It was "fun" while it lasted - Europa League 2019-20

Because the Wolves' 2nd round draw happens today! Can't wait to take on Crusaders.

2nd Qualifying Round

*cough*

Wolves vs. Crusaders. What is this, basketball?

Lol called it

wooooh 3Q round in Armenia, just hope Jimenez isn't too badly injured

Forgot this was an early (for us) kick off, ah well, two up at half time, hope the jet lag doesn't fuck us

PSV's tragic start to the season (cunted out of the CL) sees us playing against Haugesand in Norway rn.

A Wolves vs PSV final still very much on the cards.

the mass cards

he's been ready since 1976

https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2019/08/14/wolves-fan-travels-6000-miles-for-18-minutes-of-football/

Yeah I read that this morning, I mean it's not exactly eco-admirable is it? Like the bit where it was a trip to Hull he missed tho

We used to have a guy from the Isle of Man I think traveled home and away a lot

I mean it's not exactly eco-admirable is it?

this is a pretty churlish take lol

obv i have ended friendship with the greens and labour is my new best friend

Paid about six bucks for the Wolves stream, but website has crashed. Fans raging on Twitter

Had to watch it all on a pirate feed. Saw the goal. Yay!

Hopefully be back up by 2nd half

JOTAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

oof, conceded one right back. two road goals though will help with tiebreaking

Jimenez! That was sweet

ugh dumb pen at '89, makes for a tighter 2nd leg than it should be.

thank goodness for 3 away goals

Tempting to think of Wolves as plucky underdogs when of course they're easily the richest club in the competition at this stage.

I was doing something else last night, that's a solid result tho, Torino was a big step up.

Def was more lopsided than the score made it look. Now just not to Barca the 2nd leg away

Their counterattack was p balls out at times which is encouraging.

Sounds like it was a good game tonight, and now we're in the draw tomorrow. Woooooo.

I watched long enough to see the Dendoncker goal. The attack was solid. Hope they do that to Everton now.

Defending got a bit sloppy again, but they were already up 2 in aggregate at the time.

not even gonna try to understand how this draw works

Wolves-PSV final still on afaict

Wolves - Besiktas will be fun.

both games likely to be intense, happy with our group for good-looking games tbh

Celtic and Cluj will be sick of each other.

Wolves get a trip to glamorous Bratislava.

feels like a 70s classic that

Suspès el Dudelange - Qarabag per un dron pic.twitter.com/VeNebrJHuo

— Enric Fuentes (@ilynhenke) October 3, 2019

Armenian drones suspend Dudelange vs Qarabag crunch match.

Qarabag players were trying to knock the drone out of the sky with the ball.

A brawl has broken out in the crowd too.

There is no bottom for this Utd team

^^ harsh on AZ imo

Wolves-PSV final still on afaict

― Joe Proroguin' (Noodle Vague), Friday, August 30, 2019 1:41 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not taking anything away from AZ, who seem to be a decent young side

We didn't manage a single shot on target. Only managed one attempt worthy of the name. I've watched a lot of shit Utd performances in the post-Fergie era but that is down there with any of them

Genuinely remarkable showing from Fred too. Actually incapable of completing a pass greater than five yards

And Solskjaer literally looks like the ghost of David Moyes

Yay Wolves, sick of these airing during work

i couldn't watch because for some fucked up reason somebody in the pub decided that Rangers was a thing that people wanted to sww but a win in Istanbul is seriously serious goodness

Still, at least you got to see Rangers lose in the last minute.

Always a pleasure

And Solskjaer literally looks like the ghost of David Moyes

― Number None, Thursday, October 3, 2019 11:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I see Solskjaer has said he was "pleased" with ManU's performance, so it's all good! Seriously though, it doesn't matter how bad a pitch is if you can't manage a single shot on target. Dark days.

Hey he scored a goal once, he must be a Top Manager

Jesse Marsch’s half-time team talk in the #Salzburg dressing room at Anfield is genuinely something to behold pic.twitter.com/KGZ1D3BbeV #LFC #UCL

— Richard Buxton (@RichardBuxton_) October 4, 2019

You can see it raining Untergang-style memes from this, but this is great to watch.

come on you Wolves

big win, it's now officially a "European adventure" apparently

soft sending off for Jota tho

Yay Wolvesss!

