Jaggy McJagface
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Posts posted by Jaggy McJagface
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53 minutes ago, Insert Amusing Pseudonym said:
The worst part about last night for me isn't the result, it's the proof that our approach in the summer was so completely unnecessary.
If we'd put in 3 games like that in Germany Clarke would be facing minimal dissent, regardless of result.
I am worried the end result last night will make Clarke think he’s vindicated in the ultra conservative approach of playing a back 3 even when Tierney isn’t fit.
We may as well go baws oot and try and out score opponents as we probably concede from an individual mistake regardless of how defensively we were to set up.
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19 minutes ago, TPAFKA Jersey 2 said:
Don’t know if I’m oversimplifying (and there’s probably a good reason why), but if the purpose of this latest announcement is to ensure that all the top teams are in pot one, wouldn’t it have been easier just to use the FIFA world rankings full stop?
It would, but the new nations league format makes this virtually impossible due to the increased number of games in the NL, so something had to give.
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2 hours ago, craigkillie said:
The announcement about the South American teams was nearly 3 years ago, I don't think I was claiming otherwise, I gave the exact date in my post. How long ago it was isn't the relevant part, the gap between it being announced and England being relegated to League B is what is relevant, since the argument being made by you and the Master revolves around the assumption that this Nations League format was designed BEFORE England's relegation (since otherwise, the fact they were in League B would already have been known).You are right to say that England weren't guaranteed to be relegated in June 2022, but it looked very likely. The other two teams likely to be relegated from the group at that point were Germany and Italy, who are also clearly elite nations - the only "non-elite" team were Hungary, who topped the group. So to any observer looking in at that stage, it was pretty clear that an elite team would be relegated. Incidentally, France were also bottom of their group at this stage, albeit with more chance of survival than England. So again, I find it unlikely that UEFA would not have been expecting an elite team to be in League B as of June 2022.
Your reading of those FIFA regulations is clearly very different from mine. It explicitly states that the World Rankings should be the predominant method used for seeding, and that any variation at all requires FIFA's permission. It is therefore not at all clear that FIFA would agree to an approach which completely ignores World Rankings, which is the central point of your argument. You have also overlooked the point I made about these regulations (created June 2023) not even existing at the stage where the new Nations League format was released (January 2023) - in the absence of any other information, you'd therefore be expecting the qualifying rules to be the same at this stage.
I can absolutely imagine UEFA lobbying to use the Nations League rankings for seedings (as they also did for the 2022 World Cup), and I can imagine this clause being inserted partly as a result of this lobbying, but there will also be a reason why FIFA have still insisted on their rankings as being the predominant factor in seeding. There will be a big difference in FIFA's eyes from an system which is almost entirely based on World Rankings but deviates slightly for operational reasons (ie this proposed approach) and one which completely abandons World Rankings (the approach which a handful of bloggers speculated about and you seem to have taken as gospel).
The central topic in this argument is not that there is a conspiracy years in the making to get England to the 2026 World Cup. We are saying that using the Nations league in full to determine the WC pots is CLEARLY the simplest, fairest and most efficient way to do it, and that the only reason it is not being done for this edition is because one of the most commercially lucrative teams happens to be in pot 2 this time around.
You know this. You have been told this multiple times. You are shifting the goalposts and deliberately choosing to avoid this central point because you are a pedantic smartarse who likes to argue with people on the internet.
Wrt the fifa regulations - if they really were so insistent on using the rankings alone, then why would they make any alterations to these regulations at all? They are clearly not against using something other than the rankings as a matter of principle as they’re letting UEFA do it as we speak. It’s quite clear to anyone looking at this holistically that these alterations to the regulations were made with the UEFA Nations League in mind.
I won’t be engaging any further as we’re basically retreading the same ground, but I know you won’t be able to resist getting the last word in as usual, so batter in.
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5 hours ago, craigkillie said:
These specific changes clearly weren't in the post for a while for the exact reason that you outlined in your post - the planned inclusion of the South American teams. That was only originally announced by UEFA in December 2021 as part of the cooperation announcement with CONMEBOL which also led to various other inter-confederation competitions being set up (most notably the "Finalissima" which first took place in June 2022).
