The chase for 4th place (not top 4)

Leftback99 said:
Now everyone has caught up with what was obvious for a couple of months and realised we won't get it, do we think we'll finish 6th (Europa), 7th (Conference) or 8th (nothing)?

I think 6th is a long shot.
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Hopefully 8th.
 
If we could forfeit the rest of the season, we should. United should be paying its fans for sticking by them
 
United have no conviction in its game. Arsenal found theirs a while back - Spurs have certainly found it since March.
Both Arsenal & Spurs will fight to the finish.

What makes this even more interesting is Chelsea could get dragged into this if they drop their levels.
If Arsenal win over Palace today then they will be 2 pts away from Chelsea with a game in hand and they play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 3 weeks.

Spurs look to have the best fixture list of the 3 but they need both Chelsea & Arsenal to drop points. Pressure is on now - lets see how this all plays out.
 
Before the weekend it was a long shot, now it's completely dead in the water.

I think we will finish 8th which is embarrassing for a club of our size.
 
We need to finish at least 5th to prepare for the worst. Players wont accomplish that.
 
Anything below 5th will mean no Europe next season right? Or does it depend on Cup winners?

I am actually thinking it would be good for us not to play EL next season. We can then trim down the squad significantly. Get rid of the likes of Mata, Cavani, Matic, Pogba, Lingard, Bailly, Jones, Martial, etc., bring in 2-3 quality additions and use youth players like Garner, Amad and Mejbri. At least it would be something new.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Anything below 5th will mean no Europe next season right? Or does it depend on Cup winners?

I am actually thinking it would be good for us not to play EL next season. We can then trim down the squad significantly. Get rid of the likes of Mata, Cavani, Matic, Pogba, Lingard, Bailly, Jones, Martial, etc., bring in 2-3 quality additions and use youth players like Garner, Amad and Mejbri. At least it would be something new.
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FA Cup will likely be won by a team that qualified for CL considering Crystal Palace are the only ones left who are not currently firmly in top 4, so 6th and 7th placed teams will get Europa League spots and 8th team will go into Conference League. So we will almost certainly be in Europe next year as we are 14 points ahead of Leicester in 9th.
 
Sarni said:
FA Cup will likely be won by a team that qualified for CL considering Crystal Palace are the only ones left who are not currently firmly in top 4, so 6th and 7th placed teams will get Europa League spots and 8th team will go into Conference League. So we will almost certainly be in Europe next year as we are 14 points ahead of Leicester in 9th.
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Wouldn't it be 5th and 6th EL, and 7th Conference League in that case?
 
Sarni said:
No, League Cup has already been won by Liverpool so that spots goes to a Premier League team as well.
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From what I can gather from the PL's website, there are seven European places up for grabs.

UCL: 1st-4th Places in the PL
UEL: 5th place + FA Cup Winner
UECL: EFL Cup Winner

There are no league qualification spots for the Conference league. So no matter how the cups are won, I don't think an 8th place can give European football next season.
 
Mike Smalling said:
From what I can gather from the PL's website, there are seven European places up for grabs.

UCL: 1st-4th Places in the PL
UEL: 5th place + FA Cup Winner
UECL: EFL Cup Winner

There are no league qualification spots for the Conference league. So no matter how the cups are won, I don't think an 8th place can give European football next season.
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Indeed the number of EL spots has been reduced to 2, I did not know that. So 8th will not give us Europe indeed.
 
Sarni said:
Indeed the number of EL spots has been reduced to 2, I did not know that. So 8th will not give us Europe indeed.
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Exactly. Given that 4th is probably out of reach, we are in a situation where 5th or 6th would be ok, 7th would be a nightmare and 8th or below would be ok. I just don't want to see this club in the Conference League.
 
Mike Smalling said:
From what I can gather from the PL's website, there are seven European places up for grabs.

