Europa League Teams In Draw Tomorrow

[craig 5,199]

Statistical comparisons of a team's record in Europe over a decade or two will rarely be an exact science, but it's still more relevant than looking at one individual result from a decade ago. To do it properly would take a fair amount of working out though because we've played a lot more CL games than Maribor have in that period where they've played 34 CL games.

 

FWIW, even if we do look back to that 6-1 agg win over them a decade ago, they actually came to Ibrox and went in leading 0-1 at half time IIRC, but we tore them apart in the second half.

 

It's all fine and well to say what type of teams we should be beating in Europe, but history proves that you don't always beat the teams you think you should be beating. You can be sure that Man U thought they should have been beating us at Old Trafford last season, but we took a draw off them and they were lucky to get a win at Ibrox.

 

Over a decade or two it wont be any more relevant at all than looking at an individual result 10 years ago. Looking at their european form over the last 20 years is completely irrelevant to what kind of team they are now - same as is the case for calscot's referral (which wasnt meant as some kind of comparison anyway) of the individual aggregate score 10 years ago.

 

Neither team has the same players as it did last year, let alone 10 or 20 years ago. There really is no comparison of the two teams that is relevant in terms of the likelihood of us progressing this time around.

 

It matters not Zappa, we SHOULD be beating teams of the calibre of Maribor. I am not saying we will - we all know that football is unpredictable but we still SHOULD be beating these teams.

[Zappa 0]

Over a decade or two it wont be any more relevant at all than looking at an individual result 10 years ago. Looking at their european form over the last 20 years is completely irrelevant to what kind of team they are now - same as is the case for calscot's referral (which wasnt meant as some kind of comparison anyway) of the individual aggregate score 10 years ago.

 

Neither team has the same players as it did last year, let alone 10 or 20 years ago. There really is no comparison of the two teams that is relevant in terms of the likelihood of us progressing this time around.

 

It matters not Zappa, we SHOULD be beating teams of the calibre of Maribor. I am not saying we will - we all know that football is unpredictable but we still SHOULD be beating these teams.

 

In one sense you're saying it's irrelevant to look at this team's record in Europe and then you're straight afterwards saying that we should be beating this type of team. So what are you using to define parameters that lead you to say we should beat this team?? Have you watched them recently? I haven't watched them myself, so I can't say for sure whether we should be beating them or not. We thought we should be beating the Romanian champions Unirea a couple of seasons ago, but we didn't. We thought we should be beating the Swedish champions Malmo, but we didn't.

 

Saying that European competition records are irrelevant (which I partly agree with btw!) then in the next breath saying we should be beating a team that we know very little about OTHER than their European competition record as well as the fact that they are champions and the most successful team in Slovenia seems a bit contradictory to me because a club's current domestic league form combined with their European competition record is all we have to go on. If a club like Maribor has consistently done semi ok in Europe over a decade or two and occasionally punched above their weight like ourselves, then it's surely relevant to take that into account when considering what sort of team we've just been drawn against.