The9

'98!!!!

We've got the Europa League to worry about, and as a result almost all of our potential Europa Thursdays right through to the semi-finals would see us face one of the other Euro qualifiers on the weekend after. If we bomb out of the Europa early we could be in an excellent position to break the top 4, as every time we face a likely top 8 side we'll have had a rest and they'll have played midweek. Having said that, if we don't replace Alderweireld and/or Schneiderlin, and Cedric doesn't hit the ground running we're unlikely to do as well as last season anyway.

Sporting Clube de Portugal..? Massive historically famous club with regular recent trophy-winning domestic past.

There's a ton of stuff on the nutjob thread about another team that likes to do this. Except the last one, obviously.

Finished 1-1...

You said they'll "probably be great games and worth the money". They could be utterly terrible games, but they've still got your money whether it was "worth it" or not. You don't get any guarantees with football, so claiming matches will be "great" to justify the money is completely ridiculous, as you have no idea if they'll be great. Equally, if you are paying to support your club irrespective of quality of games, then the quality of football is irrelevant to you, so there's no need to claim the games will need to be great to be worth the money, as you get your opinion of your money's worth just by being there. That's my point.

Aberdeen just scored away to Shkendija in Macedonia with 10 mins left. Will be a decent result for them if they get through this.

Glad we're not in the first couple of qualifiers, anyway.

Gibraltarian clubs' european pedigree is not great.

Oh and I haven't managed to get the link to work yet, it's clearly hugely oversubscribed.

West Ham's team is comical compared to their last league game, they're basically fielding whoever turned up to training this week.

I'm going, I'll give you all a wave.

West Ham match here if you want it: http://t.co/q2eOdu3Kv7 - seems to be rather oversubscribed though.

Disappointed to see HB get a humping, I'd be quite keen for a trip to the Faroes - though Iceland would probably be easier.

Bit of a surprise, the Sheriff score, they've been in CL group stage recently. Odd are no mugs though. For genuine big Europa League fans, Aberdeen's match is on Premier Sport later - some VirginMedia people might find they have that for free now, used to be subscription only.

Lokomotiv just equalised.

Brondby are actually still playing, leading the Sammarinese side 8-0 now in the last minute.] I'm unimpressed with the opportunity for teams to change the date to Tuesday or Wednesday AND to switch the draw (as West Ham have) to change who plays home or away and when, that's an absolute sod for trying to plan travel. Oh, Brondby have scored whilst I've been typing. 9-0 now.

Also, turns out "Lusitans" are really "Lusitanos" - which is also a type of Portuguese horse. They have a Portugal crest on their team badge so that all makes sense. I quite like that some teams are still so obscure that their names can be repeated wrongly for weeks.

Qualifiers are on an ad-hoc basis, Europa League from Group stage is on BT Sport from this season - I'd be surprised if BT don't snap up a few games to build interest.

Just clicked the link anyway, can only assume they mistakenly called him "Barry" in the Other Place (still haven't been) or this makes no sense at all.

I'm not clicking that link as it's quarter past midnight and the wife's asleep, but if we're talking about obscure WWE wrestlers I think you'll find that he was called Big Bully Busick and barely lasted one PPV (I think he was pulled from Survivor Series 1991 having been initially announced). Hey fun fans, as well as weird kit love, I also have an encyclopedic knowledge of wrestlers since around 1988. Whatta guy.

So what you're saying is that gullibility implies being unconsciously duped and faith is a conscious decision to believe in the unprovable. So just stupidity?

As opposed to all the current Liverpool players who joined after their players were subjected to sequential burglaries of one of their properties pretty much every time they played a match on TV? Yeah, that's going to be a consideration...

To be perfectly frank, whether they're utter toss or amazing, you pay before you find out anyway.

And which part of me mentioning "watermark effect" (probably better to say "embossed") and navy Umbro kit made you think that I was talking about any other shirt? I was asking which OTHER Umbro shirts had anything like that. There were none, though plenty had little design tags and labels which were a nice touch. Oh, and FWIW, I bought a white 2012/13 away (and home FA Cup) shirt on eBay last weekend for all of £15, been after one for ages.