The9

Yeah, eat my dust Crabby. (Griffin 2) You can find the "top seeded qualifiers" list (all going to form) here: http://www.footballseeding.com/european-cups/europa-league-seeding-15-16/ And there's a breakdown of coefficients at the moment and the games we need to go against form etc to get into Pot 2 or 3 of the seeds a couple of pages back. (see link below) http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?54475-The-Official-Saints-European-Tour-2015-16-Thread-FC-Midtjylland-in-Playoff-Round&p=2229800#post2229800

Nice bit of research. With the exception of Asteras, Sion, Plzen, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Skenderbeu (and any unseeded upsets in the EL Play Off round who end up in Pot 4), all of the capacities are either more than Midtjylland or far enough away that lots of people will be put off, so shouldn't be much of a problem. Somehow almost all the big sides with decent capacities are stab risks. :/

They'll be more attacking at home, a different balance of midfield again but not as likely to be defensively minded. It's pretty surprising Cork was a substitute despite Chelsea being one of the sides they're most likely to play more defensively against.

They've signed Andre Ayew, and Jefferson Montero - who WAS brilliant on Saturday - was injured most of last season. They've not released any midfielders so you'll probably find he'll be back to being in and out of their team depending on whether they're home or away.

Jack Cork was on the bench on Saturday, just for the record.

I think he's added viciously swirling long range shots to his arsenal this year, which is a bloody good job as I'm not sure we have any other midfielders who can shoot (Wanyama seems to have been weaned off it and Clasie hasn't had the chance to yet).

It had nipples, I know that much.

Yeah, but at the moment there's still the possibility we don't. Even though I'm aware, and even predicting, that we will sign one or two loans only if we make the EL Group stages, we've got two big ol' holes at the moment and we shouldn't really be ok with a few games where we know we're under strength when you consider the margins we lost out by last season. Sooner the better if we're picking up a(nother) permanent centre back (not even sure Van Dijk is the solution, but we'll see).

It was if you were in The Waldorf.

I'm fairly sure it's already "caught on", it's all over Saints fans on social media and we sang it for 20 minutes straight in Arnhem, plus a mate who went to Newcastle said it took about 20 seconds to start up there.

No loan to buy for Caulker, saint86... also confirms we've been tracking him for "a number of years". http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/20150729-steven-caulker-announcement-signing-2579154.aspx As for "strongest squad ever known", how can it be when it's weaker than the end of last season as there are no currently functioning replacements for Schneiderlin and Alderweireld? Even allowing for Targett not being as good as Bertrand and a slight, likely to be temporary drop off from Clyne to Cedric, the rest of the team is weaker and the squad overall is already undermined by injuries. Stekelenburg/Forster only becomes valid when Forster is fit, Caulker is unproven though you'd hope better than Gardos even when he isn't injured, and Martina is a back up right back who seems fine but is nevertheless further from Clyne's level than Cedric is. Juanmi looks like he has potential but he's not offered much more than Djuricic or Elia did so far and Gaston Ramirez is back but out of the loop. We will have seen some improvements in Reed, Ward-Prowse and other younger players, but not to the extent that the loss of Schneiderlin and Alderweireld has weakened us. What it seems to me is that we've added depth but lost quality (and the depth is being challenged by injuries and Europa schedule already).

We would, but it would be a scramble amongst people with "an away" rather than "ST plus Euro away plus 10 more aways"

I can confirm I'm going to every single Saints Europa League match I can for as long as we last and spending all of my disposable income to do so. And taking the wife to all of them. It's the bloody Prem aways at £35-£55 a chuck which are the speedbumps in the whole process, making sure I go to enough of them to get tickets to the Euro matches!

Obviously it won't, so I expanded the discussion into the likelihood of getting tickets from those and similar criteria.

We were 100% collection for Steaua too... just from St Mary's.

You'll be alright.

To be honest the chances of getting such a small ground in the group stages are a fair bit less. With only 550 people having that priority anyway it'll be easy enough to give them the first day without even needing to talk about number of aways for group stage. When it comes down to it, with us likely to be pot 3 if we get through, there will probably be bigger grounds for 2 matches and worst case scenario a similar sized one to Midtjyelland for the other. The question then is whether they allocate all 3 group games at the same time (when people will want to book up flights etc immediately) or if they'll be phased to take this season's League aways into consideration. I'd be a bit peeved if I couldn't go to later Euro aways because I'd been to all the earlier ones and didn't have the spare cash to go to the Prem aways too!

Fair enough, it's called the "Feestadvarken" aka Party Aardvark. My lot just assumed it was a dragon, and my latent welshness didn't feel the need to question it. http://www.florentijnhofman.nl/dev/project.php?id=195

Well, it's fair, still no idea if I'll get a ticket or not.

Seeing as I'd 1) never heard the Benteke song and 2) They won't be singing it any more anyway I don't have a problem with this. First time I heard it was a pub at Man City last game of last season, thought it was ridiculous but tremendously catchy.

Depends on whether you think West Brom are paying him NEARLY what he was getting at Anfield or not really, doesn't it? He'll still be on lots more now than he was at Saints. He's got the same length contract though, I'd expected he'd have insisted on a longer end date than he had at Anfield, but he hasn't - must have been a dealbreaker. I suspect he'll be on the bench again by Xmas unless they sell Berahino.

That'll be fun for you! That's two people I now know who are definitely going to get in then!

Cedric looked more than capable to me, it was the lack of defensive support ahead of him that meant he had to make more challenges than he'd usually need to, Martina's existence was handy at that point. Targett is usually solid but again the lack of wide midfield support meant he was under pressure (giving the ball away too easily didn't help him either), and also meant Yoshida was out of position trying to stem the attacks out wide, leaving Fonte exposed and looking a lot more panicked than last season, etc. All the trademarks of a defence missing the shield it had last season and being too reactive rather than proactive in stopping the attacks even getting to them. Mostly down to the loss of Schneiderlin, I'd normally say missing Alderweireld too, but ironically exactly the same thing was happening to him for Spurs at Old Trafford - no defensive shield and pulled all over the place. Well, serves him right.

I'm expecting it to use last year plus Vitesse and that's it - won't take this season's aways into consideration until we've had about 5 of them already, like previous seasons.

I suspect they'll go with 14+ and then 10+ if it gets that far... hope so anyway.