Europa League Explained

For those who are looking forward to July 17th as much as I am, I have a website treat for you.

Some of you may or may not have checked out the great Wikipedia Europa League site but what it is missing is predictions of a statistician.

With that said, I give you the Europa league site of one Bert Kassies. For those of you who enjoy seedings, power ratings and the like, you'll love this.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uef ... l2009.html

 

Cue "dancing in the streets of Total Network Solutions" comment...

So, what if Lawrie Sanchez gets hired at Motherwell, and we end up playing them at some point?

 

Does FSC still have Europa League rights in the U.S.? I assume so, but wasn't sure. I didn't really follow the UEFA Cup much the past couple of years. Didn't they split the games with Setanta?

 

Hmm. So if seedings more or less hold, what we'd be looking at is a (on paper) weaker team in the third qualifying round, then (if FFC advance) a team of comparable strength in the fourth qualifying round to advance to the group stage.

 

I'm currently working on compiling a ranking of each team in the Europa League based on coefficient.

And although we're up there based on our league and prestige (based on our league), our coefficient is surprisingly low.

It'll prob only be a run of 8, but it's going to be the best 8 ever.

 

Our coefficient is low because it takes into account the last five years of results. Other than last year, that leaves few great results for Fulham...

 

Unless I'm confused, there's no way for Fulham to play 8 games. It's either two (lose in the third qualifying round), four (lose in the play-off round), or ten or more (advance to or past the group stage)

 

Good catch. I was thinking the groups were comprised of 5 teams, like during the UEFA Cup.

True, but you'd think the formula would be weighted because of the domestic league and how long we've been in the topflight.

 

Won't the 18 Ayg home game v. Blackburn be postponed for qualifiers? Some games then are already pushed back.

 

And even then, I think it only looks at European competitions.

Clarification: Each club starts with their country's coefficient as a base. European results over the past 5 years are added onto that. I think. So this year, we pretty much have the baseline England score. If we make the group stage, we get England plus a couple more points for next year's coefficient.

 

Yeah, I don't know precisely how it works. I'm sure we get SOME credit for playing in a tough league and for staying in the top flight. But I'm pretty sure our 2005 results matter equally to our 2009 results...

...which is ridiculous because no one who played for Fulham in 2009 was even on the team in 2005, but oh well.

 

Well no, because if that were the case, we would have NO coefficient, which isn't the case.

 

I edited my original post, but everyone gets a base coefficient from whichever country they're from. European results are added onto that:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/calc.html

 

Ah whoops. I totally misunderstood the coefficients then. Thanks for the info.

But that page makes my head spin...