The plan for this was to expand the top tier of the Nations League to 22 teams to include the 6 top South American nations. The exact format of that hadn't been worked out in any detail at that stage, but it clearly would have looked absolutely nothing like this current proposed system. At this stage they were also seemingly considering a 32 team Euros.What you and The Master are trying to have us believe is that UEFA went from announcing this idea in December 2021 to having completely ditched it AND fully proposed this new system before June 2022, when England's relegation was all but sealed. You are also having us believe that this new Nations League system was planned in June 2022 (or earlier) with the full expectation of tying it into FIFA's 2026 World Cup qualifying regulations, even though the 2026 World Cup qualifying regulations weren't actually released until June 2023?
I'm also curious about where these new stipulations and changes that supposedly give UEFA free rein to do what they want with seeding are written. I've looked at the FIFA World Cup qualifying regulations here, and what would appear to be the relevant rule (11.1) says:
"All draws to form groups and/or sub-groups for the preliminary competition shall be conducted by seeding and drawing lots whilst taking sports and geographical factors into consideration, as much as possible. Any seeding based on team performance for each confederation’s preliminary competition shall, in principle, be based on the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking. Only the FIFA Organising Committee may approve exceptions to these criteria for the preliminary competition. All decisions of the FIFA Organising Committee are final and not subject to appeal. The preliminary draw details for each region will be confirmed and communicated by FIFA and the confederation concerned in due course."
This suggests that World Rankings should still be the primary factor in seeding. Any exceptions to this (such as using Nations League ranking) would require FIFA approval. In practice, UEFA will be the only confederation which has any deviation from FIFA rankings whatsoever.The inclusion of the South American teams was mooted and scrapped nearly three years ago now. This new format is the new way in which they have decided to expand the Nations League. That isn’t particularly relevant to the overarching point we’re making that using the nations league rankings being used in full is clearly the optimal method for deciding World Cup qualifying pots from this edition onward, and that we find it unlikely they would have chosen to scorn this method if all the elite teams were in league A.
As an aside, while it isn’t particularly relevant to the discussion, it is utter nonsense of you to pretend that England’s relegation was “all but sealed” by June 2022. By the end of that window they were bottom but had 6 points left to play for, and were within at least 5 points of every other team in their group going into the last window. It is disingenuous to pretend they were effectively relegated already by then and use it as a central plank of your strawman argument.
The FIFA regulations you just posted clearly show how confederations are now able to use their own systems for deciding their preliminary pots if they want to. You’re right in saying every other confederation will just use the rankings, but nobody was ever arguing with you about this.
The very fact that these changes were added to the FIFA regulations - combined with the new format for the NL making using the rankings effectively impossible - led many to understandably surmise that these changes were added specifically with UEFA in mind to allow them the leeway to use the NL instead of the rankings. If anything, getting served this daft halfway house (which really makes the draw no easier) is surprising instead.
What we are saying is that it is exceedingly unlikely this is the method they would have chosen had all the elite teams been in league A is it is more complicated and less fair than the method of using the NL rankings, which we have established both from the FIFA regulations and the news yesterday that they are allowed to use.
Feel free to ignore all this if it makes you feel like you won an internet argument, though.
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1 hour ago, The Master said:
The significant change to World Cup qualification seeding for one thing.
I don’t see how someone can look at the very precise setup of the Nations League, and how it would dovetail almost perfectly with a World Cup qualification based entirely on its rankings, and think that’s not what the original plan was.
I think he probably has noticed this but just prefers being a contrarian and telling people that they’re wrong about things.
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1 hour ago, craigkillie said:
I don't understand what you're saying here.The changes to the Nations League were only announced in January 2023, which is AFTER England were relegated to League B. So how on earth can any supposed plan for the World Cup qualifying schedule be scuppered by something which was already known when the whole format was set up?
