[Macros]

Premier league is a straight up league, 20 teams, each team plays every other team twice.
3 points for a win
1 point for a draw
Most points wins, the three teams with the lowest point tally get relegated to a lower league, and three teams come up fromantic a lower league to replace them next season.

The FA cup, is open to all teams in 10? leagues (premier, championship, league 1 and league 2 are top 4 leagues, wwith the 92 professional teams)
I think know the record numberuhigen of teams was like 730? The professional teams skip the earlier rounds and get seeded into the 3rd?/4th? Round. It's a straight up knockout competition, and the final is usually the last domestic game in the season.
It's usually a premiership team that wins it, but upsets do happen, and most years one lower league team goes on a run or takes a massive scalp.

[Macros]

I should add that for a non league team, getting drawn against a premier league power house is a blessing, even if they expect to get hammered, the financial rewards have saved a lot of small teams. Scraping a draw and getting a replay is a huge deal even for a minnow, winning obviously is the target but a replay is huge for them

This post has been edited by Macros: 10 August 2017 - 09:02 AM

[Morgoth]

I'm really struggling to figure out my midfielders. They were the heart of my team last season, but prices seem to have been increased all across those players.

[Macros]

It's taking a punt on a youth player coming good (spurs) or a lower team having a good season (Liecester or west ham 2 seasons ago)

[Tapper]

Morgoth, on 10 August 2017 - 12:35 PM, said:

I'm really struggling to figure out my midfielders. They were the heart of my team last season, but prices seem to have been increased all across those players.

I managed to get a midfield that I am OK with, but it came at the expense of being stuck with the cheapest possible 3-at-the-back formation. There's no wiggling room whatsoever unless an expendable 5.5 mln guy goes up in value.

[Morgoth]

Last season I ran with Sigurdsson, Eriksen, Alli, King and Sanchez as my midfield, and it pretty much carried me through the entire season. This year I haven't really found a good combination that doesn't lose me a healthy attack formation. Ah well, that's the fun of it I guess

[Tiste Simeon]

Liverpool draw. Chelsea lose. Huddersfield at the top of the league. Been a good first couple of days all told.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yes. A very good opening weekend for sure.

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 13 August 2017 - 09:40 PM

[Morgoth]

It didn't entirely work out for me, but it wasn't too shabby either as far as openings go.

[Macros]

Mine wasn't great at all

[Morgoth]

The deciding factor for my selections onwards is a) what happens to Sanchez, and what happens to Sigurdsson.

[Malankazooie]

So I was catching some of the UEFA Champions League playoff. Saw the match between Liverpool and Hoffenheim. So this UEFA Champ Playoffs is two legs and its purpose is to allow these teams competing to get into the group stage of the UEFA Champions League, correct? I'm sorta confused by it because I don't see any of the powerhouses in this like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, BARCA, etc.

I'm a euro / English Premier League professional football/soccer noob, so sorry for being so ignorant. But I'm really enjoying it. I've watched the UEFA highlight show for the most recent matches in this playoff and damn there's been some awesome action!

[Morgoth]

Malankazooie, on 17 August 2017 - 01:18 AM, said:

So I was catching some of the UEFA Champions League playoff. Saw the match between Liverpool and Hoffenheim. So this UEFA Champ Playoffs is two legs and its purpose is to allow these teams competing to get into the group stage of the UEFA Champions League, correct? I'm sorta confused by it because I don't see any of the powerhouses in this like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, BARCA, etc.

I'm a euro / English Premier League professional football/soccer noob, so sorry for being so ignorant. But I'm really enjoying it. I've watched the UEFA highlight show for the most recent matches in this playoff and damn there's been some awesome action!

Yeah, there are a lot of teams from a lot of leagues in Europe, and not all of them can fit into the Champions League. So a number have to compete in a qualifier beforehand, depending on the strength of their home league. Liverpool is a in the qualifier because they finished fourth in last season of the Premier League. Whereas in the Norwegian league only one team - the winner - gets to compete in the qualifier.

[Macros]

Top teams from the 'bigger' leagues get automatically seeded to the group round, then the final spots are for the non seeded teams to right over.
The cynic in me feels this might be linked to more televised games, and more high profile teams getting a shot without removing the chances of getting in from 'lesser' teams

[Malankazooie]

How many teams advance to the group stage from the playoff?

[Macros]

There's 8 groups of 4. These 32 are made up of 22 seeded teams (winners/runners up of leagues) and 10 that make it through the play offs, those are happening now.
I think there's 2 pots for the group draw, so there will never be a group with 4 league winners in it. I think it's like the top 8 teams get out into groups then the rest get randomly allocated. Possibly, that needs fact checked.
The groups, They play like mini leagues, each team plays the others twice, home and away.
The winners and runners up of each group make it through to the knock out stages.
The winner of a group will always be drawn against the runner up of another group, then it's a straight knockout to the final

[Macros]

Then there's the 3rd place in each group, they get inserted into the Europa league knockout stages (last 32?) But Europa league is hella confusing, so I'm not even going to try

[Gorefest]

Yeah, that is about right. Europa League has its own group stage but after that they get joined by the dropouts from the Champions League. It is a confusing system tailored at keeping the 'big' teams active in Europe as long as possible to generate tv money.

[Tiste Simeon]

Oh yeah great start. Feeling really confident for the first time since Fergie left.

If course we have yet to see how we perform against good teams like City or Chelsea but there is a feeling of invincibility that harks back to a few years back.

[Morgoth]

At least my gamble on Pogba being better this season paid off.