And I sure as heck don't want var calling balls and strikes in baseball games!

Arsenal v Liverpool should be a good early season test at the weekend. The Gunners won’t crush my hopes week 3 will they?

i just hope we start our best lineup. need pepe and ceballos in there. not sure who will round out the midfield 3 but i hope its torreira and guendouzi. I have liked some things this season, but we are not playing fast or direct enough yet. it was painful watching them try to break burnleys press, as they couldnt do it until they brought on the more direct pepe. Nelson, the young winger, was not quite up to the task of breaking that press.

should be a brilliant game

Emery’s stamp on the club is beginning to crystallize. You’re right. Even with six points, the club has looked ragged, even a bit lethargic. But there are glimpses. I hope they’ll come together before MC and LIV get too far away. Please don’t make the CL’s fourth slot our ‘prize’ this season.

Sheiky vs Spurs last weekend, Man U v Chelsea the weekend before

what the hell is a neutral supposed to do when there are no more matches amongst big-6 teams left?

then again, perhaps we should be talking about big-7 teams. Have a suspicion that Wolves is going to sneak up on one of the putative big-6 teams

i think we did well to control both games, but i failed to see enough being created from the wings and from anyone not named dani ceballos or guendouzi. and we need to be less predictable. i like possession, but the backs need to use better judgement when to play a long ball to relieve pressure vs actually playing out of the back, and we need to make the passes much faster, before the other team can organize the press. Newcastle stacked it on us and defended with 10 or 11, and burnley pressed as hard as ive seen anyone press us in the last 2 years. lets see what arsenal can do vs a club that wants to play football.

score a first goal and then let in five :p?

Ynwa!

damn, it's really unfair that Ajax, semi-finalist from last year, should have to go through two rounds of qualification just to reach the group stage. They did beat Juve and Real last year (sorry Ronaldo), and were this close to playing in the finals.

For all that trouble, they have to travel to the far reaches of Europe to qualify. Kind of a farce when the likes of Salzburg gets a direct route to the group stage...

It all has to do with the league's performance over the previous years in UEFA competitions. No-one else in the Dutch league has done as well, so based on their country ranking, they're inserted at a specific stage as champions. Salzburg goes to the group stage as Austrian champions because they Austrian league has has better UEFA performances recently

Well, it's BS, because the Austrian league is sh*t, and the single defining aspect of RB Salzburg's identity of the last 10+ years is that they have never made it to the CL group stages through the qualifying rounds.

(I have followed the Austrian league since 1979.)

well, to be fair to them, they at least beat Red Bull (i mean Rasenball Sport) Leipzig :p

as to ltwtsculler91's point, I understand how the UEFA coefficient work, but the whole thing is a bit capricious. Ajax has a club coefficient in the 21st place, which is above any of the entrants from Russia, Belgium, and Turkey (all of whom gets an auto invite to the group stage). In effect, one gets penalized for playing performances of other teams in the league...

My favorite story there is the time a Salzburg defender wore a Leipzig jersey in a CL qual game, and nobody noticed until the post-match interviews.

I suppose Nike shipped it with his name and number, but the two clubs' jerseys were identical in every way, except for the text in the crest badge.

https://i0.wp.com/www.dirtytackle.ne...AuWEAEfPLh.jpg

Austria? That's kangaroos with skiboots, correct?

(Linz may well qualify too, then they have two teams in the CL)

Yes, and also where German composers go to advance their careers, eat better food, and terrorize landlords.