stevegrant

James Horncastle on BT Sport made an interesting point earlier this evening when talking about Inter that, having spent an absolute fortune this summer (including their signing of Joao Mario for nearly €40m this week) and not sold anyone of note, they might not even be able to register all of their signings for their Europa League squad because of UEFA FFP regulations, so we might end up playing a below-strength opponent anyway. Not quite sure of the logic there, would have thought any FFP punishment would take place next season rather than immediately. Edit: he's just clarified this on Twitter. As Inter had previously been sanctioned by UEFA for FFP breaches, they are under a squad restriction this season. There was some sort of voluntary agreement in 2015 (presumably similar to that struck by Manchester City and PSG at the same time) which would be acceptable to UEFA on the understanding that overall losses could be no more than €30m, and that from their last Europa League squad, players that have left the club can only be replaced in their squad by players whose purchases are covered by the sale of the players they're replacing - essentially, it's possible that Joao Mario can only play in the Europa League if Inter sell a player for a similar fee.

Not many. That'll be the hardest one to get tickets for because the demand will also be high. Israel will be a relatively small allocation but I'd assume also less popular for many reasons.

I think Sport Options ran a trip last year, would expect they'll do one for Milan and Prague at least, not sure it'll be cost-effective for the club AND external companies to all do trips for Be'er Sheva.

Can do £450 return with easyJet from Luton, but the times weren't quite as handy for me. Guessing official trip prices of around £650.

A colleague chose the ****ing perfect moment to come over for a project chat Ended up having to pay £140 for the Milan flight, Prague was less than £100 though with BA. Tel Aviv, though, ****ing hell. Would have been fine had that been the last game, could have got a decent price, but north of £500 for flights that didn't involve an overnight layover

Unsure - having a scan today, I believe.

Can you make that graphic any bigger?

Can more or less guarantee they'll be very expensive compared to booking the trip yourself within an hour of the fixtures being released, perhaps with the exception of the real long-distance trips to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

I believe that our place in Pot 3 is now secure. Gabala have knocked Maribor out

West Ham losing

Yeah, it's a new rule as of last season, hence Arsenal ending up in a group with Bayern last season despite their coefficient still being ludicrously high compared to their actual achievements (this season they'd have been in pot 2 under the old rules as well). It's basically the reigning champions plus the champions of the 7 highest-ranked leagues, or if the reigning champion won their league as well, the champion of the 8th-ranked league would also be in pot one (which was PSV last year as Barcelona were both European and Spanish champions)

They pre-draw them, I think, partially based on geography. Fortunately, as there's at least 80 miles between all of the three potential stadia in use in this country, that won't be an issue. It might even be - god forbid - a completely random draw It's marginally less tedious in real life.

Going back to the subject of early kickoff times in eastern timezones, there is an interesting addition to the Champions League group draw rules this season, which I guess might also apply to the Europa League draw tomorrow:

Sake

We are number 23...

Usual story, don't judge the score until both sides have batted. Lots of wickets to spinners in the first innings is interesting, we were docked points for preparing a similar surface a few years ago...

The kickoff times are all unified across Europe with the exception of those in timezones further east than CET. *shrug*

As far as I'm aware, Tallaght was OK for the third qualifying round but not good enough for the playoff round. I'd be surprised if they were able to play EL group stage games there. 99% sure UEFA wouldn't let them play at Windsor Park in Belfast, so Dublin's really their only option, I think.

There are two time slots, 6pm and 8:05pm (UK time). I think there's generally an even spread of kickoff times for everyone, so I assume we will have at least one home 6pm kickoff, which is a bit **** for people getting there from any sort of distance away from Southampton. There are exceptions for games that take place in the most easterly destinations (i.e. Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan), which tend to kick off earlier because of the timezone differences.

Hence why they played their CL playoff game against Legia Warsaw at the Aviva. Their EL group stage games will almost certainly be there too.

It literally took five minutes, FFS Main benefit is that it ensured that the tickets ended up with the people who most deserved them, rather than letting people bump up their purchase history by flogging their ticket to a mate. As already said, doubt it'll happen for most venues, the smallest ones are likely to be the most remote this time, I think.

Ah, fair enough.

I'm not 100% sure that's correct - while obviously the profit from player trading is useful for FFP purposes because of the way transfer fees are accounted for, I don't think there's specific allowance for player trading profits to supplement the wage bill. However, there absolutely is a specific allowance that enables any increase in commercial revenue from the previous year to be used entirely towards the wage bill if the club wishes. This season sees new commercial deals with Under Armour and Virgin Media - along with a load of other partnerships that are popping up every now and then - which has added north of £10m a year to the commercial revenue, which can ALL be lumped on wages if we want to.

Think it's probably more to do with the Premier League and keeping overseas broadcasters happy, to be honest. Much easier for NBC, for example, to co-ordinate their programming to show three games at 14:15 UK time than one at 14:15 and two at 15:00.