calscot

I think the wages are the main factor and I assume some of the money will go towards that rather than transfer fees - although 5m doesn't exactly go far these days even in the bargain basement.

RTFP! Or just get someone to explain it to you.

Seems to me that third or fourth makes little difference except for playing away first.

You can hit the corner flag with the most horrendous of sliced shots or hit the post with a cracker and they count the same as a shot off target. Same with a shot on target, it can be a wonder save or as tame as a back pass. Terrible quality of metrics.

He was shouting for it and then seemed surprised to get it, but took his time and hit it hard while leaning back with a side foot - which always goes high. Side foot needs to be less forceful to keep it on the ground and just pass it in. On the Albertz pass, it did get VV a bit behind his stride and he didn't adjust his body well... but it was such a gift there's no excuse...

I'm speaking hypothetically...

Walter says he was replaced by his non-footballing twin brother after that. Everyone remembers him for that and how bad he was afterwards, but he was a very good player for us before the miss.

It seems they use the country coeff from 2015 and the team coeff from 2016... That's a shame and a massive blow to us as it's going to be very hard to qualify, a seeded place up to Q4 would have made the journey relatively much easier.

Same for Benfica.

I think you're right as Lisbon have the coeff for 2016...

If you look in the qualification for 16/17 page it says: 23 Scotland 17.900---------------------------------------- CL1= (ch/Q2) CW= (eu/Q2) EL2= (eu/Q1) EL3= (eu/Q1) That says Scotland's coeff is 17.900 Now the country ranking for 2015 is: [TABLE=class: t1, width: 100%] [TR] [TD]22[/TD] [TD=align: left]Denmark[/TD] [TD]6.700[/TD] [TD]3.100[/TD] [TD]3.300[/TD] [TD]3.800[/TD] [TD]2.900[/TD] [TD]19.800[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]23[/TD] [TD=align: left]Scotland[/TD] [TD]3.600[/TD] [TD]2.750[/TD] [TD]4.300[/TD] [TD]3.250[/TD] [TD]4.000[/TD] [TD]17.900[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]24[/TD] [TD=align: left]Sweden[/TD] [TD]2.600[/TD] [TD]2.900[/TD] [TD]5.125[/TD] [TD]3.200[/TD] [TD]3.900[/TD] [TD]17.725[/TD] [TD]5 [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] and 2016: [TABLE=class: t1, width: 100%] [TR] [TD]24[/TD] [TD=align: left]Denmark[/TD] [TD]3.100[/TD] [TD]3.300[/TD] [TD]3.800[/TD] [TD]2.900[/TD] [TD]5.500[/TD] [TD]18.600[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]25[/TD] [TD=align: left]Scotland[/TD] [TD]2.750[/TD] [TD]4.300[/TD] [TD]3.250[/TD] [TD]4.000[/TD] [TD]3.000[/TD] [TD]17.300[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]26[/TD] [TD=align: left]Azerbaijan[/TD] [TD]1.375[/TD] [TD]3.000[/TD] [TD]2.500[/TD] [TD]3.625[/TD] [TD]4.375[/TD] [TD]14.875[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] So need to check further...

I always thought that it was the previous year's coeffs as this years are still being calculated. Has it changed? It makes a massive difference as we achieved about 12 points in 2011 with Walter - and five since. 113 to 267 is a huge drop.

I think we are touch and go for seed for round 4 but leaning slightly on being seeded. That's massive as it could mean avoiding the teams from the big 5.

Or maybe a miracle and that's where Celtic will be...

Hearts and Aberdeen will be in the first round...

Ironically, in this boom time for other Scottish clubs with Rangers in the lower divisions, our second placed team in the top league, Aberdeen, have a coeff of 4.580. The best club outside Celtic are Motherwell at 8.08. Celtic are on 39.08 at 55th place. We're 113th and ranked above all teams currently already qualified including West Ham. I think it's safe to say we'll be seeded.

I think we're actually on 17.08... I believe it's the 2015 ranking that's used...

We have better than 50-50 chance of winning it and football is partly about dreaming of success. I think it's ok for us to look ahead at what if, less so for the players...

An Englishman doing something special in Scotland, and you think of Ireland..?

For me they can have the "zombies" - although I think it's funny that in the Rangers end there were Rangers banners and in the Celtic end, there were Rangers banners... The "Hun scum" is a different kettle of fish, and the biggest offence for me is that if the authorities punish Rangers for less but leave this be then it makes Rangers fans second class citizens. That's not on. It's more than just about the punishment, the lack of it condones it, encourages more, and skews the already biased reporting to justify saying we're sectarian and they are not. I'm not sectarian, and yet by default I have my character defamed by the press on a regular basis.

I agree Ball played deep and our full backs bombed forward so it's about semantics, that's like a five in defence that turns to a three in attack to me. I said it was "arguably", which had a context to an earlier post which was being simplistic and glibly dismissing five at the back. I can't believe people didn't see all the long balls... It was mostly out of necessity against a stronger side than we normally play, so I don't even see how it even can be usual to other games. This game and the way we played was definitely not typical - although the basis of the tactics had the same foundations, we had to adapt to a much better side than we are used to playing, which in most cases we did incredibly well.

We really must have been, I was getting pretty frustrated with a lot of them as they were incredibly poor and either went out or to a Celtic player. Some were just unnecessary and maybe down to tiredness or lack of ideas. I take it you didn't see the noticeable number of clearances by Foderingham as well as some of the goal kicks which were generally poor also? They were more prevalent in the second half and the longer the match went on, when Celtic pressed much higher up the park at times. I watched it on a stream so can't play it again in fast forward to count them... I don't particularly mind the number of them, although I think it would have been better to be less, but the pass completion was very low which is worrying. For me it demonstrated we need to be able to do them well. As I've said before, if you're predictable and refuse to change then the opposition can take advantage of it - if you always pass short then they hassle your defenders more and more - but if you send the odd one over their heads, they can be well short of numbers at the back, which keeps them having to be careful and not pressing too much. Luckily, that's what we did but they benefited from that as well.

I just don't get that sort of thinking (wrt the BB)... "I want to sing what is considered sectarian lyrics so much, I don't give a crap about how much trouble it makes for the club..." If we had more fans with any sense we could have changed the lyrics years ago and still sung the song with impunity. The Sash has got to be about the sissiest sounding song in football. "Do you like my beautiful sash...?" Cringeworthy. Never once sang that. I get singing a song to motivate the team, I get a bit of winding up, I can get a bit or sentimentality or a national anthem, or a celebration song, but there's something a bit funny peculiar to me when people take compulsive singing of irrelevant and anachronistic songs so very, very seriously. It's a game of football after all...

What a lot of Rangers fans don't seem to realise is that if all the sectarian crap is about getting it up them, then being squeeky clean in this regard would piss them off even more. I don't think there is much dignity in highlighting their sins as it smacks of their obsession with us, but I'd rather fans went down that road if they feel the need to do something with hate, rather than something that brings the club down. There are songs you just need to tweak the words a bit or we can moving into this century and make some new ones - do people really like singing hymn tunes etc rather than modern tunes from good bands?

Got to slightly disagree with this as we arguably did have five at the back, and there was a very high number of long balls which is not anywhere in plan A - and our lack of practice in this showed. I think it demonstrated that we do need to tweak plan A to cope better with teams that press us high up the pitch - although this may not happen too often outside Celtic and Europe.