Europa League

This is our level now dawgs. Better get used to it.

I have a severe case of deja-vu now, I saw these West Ham discussions before

Morten said:

Teams to avoid though, Dortmund probably tops that list.
Shaky defensively, but great at going forward, a striker like Haaland in EL is a bit silly.

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Haaland would murder our defense. Talk about strength/intensity/height/quickness/speed. Yikes!

Marshall D Teach said:

West Ham fans are hoping they draw us.

Surreal.

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Now I feel shit.

I think West Ham would beat us fairly easily.

Here is the thing.
We will not draw West Ham for the R32

All CL 3rd teams are drawn against EL 2nd in their groups:

So we will know more tonight, but, bar a possible Napoli (which I think won't happen tonight), our potential R32 opponents look like this:

RAngers,
Red Star/Braga,
Olympiakos,
PSV,
GAlatasaray
Dynamo Zagreb,
Spartak Moscow

Even for this Barca, we can go through

Then in the R16 the R32 winners are drawn against the EL 1sts in their groups, which list will look like this:
Leicester,
West Ham,
Lazio,
Eintracht,
Leverkusen
Lyon,
Monaco,
Braga (?)

OK, more difficult now, but if we manage to avoid West Ham and Leicester (the best teams of this list), we can certainly do it
Leverkusen, Lyon and Monaco might be tricky, but we should eliminate them

The moral of the story is:
We can very well avoid the most of the most difficult teams (which are the CL 3rds like Dortmund, Sevilla, Porto, Atalanta plus the two good English sides Leicester and West Ham)
until the QF, which means until April
Then, we have to step up obviously, as we certainly gonna play some difficult ties in QF, SF, and possibly F if we go deep.
But some time will have elapsed until then, and Xavi - hopefully - will have time to make some things click

Yeah, positive thing is even the round 32 is few months away. I am positive Xavi can improve this team in that time.

^

Agreed Birdy, by that time, we'll also know better of our chances of making top 4 in La Liga

Napoli-Leicester banger of a game

Birdy said:

but if we manage to avoid West Ham and Leicester (the best teams of this list)

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Imagine being in a coma since 2012 and waking up to read this.

I still can't get over how surreal this is.

I hope this team can improve enough to go at least a few rounds in EL and Copa, give the kids some valuable experience. Not at all sure this will happen, without significant reinforcements in the winter transfer window.

te amo barca said:

Napoli-Leicester banger of a game

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Probably the cream of EL

Leicester are having a disastrous season

Is west ham the only English team in Europa?

Man winning that shit might be easier than I thought

bad news is that Napoli finsihed 2nd in the group

which means they are potential Barca opponents for R32.
Let's avoid them

Better to just get knocked out in the playoff round to focus on top 4 if we are still in the race for that come february