UCL: 1st-4th Places in the PL
UEL: 5th place + FA Cup Winner
UECL: EFL Cup Winner

There are no league qualification spots for the Conference league. So no matter how the cups are won, I don't think an 8th place can give European football next season.
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Liverpool have already secured this spot, which leaves only 6 spots for United.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Exactly. Given that 4th is probably out of reach, we are in a situation where 5th or 6th would be ok, 7th would be a nightmare and 8th or below would be ok. I just don't want to see this club in the Conference League.
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Yeah, I'd probably want us in Europa as that is a good opportunity for the new coach to test his players in Europe and there are usually some very decent sides there - especially second half of the competition when eliminated CL teams join. Conference is pointless, though if we were there I'd hope we would use it to play our second team.
 
I want to finish 8th now. Think it will be a blessing in disguise. We get to trim the squad and with the world cup being mid season it could actually massively play to our advantage next season.
 
United have played poorly all season, whereas Arsenal seem to be carrying the most momentum due to their performances.

Spurs are inconsistent, I can't see Conte staying for long unless no players are sold and they spend large sums in the summer market.

Unless a drop off Arsenal will finish fourth or third.
 
sangria said:
Liverpool have already secured this spot, which leaves only 6 spots for United.
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I speak on behalf of all Liverpool fans that we would be more than willing to give that place in UECL to United.


On a serious note, I agree with some of the posters above that a season without Europe would actually help United sort themselves out.
 
sangria said:
Liverpool have already secured this spot, which leaves only 6 spots for United.
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Which means it will go to either 6th or 7th place in the league, depending on the winner of the FA Cup. Most likely the spot will go to 7th.
 
I hope we get conference league, I would love to see how they spin it into something positive.

Could also be the embarrassing kick in the teeth the club needs.

I don’t see us getting more than 12 (3 wins, 3 draws, 2 defeats) of remaining 24 points available so let’s see where that leaves us…?
 
Hastar said:
I speak on behalf of all Liverpool fans that we would be more than willing to give that place in UECL to United.


On a serious note, I agree with some of the posters above that a season without Europe would actually help United sort themselves out.
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I keep flip-flopping on this. Currently I don't agree, but really it all comes down to whether a new manager would get more benefit, from a coaching perspective, from training ground time or more games so I've added it as a pro and a con. Other than that:

Pros
  • Would allow us to strip down our squad
  • Fewer matches would help us out in the league
  • More time on the training pitch for new manager

Cons
  • Very difficult to attract quality players without any European football at all
  • Lose a potential route into the CL the season after
  • Less football. There are still some fans left who like watching United play
  • Lose the most likely opportunity to use youth
  • Less competitive matches for manager to assess players/progress
  • Loss of matchday revenue - not insignificant
 
If you make use of that year, it works out well.

But.. if you don't then it can turn into something very bad quickly, could be a bad slope.

Hard to see United making use of it when they're starting from scratch. For us at least we had 1.5 years of Arteta where he had worked on things before this year.
 
croadyman said:
Down to Spurs & Arsenal
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Absolutely. We have no chance. Next few games will determine if it's going to go down to the wire or Arsenal will be fairly comfortable. Hopefully Arsenal slip up so we at least get a contest.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Absolutely. We have no chance. Next few games will determine if it's going to go down to the wire or Arsenal will be fairly comfortable. Hopefully Arsenal slip up so we at least get a contest.
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Yeah quite honestly would rather have no European Football than be in Europa. Would say we saw the benefit of it with Chelsea & Leicester in recent seasons. Mind you those squads were actually on the same page which we clearly aren't.

I also don't buy into needing European Football to attract players because most of this time they are Social Media obsessed overpaid shirkers.
 
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Bilbo said:
I keep flip-flopping on this. Currently I don't agree, but really it all comes down to whether a new manager would get more benefit, from a coaching perspective, from training ground time or more games so I've added it as a pro and a con. Other than that:

Pros
  • Would allow us to strip down our squad
  • Fewer matches would help us out in the league
  • More time on the training pitch for new manager

Cons
  • Very difficult to attract quality players without any European football at all
  • Lose a potential route into the CL the season after
  • Less football. There are still some fans left who like watching United play
  • Lose the most likely opportunity to use youth
  • Less competitive matches for manager to assess players/progress
  • Loss of matchday revenue - not insignificant
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Kante joined Chelsea from Leicester despite Chelsea being without any kind of European football. EL and ECL are not the thing, quality players look at. Thursday evening to North, East Europe are not really attractive.

