The9

I saw Stiff Little Fingers at T in the Park earlier this month, and I've seen Eddie and the Hot Rods in Southampton recently too, and I wasn't old enough to remember either of them despite being in my 40s.

The early stages of the JPT were split North/South and then East/West within that split as well, so if they stick with that (and don't put us and them in different sides of the east/west sections) it's pretty likely. This is from last year: http://www.newsatden.co.uk/49546-millwall-to-know-jpt-first-round-opponents-on-saturday.html "Millwall are among eight teams in the South (East) section with Colchester United, Dagenham and Redbridge, Northampton Town, Cambridge United, Leyton Orient, Luton Town and Peterborough. Should they progress they will face one of the four sides (Crawley Town, Southend United, Gillingham and Stevenage) who received byes to round two." The Skates aren't listed so they were in the South (West) section last time, which means if they stay there, as we're further west than them we'll be in the same section. They'll then have a 3/15 chance (1/5) of playing Saints U23s. There are 16 groups of 4 teams and 64 sides in total, which most likely will be evenly split by region into 4 groups per region. This is all depending on the regionalisation being east/west as well as North/South.

The thing I realised today is that Barnsley are the holders, and not allowed to defend their title as they're a Championship club now, but because of the Prem clubs rejecting the invitation there are now Championship clubs who've been invited to compete with their academy side. It's all a bit of a mess.

The Premier League U21 League doesn't exist any more either.

Not that they're scrambling to get people to accept or anything...

I saw TWO Portsmouth shirts in the wild today. That's the most I've seen in about 5 years apart from watching Newport beat them. Though to be fair I was in Havant.

We don't know if we'll have any long distance ones yet - we could end up with Anderlecht, Lille and Dundalk (which I'd be fine with, tbf, though I have been to Lille in the past 6 weeks) - the key thing that's come home for me is that we were already playing this time last year, and the weather in Europe is going to be a little different from July/August of last year to the group stage period of September to December this time around.

There would be a thread about us "not buying anyone" by June.

And Mahrez and Kante. Don't forget how they definitely didn't want to leave the Champions, who have Champions League matches this season, let's not forget. We won't pay unsustainable money, other clubs will, and you should probably get used to it.

We might struggle, we might not. It'll be down to how many injuries and suspensions we get and when they happen, because the squad is decent enough to be nowhere near the bottom half without a streak on unavailable players.

Javi de Pedro from Real Sociedad. Javi the fan actually worked for Glenn Hoddle's Spanish Academy for a little while about 5 years ago. I moved down here 10 years ago too. The Skacel joke seems a LOT older than 10 years ago but I'm fine with it being that long ago for the actual transfer, I've moved house 5 times since then, and gone from "passably decent at football" through "doesn't run much" to "haven't kicked a ball in 2 years".

Obviously not but there's a big old window of delay to get stuff booked before the club confirms the fixtures for people who know how to work it out.

Yep, and if you wait a bit longer you'll get to pay even more for hotels and flights too.

FWIW Spurs had the dates of matches up on the draw day by 12:48pm last season so shouldn't be a big wait... about 15 minutes following the draw. http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/europa-league-group-stage-draw-280815/

Oh, and that "positioning teams in the group" for the fixtures does not take place on that video - though it definitely takes place. That's a bit of a p155er given that we won't be able to book anything until we know which position number we are! I wonder if UEFA do that to discourage people from booking until "officially confirmed" so they can sod about with kick off times for tv markets, etc.

FWIW, I'm just watching the draw, and (apart from being DULL) they drew Pot 1 A through to L without any issues, as you'd expect. Then the first ball from Pot 2 was Lazio, who were put into the blue half and Group G (rather than Group A) because there was already an Italian team (Napoli) in the red half (in Group A). When Fiorentina came out later they were placed into Group I rather than F. They'd also already picked Besiktas when "F" was alphabetically next, but placed them into Group H on the other side of the draw, presumably because they needed to keep the slot in Group F free for a team still in the Pot 2 bowl which had a team from the same nation already drawn in the other half of Pot 1 (Group G-L). I bet that gets messy by Pot 3 and I can see why they needed a computer to show "available pots". Watching on (16 minutes in), it was because Braga was in Pot 2 and needed to go in the opposite side of the draw to Pot 1's Sporting (Lisbon) so they had to keep Group F open until they were drawn - which actually meant filling up H,I,J and K first. That actually means if you're super-smart and hyper-quick you can cut the number of possible opponents down immediately when a team from a country with 2 (or 4) representatives gets drawn into the other half of the draw. So based on this principle [assuming only Saints and Man U qualify] when Man U come out we'll know if we're in A-F or G-L and who we can and can't get depending on which other nations are in the other half of the draw (so the other nation from their country would be in the Saints half of the draw).

