Seriously WTF?
Two years ago Stuttgart did a nice little number on our coefficient by losing five games in the group stages. It looks like they are going to try and repeat that damage to our coefficient again this time around after an uninspiring home draw to Rangers. Unable to take advantage of the absence of Rangers’ captain David Weir, ruled out late, the Swabians enjoyed the better first half but could only must one goal from Progrebnyak. The second half they were thoroughly outplayed by a Rangers side that could barely afford the airfare let alone to strengthen their squad this year, and were probably lucky to escape with the point.
Rule number #1 that somebody, and I guess it needs to be me, needs to impress upon the Swabian heirarchy is that you win your effing home ties. Stuttgart, who are a team I have a lot of time for, are really going to get my vote for “NEVER AGAIN” if they don’t get it together. I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon here, but we can’t afford for Stuttgart to embarrass themselves again, not when we are on the cusp of getting 3rd in the UEFA Coefficient Ranking.
Two years ago they lost both games to Rangers, so some might say that this is an improvement. However, two years ago, the SPL wasn’t a league ready to drop into Nordic levels of importance in Europe. That Rangers side at least went on to challenge for the UEFA Cup. This Rangers side will be lucky to get games 7 and 8 in Europe come the new year. Well unless Stuttgart replicate their pathetic showing of two years ago, where they only beat Lyon after they had secured knock-out stage football.
And just so we all know, Hamburg embarrassed themselves and us with the same 5 loses in the group stages the year before Stuttgart, but at least they gained back some coefficient points with a semi-run in the UEFA Cup last year. I don’t expect Stuttgart to make the semi-finals, but a third place finish is the minimum. So they need to start winning games to pay us back for ’07.
We are very close to stealing a 3rd spot from Italy in the Champions League, which means a fourth team and three automatic slots. And its all riding on Stuttgart after Wolfsburg and Bayern showed that they are ready for a knock-out stage visit.
Or maybe the Champions League just comes at a bad time for the Swabians. If they played the competition exclusively in April and May, they might be aiming for their third straight title. But it’s played NOW, so get it together Babbel!
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6 comments… read them below or add one
As a Stuttgart fan, I was thoroughly pissed with their inept finishing last night. Ridiculous. Hopefully they can beat Unirei twice and Rangers when they face them again. They just seemed too slow to make anything happen. Very disappointing…
Well I wrote this rant about 2 hours too early as Hamburg decided to go out and get their ***** handed to them by an Austrian club, which now means Uli will have to spend 15 hours researching the last time a German club decided to dick around south of the border. And Hertha wasn’t much better drawing at home with Swiss Giants Ventspils, which I think is technically a term for diarrhea in Icelandic.
You know the days is going tits up when Werder Bremen is your last best hope seeing as they are playing Portuguese 4th division B squad. Holy crap, how did we go from Tuesday to this sorry state so quickly.
And yet, Roma and Lazio both lost, so in the early running for the coefficient, we’re in so-so shape. Group C is officially a mess, because I don’t think I would have called a Celtic loss either. But all the pressure is squarely on Hamburg. I don’t expect Hertha to get out, but if Hamburg doesn’t make out of the group stages, especially after all the early season praise heaped upon them, they’ll have a lot more than Guerrero’s injury to blame.
That’s true Luke and Werder did get a victory, even though they conceded 2 goals.
So for all my bitching it was a 3-2-1 record.
I thought the reason for German clubs’ hopeless performances in Europe was inexperience. However, Wolfsburg vanquished that theory quite easily. My new one is the negative correlation between league form and Europe (with Bayern always being the exception of course). Let’s see how that goes.
Germany: 3-2-1
Italy: 2-2-3
Not a bad week.
I think something people forget is that Europa Cup matches are worth just as much for your league coefficient as Champions League. Last year Shakhtar accumulated more points for winning Europa than Barcelona did for CL. So Stuttgart taking 2nd place and then inevitably losing to an actually good 1 seed could be much worse than taking 3rd and making a nice run in Europa Cup. Of course it can also backfire if they crap out of Europa Cup immediately.
Hertha is crap. But so is that group. If you can’t place ahead of Herenveen and Ventspils….man I dunno. Looks like our hopes are riding on Wolf, Bayern, Bremen and hopefully Hamburg. And then Italy imploding like a dying star, which I really think could happen.
Inter is not finishing 1st in that group over Barcelona. Then they could draw a really tough English team or maybe Real Madrid and get bounced out in 1st round. Same could happen to Juve. Or they could even finish 3rd. In which case I kind of doubt they make a long Europa run as all their players/fans won’t give a crap about Europa. Fiorentina is not beating Lyon or Liverpool for 2nd. 3rd for them. AC Milan is an enigma. Their team is not very good, but they always play well in CL. Genoa has a real good team this year and could do serious damage. The two Rome teams are washed up and should sputter out.