Tannochsidebear 2,306 Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 At the outset of this tournament with our ranking being so low as to ensure we were going to be unseeded for 4 rounds of qualifiers it looked almost impossible to reach the group stages. The list of seeded teams was so strong that we needed a miracle to avoid all the big guns waiting in the draw. Step forward the unique system where the draws are made in advance of the ties being played. We were the seeded team for the first round and got Shkupi who were around the middle of the unseeded rankings, which was fair enough. We then somehow managed to draw Osijek, ranked 33 of the 37 seeded teams and we avoided Seville, Besiktas, Atalanta, Aalkmar, Leipzig who would surely all have been far too strong for us at this stage. As an unseeded side for the third round draw, we again got lucky drawing the 15th ranked side Maribor and avoiding the likes of Zenit, Basel, Olympiakos, Feyenoord as well as Seville and others. Then the real slice of luck in that as Maribor were 11th highest of the 26 sides in our draw, they became a seed and as their opponent, by default so did we. This meant that instead of Seville, Zenit, Basel, Besiktas, Olympiakos, Copenhagen, Braga, Bucharest, gent, genk, Maccabi or Feyenoord we get Ufa or Progres! While it is certainly true that Maribor have had some fairly impressive results in Europe over the last few years, including beating 4 Scottish sides in the last decade or so, we really couldnt have got this much better and if we can continue to defend as well as we have done this season to date, we will have a really good chance of making the group stages and some much needed European pooled tv income, nevermind the 3 additional sellouts at Ibrox where we can test ourselves against some good sides. 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster. 4,808 Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 (edited) Couple of things......... 1. Progres are obviously not of the 'absolute bottom draw minnow pushover category' they were given when they beat us last season. In two seasons they've got through 3 qualifiers with teams from Scotland, Azerbaijan and Hungary. 2. There was a gap of six years between European ties from 2011 to 2017, also between Maribor and Progres. There might be a gap of 1 week this time. Edited August 6, 2018 by buster. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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