Managed to watch while teaching a class

first pepe freekick decent but the keeper fucked it, second one felt like an arrival tho

Jammy Gooner bastards. I don't know where Celtic found Christopher Jullien - well, I do, it was Toulouse - but that guy is sheer class.

coming back to beat nazio yas

I remain slightly peeved we didn't beat Rennes in the first match, we should have.

he should resign

Like Amorim has once again said he might have to do. Seriously both of these clowns need a simple course in "the lads have done well but we won't get carried away" or "we're disappointed but there are some positives to take" or whatever shite, rather than Jesus on the cross every single press conference.

did....did you just say "clown"

he'll be coming for you

I thought Ange would mic-drop resign on the spot too tbh

as if any manager would ever resign and forego the payoff. amorim has been saying he would, if the fates demand it, but i find that doubtful, and i don't even judge any of them for it.

I really really wanted Amorim to succeed. He looks the part, generally talks a good game, and his CV was promising

But I have never seen a more inflexible manager in my life

Every game, no matter the opposition, and no matter what happens IN that game, it's the same formation and shit, negative approach. I've lost count of the times this season when we've been chasing a game and he's brought on another fucking centre back rather than an attacker. And if things get really bad then he occasionally sticks Harry Maguire up top

He's won six games in the league, none of them convincingly, and this is the third time this season he's been beaten by a terrible Spurs team

Of course there's no reason he should resign but this is the only club in world football where there'd even be a question of him not being sacked. On his record so far, he's not just the worst Utd manager of my lifetime, he's one of the worst Premier League managers ever

It's actually four times. And we've only won 17 matches all season. So roughly 25% of them have been against United lol

Ten Hag managed the first loss

I'm still seeing the odd delusional Man United fan saying "But Klopp/Pep had very bad first seasons too"

The worse United get the worse Klopp and Pep's first seasons (the latter got 80 points) seem to become.

He just needs more time/a pre-season/his own players

delete as appropriate

Klopp obviously had his ups and downs but it was clear even in the first game something was brewing. Then they hammered City away that winter and again you could see this is going places, despite the odd howler result.

I guess it's a matter of debate whether a good manager must be versatile, like Pep or someone probably isn't, but at the same time it seems very dense and naive to keep trying to force a system on a squad that can't play to it.

echoing nn frustration here but with ange obv

the conflicting dysfunctional silos at the club (board, coach, players) all pushing narratives and pointing fingers rather than even trying to do a 6/10 job each first is a sickener

ange now spinning that he junked the league from feb to win this trophy, that was his baseline for future success.....like being shite 90% of the time is some sort of calculated and necessary tradeoff to beat bodo glimt....

idk im a little unarsed by the "i can believe its still the uefa cup" cup and ive never bought the line that the slow progress from jol through whatever the fuck conte/mourinho tail end was didnt count for anything because we didnt cap it with cups that middlesborough or brendan rodgers have won.

absolutely shite season and if theres players or coaches at spurs that think theres now measure of acceptable balance and we move id like them all to be identified and shipped too.

theres just nothing to build on with ange after two years and nothing there has changed for me. thanks for the trophy.

Eternally grateful to Ange for Kyogo, Maeda and Hatate, but he's been pretty well useless for Spurs.

pep is a management consultant theres a level at which he is known and understood to have power and control from corporate that trumps any requirement to lead or be correct. he becomes a fact, you can succeed because or in spite of him but you cannot achieve anything by questioning him.

theres a level of value in this in very certain setups and he makes sure he doesnt test himself anywhere else.

“shite season”

you literally just won the europa league tf

what profile of manager could work at spurs, it feels doomed. get mckenna in and stick with him would be the least bad play maybe

argument there is to stick with ange for another season tbh

the "win now" managers cant do fuck all with a squad with this technical floor and levys appetite for turnover at loss is nil

ange in, glumly?

you've lost your fire

slowly doused by years of leakage

I’m ange out for his sake not spurs’. play for them is def ange in imo - he’s already arguably overachieved. would be mad to dump him having won a trophy. a european trophy, no less.

saw some people saying arsenal have had a better season which is just mad to me. different mentalities or perspectives, I guess

I think they have. Spurs lost 21 games in the league. Spurs may have ultimately had a more successful season, but a better season to me implies commenting on the week to week. Spurs have had an absolutely abysmal season on that basis.