The changes to the Nations League will obviously have been in the post for a while. UEFA are continually trying to lend it more and more meaning, legitimacy and relevance by tying in qualification to NL performance, creating semi finals and finals and now introducing playoffs. They want less friendlies and more commercial opportunities which the nations league provides. I also remember the talk of them considering adding South American teams a couple of years ago as well.
They weren’t going to scrap all these changes just because England happened to be in pot 2.
It’s plainly obvious that just using the NL to determine the WC qualifying pots is easily the simplest way to do it, and means there are no conflicts of interest in the nations league with regards to teams moving up and down pots depending on whether they reach a playoff or not. The systems line up perfectly to ensure that draw goes smoothly as long as the Nations League rankings are used.
The point which the Master and I have both made multiple times to you today and which you have ignored is that there is no way this particular system for drawing the World Cup groups - a halfway house which potentially disadvantages many teams for good performance in this edition of the NL - would be happening if England were in league A at the expense of a “smaller” team like us, or Bosnia, or Denmark.
I guarantee you that if there are no elite nations in league B going into the 2030 World Cup that we move to just using the Nations league in full, as that is quite clearly the most sensible way to do it.
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There will be lots of gaps in their tour as they are in their 50’s and Liam’s voice won’t be able to handle 20 gigs in 30 days or whatever it would end up being. This is why they’re doing 2 consecutive nights at the weekends with a week off in between and only the odd midweek gig.
Saw lots of chat of them breaking Taylor Swift’s 10 night record at Wembley, and they could easily have surpassed this if they really wanted to, but I’m glad they’re doing gigs in other cities instead.
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6 hours ago, Gordopolis said:
So apparently Che Adams pulled out while fully fit as he wants to "focus on settling at Torino".
This, allied with Greg Taylor and Forrest pulling out without obvious injuries, has the whiff of the olden days pre-Clarke, where a squad would be named and 4 or 5 guys would pull out, guaranteed. That SC consigned that pattern of behaviour to the bin is/was one of his major strengths as our manager.
Is it a herald of the wheels coming off?
Where are you hearing that?
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If we go winless in this Nations League campaign, then it’ll be 18 months without a win aside from Gibraltar by the time the World Cup qualifiers come around.
Surely any manager that goes 18 months without a competitive win would be ushered out the door?
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2 hours ago, throbber said:
They need to open with Rock and roll star then straight into acquiesce/supersonic before even saying hello to the crowd. Live forever and slide away in the middle somewhere and wonderwall don’t look back in anger and champagne supernova towards the end.
I think they might start with Hello
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13 minutes ago, craigkillie said:
It certainly hadn't been widely assumed on here, where there was discussion of pots based on FIFA rankings. There has certainly never been any belief on this forum that we were guaranteed Pot 2 by being in League A of the Nations League.This is FIFA's competition, and the fact that UEFA have stretched themselves with another competition format isn't FIFA's problem. World Rankings have always been used for World Cup qualifying, including for 2022 World Cup despite the Nations League rankings also existing at that point.
This is not really "at the last minute" given that the draw isn't for another 3 months. England got relegated to League B almost exactly 2 years ago, this isn't something that has just popped up over the horizon.I distinctly remember reading threads about this while I was still in Germany from more than one account on Twitter. The fact most people here (or anywhere) were more interested in talking about the performances on the pitch than the intricacies of a convoluted future qualifying draw isn’t exactly surprising.
The rankings have always been used to determine WC pots… until now. The fact is FIFA have allowed confederations to use other means of determining their preliminary qualifying pots. The fact FIFA added these stipulations tipped a lot of people who had noted the problems with the new NL format off that they were in all likelihood just going to use the nations league rankings to determine the pots.
Simply using the NL pots is not only allowed, it makes the most sense by far and would avoid overcomplicating the draw by adding nonsense playoff permutations.
The point people are making today is that we are only getting this dogs dinner of a format because one of the elite nations has put themselves in a position where they either might not qualify or knock out one of the other elite nations in qualifying, and that stinks.
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5 minutes ago, craigkillie said:
The actual Nations League rankings obviously make it the most likely that the bigger teams drop down in pots (although in practice this hasn't happened much when they've used it in UEFA qualifiers, there hasn't been a big nation in Pot 3 or below yet).
