Other Games - 2024/25

[Dante Lavelli]

TBF to Garde, and I'm stretching, we only got 17 all season. 12 in 20 is better than I thought it would be.

God, that season was a fucking horrible experience...and the preceding five years had been shit too. The end of Lambert was like getting out of prison, then immediately booking in for a checkup with your friendly local GP Dr. H Shipman.

Thankfully seems a long time ago.  Worth remembering that it arguably started when Randy lost interest stopped bankrolling us. Our current owners show no sign of bailing but it does emphasise how critical growing income could become.

[Smithy]

I'd imagine most seasons now we'll have at least 8 in Europe every year.

I think it was you who made the point that having 8 lessens your chance of getting the coefficient high enough.

Well, the coefficient is divided by the number of teams you have playing in Europe, so as long as those 8 do okay, the coefficient does okay.  The difficulty will come if a team has a shocker in Europe, and goes out early, hardly winning a game. That drags everyone else down with them.  But the strength of the Premier League is such that you'd imagine any side capable of qualifying for Europe is going to be good enough to give a decent account of themselves in Europe.  Look at West Ham winning the Conference while being decidedly mediocre in the league that year.

Having five teams left in it at the quarter-final stages of all competitions is pretty good going, I don't see us being able to do that every year (not everyone can be Aston Villa), but as long as we have teams getting to knockout rounds, and a few making semis and finals, we should keep our extra Champions League place.

[Dave]

I'd imagine most seasons now we'll have at least 8 in Europe every year.

I think it was you who made the point that having 8 lessens your chance of getting the coefficient high enough.

Well, the coefficient is divided by the number of teams you have playing in Europe, so as long as those 8 do okay, the coefficient does okay.  The difficulty will come if a team has a shocker in Europe, and goes out early, hardly winning a game. That drags everyone else down with them.  But the strength of the Premier League is such that you'd imagine any side capable of qualifying for Europe is going to be good enough to give a decent account of themselves in Europe.  Look at West Ham winning the Conference while being decidedly mediocre in the league that year.

Having five teams left in it at the quarter-final stages of all competitions is pretty good going, I don't see us being able to do that every year (not everyone can be Aston Villa), but as long as we have teams getting to knockout rounds, and a few making semis and finals, we should keep our extra Champions League place.

Yeah, the "divided by eight" thing definitely has an impact, but in most cases that should be trumped by the added wealth and quality of the English teams.

Assuming the eight teams are the current top eight:

Liverpool
Arsenal
Forest
Chelsea
Newcastle
Us
Man City
Fulham

Then Fulham will almost certainly be the strongest team in the Conference League, pick any two of the other seven and are they going to be any worse than this Man Utd and this Spurs, both of whom have coasted to the quarter finals in the Europa League more or less in their sleep.

Then the other five, are they going to finish outside the top 24 in the Champions League, with a couple of them going a bit further?

Obviously Forest are the wild-card in all that, but it feels like it'll be top five = Champions League more often than not.

[ADVILLAFAN]

How many points per game have Leicester won, since RVN took over? They seem to lose every match.

[cdbearsfan]

7 points from 17 games. 0.41 per game. Worryingly, given Southampton's next opponents, they did win his first game, at home against a claret and blue team.

[paul_e]

It's worth remembering that for this season we were 3rd despite Man U and Newcastle getting 2 wins between them. Both of them finishing bottom of their groups and not even dropping to the Europa played a big part in us missing out on the place.

[Somniloquism]

How many points per game have Leicester won, since RVN took over? They seem to lose every match.

7 points in 17. Won against West Ham (RVN Debut) And Spurs (Jan). 10 in 13 before he was appointed. Since the Spurs game, they have lost all seven league games without even scoring a goal and conceding 18.

[ADVILLAFAN]

Cheers, so 0.412 for RVN.

[Mellin]

Mad that they got rid of Cooper whilst outside the relegation zone. Their squad is so shit. Shouting out for a progressive manager with those players, when they were doing exactly what they needed to...grind.

Think they'd have gone anyway, but had a better chance before.