadvantage.  Thursday to Sunday just doesn’t work. It’s a great competition hopefully we can give our fans some away trips in the New Year and something to shout about.”

He has a point too; it hardly seems fair when you consider that Newcastle had to travel to Belgium and back before facing West Ham a few weeks ago at St James’ Park. West Ham were far fresher and had longer to prepare for their visit to Tyneside. If the Magpies were to be able to handle both competitions then surely having an extra 24 hours rest is crucial. Earlier in the season they had to play Chelsea on the Saturday after a trip to Martimo with there being just a 48 hour recovery period for the players, and they were duly dispatched 2-0 at Stamford Bridge as a result.

Liverpool haven’t exactly sparkled either, struggling to strike a balance between the league and Europe, as they languish in 11th position. The striking problems at Anfield have made such outings even more painful for Rodgers’s side. They have had to call upon Luis Suarez in some of these ties to secure a positive result, when he needs to be rested as they can ill afford an injury or burn out to the on form Uruguayan. Birmingham City too were unable to take it within their stride in the Championship, and it ultimately cost them promotion. They had to fit extra games into what is an already gruelling 46 game campaign, before any potential playoffs. The team had completely run out of gas by the time they faced Blackpool in the semi-final of last season’s playoffs as the Tangerines brushed them aside.

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Tottenham’s attitude to the competition had been to view it as a breeding ground to their young players such as Jake Livermore before they can be integrated into the first team. This has meant that Spurs were still able to register successful league campaigns, finishing 4th twice under Harry Redknapp. This tactic does not come without shortfalls though. For those fans that paid to see Tottenham field an understrength side in both the Ukraine and White Hart Lane in the last 32 in 2009, against Shaktar, were left dismayed. The supporters expressed their anger at their manager’s disregard for the competition. It certaintly wouldn’t be stupid to claim that Redknapp’s attitude to the Europa League played its part in a large section of Spurs fans not being all that devastated when the club parted ways with Harry ‘Houdini’ last season. So it shows that even if you keep all your players fresh rather than using them in the competition you come a cropper, the hangover the trophy provides for fixtures preceding it is unavoidable.

Similarly, a lot of Tottenham fans are worried that now AVB is taking the Europa League seriously it could cause their league form to suffer, which they desperately don’t want with the side surprisingly sitting in the top 4. The fans are aware that this season is as good a chance as ever to qualify for next seasons Champions League. If they are to avoid the curse of the Europa League they will need to heavily reinforce their squad. Essentially the Europa League is only worth the hassle if the team and its supporters accept the competition as the sole focus of their season, and this I feel is too much of a bitter pill to swallow.