To gain the potential route, it would require bigger investment for squad depth which is counter productive. You need bigger squad, but since these competition doesn't pay out well, you would take out from your already reduced transfer budget. Keeping underperforming, unmotivated players around for this competition is risky. They're not happy with just playing EL and domestic cups alone. They're time bombs that would trigger other issue when the team league form is not good. Not all players are selfless reasonable. In truth, sounds like many are selfish, self centered, lacking in situational and self awareness.

It's not that simple to play youth in these 2 competitions. Seasoned pro teams from smaller leagues are well capable of dispatching the inexperienced youth team. With third placed in EL group has another chance in ECL, teams from smaller league are more motivated to play until the very end. And with all the COVID outbreak affecting schedule, you don't want to play the extra round with CL dropout in EL/playing that extra round in ECL after dropping down from EL. So you want to finish first place in the group, which playing youth doesn't guarantee.

38 league games and two domestic cups, especially with a World Cup in the middle of the season this time is more than enough to assess the players. It's not like the whole squad got called up for World Cup. Clubs managers can call up U23 players, and train them if they want too during this time.

All in all, there is no con beside losing another chance to win a trophy, in our situation.
 
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Unpopular opinion I'm sure but without CL, EL is a good place to be despite how everyone feels about it. It can be used to give youth and squad players experience in Europe. It would be foolish for us to miss out on European competition completely.
 
peridigm said:
Unpopular opinion I'm sure but without CL, EL is a good place to be despite how everyone feels about it. It can be used to give youth and squad players experience in Europe. It would be foolish for us to miss out on European competition completely.
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Not really might mean those yankee leeches actually sell up and feck off sooner
 
Nero said:
All aboard the let's finish 8th train.
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I'm coming around to this way of thinking.

I genuinely couldn't care less about finishing top 4 - we've done absolutely nothing in the competition for a decade, and ultimately all it does is put more money into the Glazers coffers.

We'll attract good players regardless, but if it means we need to actually think about what we are doing, remove the dead weight and have a proper reset without European football, so be it.
 
Delano said:
I'm coming around to this way of thinking.

I genuinely couldn't care less about finishing top 4 - we've done absolutely nothing in the competition for a decade, and ultimately all it does is put more money into the Glazers coffers.

We'll attract good players regardless, but if it means we need to actually think about what we are doing, remove the dead weight and have a proper reset without European football, so be it.
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Yeah I am definitely in that camp now
 
I'd be happy with 8th. Not only does it give the Glazers a kick in the nuts financially, we avoid those torturous Thursday/Sunday games in the Europa league/conference. I've also got two seasons tickets and do not want to fork out good money to watch Lincoln red imps getting torn a new one by the reserves.

We can re-group like Arsenal have this season and concentrate our efforts on building some momentum in the league. If we have spare gaps in the season, take the squad on a training camp to Dubai. Oh, and there is a World Cup in nov/dec.
 
Bilbo said:
I keep flip-flopping on this. Currently I don't agree, but really it all comes down to whether a new manager would get more benefit, from a coaching perspective, from training ground time or more games so I've added it as a pro and a con. Other than that:

Pros
  • Would allow us to strip down our squad
  • Fewer matches would help us out in the league
  • More time on the training pitch for new manager

Cons
  • Very difficult to attract quality players without any European football at all
  • Lose a potential route into the CL the season after
  • Less football. There are still some fans left who like watching United play
  • Lose the most likely opportunity to use youth
  • Less competitive matches for manager to assess players/progress
  • Loss of matchday revenue - not insignificant
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I kind of agree with that, except for attracting players - I don't think Europa League or especially Conference League would be a big attraction for the type of players we should be targeting, and about using youth - we'd most likely just play our strongest team as usual anyway.
 
If we play the reserves for the rest of the league games we might actually finish 6th. To finish 8th I reckon we should just keep playing our first team players a.k.a our beloved bunch of overpaid mercenaries will do the job for us. The one thing they can deliver on is underperforming
 
To barely be in the mix for 4th this far out is some achievement.
 
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