They definitely allocated slots - when you look at last season's seeding pots and then fixtures there's no correlation between pot and when the team played home/away fixtures. Also - here's the 2015/16 draw in full and they explain the entire process in the first 2 minutes and 42 seconds. The phrase "at the end of the draw, the computer will allocate the teams to their position in the group" is at 02'30" " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHfS2M0LWK4&list=PLaInLm0_SCt5lU70_VujAVwHfA8xARi2u&index=59 As for the rest of the process: You can't play a team from the same nation, so to avoid that in the group stage draw last year so what they did was split the groups into A-F and G-L ("red" and "blue" groups) to ensure teams from the same national associations were separated - that might be different this year if 3 clubs from any one nation get through (eg Man U, Saints and West Ham from the qualifying stage) they'll have to split into more blocks, or maybe just place a team in a group to ensure it's away from the other 2. Italy had 4 teams in the draw last time and they were paired up into different halves, with "the computer" separating them in the actual draw (by shifting teams over to the other half if there was a potential nation clash). In 2015/16 all the games in "red" or "blue" groups kicked off at the same time as the other games in the same red or blue group (either 6pm or 8pm), 3 matches of each. So we're guaranteed three 6pm kick offs and three 8pm kick offs. That will be the same no matter how many clubs from one particular nation make it through as logically there are still only two sets of kick off times. They also kept Russian and Ukrainian sides apart, fwiw using the same red/blue principle. It's computerised to "help" but as a basic principle, the order of the draw is Pot 1 (top seeds) and they are placed into the first alphabetically available group, so starting with Group A (subject to the previous conditions - e.g. if a team from the same nation is already in A it will go into the other side of the draw, so starting from group G in that case). When Pot 1 is done, all of Pot 2 are drawn, then all of Pot 3, then all of Pot 4 - at the end of all that the computer shuffles each group so the teams are given a "fixture position" from 1-4 which is when you know who you're playing when as per the fixtures. 48 clubs, 12 groups.

See below for my sexy and comprehensive answer, decided to use Steve's pull quote and resubmit the info.

Not really, if it means one of Fonte or Van Dijk isn't available.

Dodgy Cardiff outfit.

As discussed earlier in the thread, it's only 1p cheaper for the shirt if you have the 10% ST discount, but the shorts and socks are a bit cheaper even with the discount. But you're giving the profit to Mike Ashley rather than Saints, so...

It also leaves nearly 4 months to arrange travel it if we're away in the last group game, which is in December. But it's nice to know people are only planning one game at a time.

What matters is that probability of playing better teams depending on which pot we're in means we're better off being in a higher pot. Midtjylland were very much the exception to the rule. Also, and more importantly for me, knowing which pot we're in means we know which group of 12 possible opponents we're going to be playing from each other pot, and which 11 teams we definitely won't need to plan a trip to. Narrows down the flight and hotel pre-planning to "only" 35 other teams (we can't play Man U) from the 48.

Interesting to note that the 2016/17 version of the (2015-18 ) UEFA EL regulations are out: http://www.uefa.org/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/uefaorg/Regulations/02/35/92/45/2359245_DOWNLOAD.pdf The fixture order is the same as before... unchanged from earlier in the thread. Matchday 1: 15/09/16 2 v 3 4 v 1 Matchday 2: 29/09/16 1 v 2 3 v 4 Matchday 3: 20/10/16 3 v 1 2 v 4 Matchday 4: 03/11/16 1 v 3 4 v 2 Matchday 5: 24/11/16 3 v 2 1 v 4 Matchday 6: 08/12/16 2 v 1 4 v 3

Yeah, that's why I'm assuming Pot 3, but it was a relatively close call even last season - though our coefficient is just under 1 point better this year and the 15-25 range we're in is the most compact so that could make a big difference. It'll still come down to whether no-mark teams (like Midtjylland!) can beat sides with better coefficients. I may do my "we need 12 teams worse than us to get through" list again when the PO round draw is known.