[han2503]

All CL talk for the new season here

[han2503]

Maybe. But we don't deserve to be. The top 5 of England and Spain are better than the top 3 of the other leagues if taken cumulatively. FFS, Roma can't even get past Porto.

Nah, England is basically just steam rolling everyone because of all the money in the league. When you have relegation contenders battling it out for the best players simply because they can and are financially stronger than clubs in Italy/Germany/Spain (outside of Real and Barca), then you know you have a problem. The EPL has skewed things so widely that it's going to become a one horse race if things in the other leagues do not improve.

This is fair. Italy has historically been stronger in Europe than England and despite all of it's financial/structural short-comings is still putting teams in the competition that are doing better than their English counter-parts and aren't so far off from England in the co-efficients.

What this does though is continue to beat down the smaller clubs and clubs from France and Portugal

It's hard to say who deserves to pass and who doesn't. That kind of criteria won't bring us anywhere, because by today's standards the EPL is almost stronger then the CL. Also, yesterday I watched Dinamo Zagreb and Red Bull Salzburg: do these two teams deserve to be in the CL? Compared to both Porto and Roma they are miles away. So, the system with weaker opponents fighting each others while Italian, French, Spanish and Portugese clubs are bound to face each other is also unfair.

From what I can think, this change of rules will give clubs like Roma, Napoli, etc more breathing space, a more secure environment that will ultimately make them stronger and more adapted to CL football.

Agreed. Plus I think the entire co-efficient system is BS. The fact that Germany took Italy's spot because their teams were doing well in the EL league while Italian teams were winning the CL but were shitty in the EL says it all

It's kinda sad though that what will eventually bring us back to the CL are new rules rather than our own strengths, unless by some miracle we finish 3rd this season.

First we have to make it to 4th. We're not even capable of getting into the EL atm, so we'll see if this will even effect us