Agree that Ange would be better off leaving Spurs.

if he doesn't leave then his friends should organise an intervention

he could sell it as a success on the cv now to clubs that only watch cup finals

top ten, any sign of actual project/rebuild (instead of an uncommitted inconsistency and an easily beaten setup) and the season could be called a success. 17th and likely 22 losses and no mistakes acknowledged to learn from? there's nothing to take from that that says this is working.

all his players will be injured again in October and he'll be gone regardless

just think winning a european trophy is an insanely big deal. once in a generation type stuff for non-super elite clubs

I’d be as happy as the next guy to troll spurs fans by claiming that it’s a diddy compy or saying they only had to beat a wifi password in the semi but it’s a genuinely huge achievement. one that’s not easy to do. should be a day of joy

jol in

Would you be saying the same if Rangers hadn't lost on penalties in the Conference League final a couple of years ago?

it was the europa league no? and, yes, it would have soured me to my very core. it would have been an even more massive achievement for rangers (given the budget discrepancies involved vis-a-vis EPL clubs). thank god, it never happened. aaron ramsey is my personal hero

i enjoyed the final and was delighted by the grit and work shown

im very much enjoying the day

i just believe what im saying here also

if he stays then grand, i hope he achieves great success but every week another stinking performance doesn't really make me very enthusiastic about it is all

it would have reignited the bitterness of seville that resides (still to this day) deep within me

(I mean, yeah, you’re probably right that publicly I’d be undermining the compy at every turn but deep down I’d know.)

"with cups that middlesborough or brendan rodgers have won"

Lol

I like Ange but I’d struggle to argue he has any particular strengths as a manager.

Even taking injuries into consideration, the squad is too thin to complete seriously on more than one front and buying another set of promising 19-year-olds in the summer isn’t going to change that.

I’d love to see what Iraola could do with them but he is also someone who seems to struggle to gets teams out of prolonged slumps if they fall into them, which Spurs inevitably will.

here's where i start to look at what works with levy and ofc the answer is "very little" because he jumps from ten years of build on shoestring to pretending you can swap in mourinho or conte to ask them to tell individuals how to control a football or....try...without losing all of that detail loving caretaker stuff underneath

ange in

granted iraola is quite a bit younger than postecoglou but he’s only ever won the cypriot charity shield

Nice that some interesting reflections and discussion have arisen from this match which was in all other respects an embarrassing stain on the sport

Went on a Bournemouth forum a couple of of weeks ago and they seemed to think Iraola is good but not able to switch things up much

Nice that some interesting reflections and discussion have arisen from this match which was in all other respects an embarrassing stain on the sport

Presumably I mean, I was having a shower

I don't think i'll ever be clean again

one that’s not easy to do

it's easier than ever to do. not even trolling spurs, it just is way, way easier now. besides man u, who are going through their own terrible season/decade, they are beating teams whose wage bill is tiny in comparison to theirs. think i read bodo's was less than 1% of theirs but frankfurt won't be competitive either in that regard.

doesn't mean it's not a big thing for the club and fans but it has been devalued progressively over time by the expansion of the cl and the removal of the pathway from cl teams to the europa.

ange has underperformed beyond any expectations. nobody would even believe he'd still be in a job if you said they'd lose this many games, and i mean mid-season. he's in uncharted territory for how long it's gone after the point of failure, in the modern era. it's been bizarre to watch as a result.

xpost

cl qualification aspect is bigger than the trophy and i know exactly howuch ire that statement will raise

i rate it as less of a deal than the actual uefa cup, somewhere short of the fa cup, spurs were iirc favourites to win it from the start

preventing banter comments about trophies being the only measure of progress or success might be important to people who actually believe that shite

oh- it doesn't help that the "attacking" football is as bad as anything served up under mourinho or conte as pragmatists. deeply frustrating, unbalanced and unimaginative stuff.

if we had actually played to the requirements of each opponent or the situation all season like we did last night, we'd be a reasonable prospect

😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/8r44tObthF

— Celtic Collectibles (@CollectCelticFC) May 21, 2025

Is it a bad reflection on the rest of the European leagues that 2 of the worst teams in the PL were able to get to the final

Saw an interview with ange where he was praising vincent kompany for getting the Bayern job, saying people take notice when you stick to your principles like he did at Burnley and I found it p alarming. Any managers job is surely to try to win, but he and kompany seemed more concerned with making sure their personal brand was undamaged rather than trying to win games of football.

Is it a bad reflection on the rest of the European leagues that 2 of the worst teams in the PL were able to get to the final

Give us a break none of the rest of us has any money to spend, the EPL has hoovered it all up.

It isn't cos they are prob by far the two richest teams in it. This isn't the Europa of old.

They're by far two of the richest teams in the world of course.

The whole current EL format was made after the plans for the super league fell through to give teams a failsafe for maybe getting into the CL, from what I read.

It's been throwing up some good, deserving finalists from a diverse range most years recently. The CL format kerps most nbg clubs out of it. Weird how much Sevilla have won it yet they never did well in the CL.

(nbg? big)

rte ncorrspondent nnflexxion