McCreadie

Haha - yes it was exactly that! This leads me on to the realisation that if UEFA are not very careful about which referees they assign to the 4 semi-finals (and the instructions they are given), they might end up in the terrible situation where the finals of both of their major competitions are contested by 4 English teams. And that is never going to be allowed to happen in a month of Sundays.

Message deleted due to penny dropping.

That’s not how I understand it. I think I am right in saying that the only way a team finishing 4th can be demoted to the EL is if the team finishing 5th win the CL and the team finishing 6th win the EL as well.

Don’t wish to be rude, but what the blazes is Emery wittering on about? He looks like he knows what he is saying, but I really can’t understand a word of it.

Will be fascinating to see the difference in the level of Burnley's performance for that one.

Hmm, I think you might be right, which is even worse.

I miss watching entire games on Ceefax.

I think it is fair to assume 4th place is beyond us now. I just cannot see how we are going to beat Arsenal, or even Frankfurt over 2 legs, given that our defence has one leg tied behind its back.

Just fixed that for you.

If we can’t beat Burnley, what on Earth would be the point in being in the CL? So completely and utterly avoidable.

Very good

Well far be it from me to be the smart-arse who says I told you so, but the very next 2 set pieces after yesterday’s conversation about zonal marking at set pieces, have resulted in 2 goals to Burnley. So yes. I told you so.

Looks very much like we will end up 5th to me. Spurs and Arsenal’s run-ins are certainly easier than ours or Utds, although I would expect/hope for them both to drop points in one more game each. Arsenal’s GD advantage over us is more likely to increase further than decrease. I think we will actually need to win all 4 games to get 4th and I see Utd and/or Leicester both scuppering that fanciful scenario.

Two great posts partially quoted here, that are full of well reasoned argument and reach slightly different conclusions. For me, I’m not sure it would be all that difficult to change system for set pieces, even if it was just for corners. I would be inclined to at the very least try mixing it up a bit between man2man and zonal, either from opponent to opponent or even within games, so that the opposition don’t necessarily know what they are going to get met with every time. Perhaps a full pre season will help, but right now, it’s a proper dog’s dinner.

Well I think it is one of the easiest ways in which we could have made the points to secure CL qualification. The context is that we are now conceding double the goals from set pieces than we were before. Whether lesser teams are more likely to use set pieces to gain adavantage over us is neither here nor there. That hasn’t changed in 15 years.