This has been an issue for some time.
But are you really going to Uzbekistan? Their teams are not even in the competition. Although I do fancy going to Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan more likely.
You’re just being Stanist.
So sweet. This whole shit show is not for the likes of us.
Bless!
Yeah, I know. I mean I've heard it said and it sounded harsh. But I actually looked at the dates in a calendar today. It's stupid.
And none of it to do with what happens on the pitch, just trying to uphold a pretense through some half arsed "governance".
The draw is 1pm today. But that'll only give Palace an either/or from the third qualifying round, which doesn't conclude until 14th. Play-offs are 21st and 28th, so, actually, it doesn't make much difference - if the first leg is away, there'd only be a week to make arrangements and that would have been the case anyway.
If I'm reading wikipedia correctly, their potential opponents are actually a mix of winners from the 3rd qualifying round of the conference and losers from the 3rd qualfying round of the europa league.
Either winners of Larne v Santa Clara or AIK v Gyor or the losers of Servette v Utrecht or Fredrikstad v Midtjylland or AEK Larnaca v Legia Warsaw.
Any of whom you'd expect Palace (or us) to beat.
Stuff on Palace's appeal here: www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/crystal-palace-uefa-appeal-case-europa-league-8bk22xgfc
archive.is/7KmLk
Seems to be a bunch of quibbling about whether the dates were hard or soft and pointing out that we hadn't set up a blind trust by March 1st but did it at the end of April. But that seems irrelevant when they hadn't sorted their MCO until about a week ago.
Incidentally, do we assume that, going forward, unless we are in the bottom half of the league and out of both cups, Marinakis will have to set up a new blind trust every February and dissolve it in May?
Yeah I wondered that. Found it odd that he dissolved it after creating it. Wouldn't it be easier just to keep it active.
Presumably, unless and until they make the rules less dumb.
I guess their argument is that if the deadline isn't hard, then they have conformed prior to the conflict occurring, as Textor has sold up.
I don't think it will work.
But I do think it's all a bit daft and the clubs should play in the competition they qualified for.
Though the emails they are referring to, seem to define the 'conflict occurring' as the point at which qualification happens, rather than the first match.
I haven't really been keeping up with the soshulz on this whole hullabaloo, but are we everybody's favourite bad guy now that, to top all of EM'S comedy mafiaosa bully hoy shenanigans on the telly and pundit banning antics, we've now robbed Palace of their rightful European spot?
Proper nasty bastards that we are.
I had a look earlier and afforded myself a little chuckle. Around the time the Geordies were finalising a move for Elanga and Spurs fans purring over Gibbs-White's imminent arrival, there were a few of their fans doing batshit stuff like tracking planes and checking which London beauty salons MGW's partner had started following on Instagram, etc.
This Forest wag sent out an appeal earlier saying that in light of increasing speculation about Douglas Luiz, would Newcastle and Tottenham fans be able to advise on how to stalk him.
Nobody care that Midtjylland won 3-1 at Fredrikstad last night?
Sounds like a Palace problem.
Parish not exactly buzzing post hearing but guess you wouldn't expect him to be:
This comment on the Palace forum summed it up fairly succinctly:
It isn't fair, it's a load of bollocks really, but I don't think they have a hope of overturning it. Lawyers making money though, so that's nice.
I realise it's 20 years ago now (#shockedfaceemoji) and it was a different competition, but when the scousers won the UCL in 2005, but then didn't qualify through the league for the next season's competition, they looked set to be unable to defend their trophy as no one had bothered to draw up the rules to say that the incumbent UCL holders automatically qualify when it replaced the proper European Cup. The "waaah it's not fair" approach did then result in thier eventual admission.
Albeit via some bullshit qualifying round away to FC Mysteriosa or somesuch and an eventual rule change. IIRC.
No one really thought that would go Liverpool 's way at the time either based on the assumption that good old fashioned stubborn bureaucracy would win the day.
So it could happen, I s'pose.
Then again, Liverpool, so yeah. Nevermind.
As you were.
