bigmick wrote:It is a strange system, and not a particularly fair one ether. Nor could it be said to be encouraging teams to play in an attacking way, nor does it ensure that every minute of every match actually counts. Just as well for us that it is the case though, as our 1-0 Home win against the pub team was an awful effort and would have been enough to put us out otherwise.
It's as stupid a system as the one they use in qualifying for the World Cup and European Championship. They discount the results against the weak teams, but what happens if a weak team beat say Switzerland as happened? Surely that is as bad as beating a better team is good?
So Fiorentina can whip Debrecen by 9-2 or whatever it was, Liverpool beat Debrecen 2-0, but it comes down to results between Fiorentina and Liverpool. It is a league table, if only a mini-league, so why shouldn't normal league rules apply?
We finished 4th on GD in the league in 1996/97, had CL rules on head to heads applied then we'd have finished 2nd above Newcastle (2nd) and Arsenal (3rd)
96/97 Liverpool 2-1 Newcastle, Newcastle 1-1 Liverpool
96/97 Liverpool 2-0 Arsenal, Arsenal 1-2 Liverpool
Would have made a good season better, SF of the Cup Winners Cup, QFs of the League Cup. I think Evans was much underrated as a manager, finished 3rd twice, 4th twice (once on GD as above), won a cup and finished runners-up in the FA Cup and got to the semis in a decent cup competition in Europe (now defunct) But as with Houllier and probably Rafa, I doubt he was likely to win the league even if you gave him 10 years in charge. The mancs were beginning to dominate and pull away from the rest, we missed too many openings with wrong managers (IMHO) 2002/03 was perhaps the biggest missed opportunity, 30 points from 12 games and we fell apart. The title was won with just 83 points, the next lowest since was 87 which is more than we've managed in the Premeirship.