However, if you are comparing this system to a pure rankings based system, which is what was used for the last World Cup qualifying, and what the discussions on this forum up until now had been anticipating as being used for the upcoming World Cup, then it is clearly more likely under this current system that "smaller" nations, end up as top seeds. Under this system, 8 of the 12 places are based on shorter-term performance compared to longer-term ones, and that is generally likely to favour smaller teams, since these tend to be more likely to put together short runs of brilliant performances which can't be sustained long-term.Just to use ourselves as an example, under the pure rankings based system, there was basically no chance of us being in Pot 1. Under this system, we could easily sneak in by maybe taking something like 8/9 points from this Nations League group - ie it wouldn't even require us to go out and smash everyone. If we end up in Pot 1, then by definition that's one less space available for a "bigger" team.
I thought it had been widely assumed that the NL rankings proper were likely to be used because scheduling conflicts due to the revamped nations league made using the FIFA rankings impractical/verging on impossible? I’m sure I saw Scotland’s coefficient and the WeGlobal page on Twitter having threads on this out months ago.
It’s the fact they’ve decided to use this weird hybrid model (which still makes for a no less convoluted draw with teams moving up and down pots depending on if they reach a playoff) at the last minute which stinks of a fix. It’s clearly been set up in this manner not because it makes most sense, but because it ensures England - the most commercially lucrative nation - don’t get papped into pot 2.
With regards to your last point, yes it does make it easier for us in particular to get lucky and reach pot 1 compared to the 2022 WC format. However, we’ve got to bear in mind that there are going to be 12 qualifying groups this time around rather than the 10 we had last time, so it would be easier for tier 2 nations to snatch a pot 1 berth via the rankings anyways. Austria are currently ranked 12 in Europe, with Ukraine, Sweden and Turkey not far off them.
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8 minutes ago, craigkillie said:
The last World Cup qualifiers weren't seeded by Nations League positions either, it was reported that UEFA wanted to use them but FIFA insisted on their rankings being used. The fact that the Nations League placings are being used at all now makes it more likely that bigger teams end up unseeded compared to the previous system.They weren’t, but FIFA added some stipulations to the draw proceedings this time around to leave using the NL as the preliminary seeding format an option for UEFA. It was pretty clear that just using the nations league was not only allowed, but was the obvious solution to the scheduling conflicts this time around.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue with your second point. They are only using the nations league for the teams finishing in the top 2 in each league A group - a total of 8 teams out of 50 odd in Europe. As it stands, none of the big teams have any real jeopardy of falling out of pot 1 unless all of France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands contrived to finish bottom of their groups, which is incredibly unlikely. Even then, all but one of them would still make pot 1 in that scenario. So no, it is not actually realistically more likely that the big teams will miss out using the new system.
If they’d used the ACTUAL nations league rankings instead of this half arsed version, there would be some actual jeopardy involved for those teams, but as it stands there is very little chance of them dropping down a pot.
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6 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:
Teams taking part in Nations League playoffs need to be in four team groups rather than five in order to fit all their qualifiers in after their playoffs, so if too many teams from one pot are in playoffs to accommodate them all in four team groups, they need to be swapped for someone in a different pot who isn't in a playoff and so can be in a five team group.
It could actually work in our favour as well as it's possible we might sit in Pot 3 on World Rankings having finished bottom of our Nations League group, but a team sitting in a Pot 2 position in the rankings have finished 3rd in League A or 2nd in League B groups and so have a promotion/relegation playoff, and we could then get put in Pot 2 in their place as a team without a playoff.
Even if that were to work in our favour that is an absolutely ridiculous system and unfair on the team that should have been pot 2 in that scenario.
Couldn’t be clearer that it’s been put in place to ensure the big teams all get there.
The solution to this is either;
1.) Don’t expand the NL in such fashion that these fixture clashes become likely.
2.) If you *are* set on revamping the NL, do qualifying pots based on them to avoid this nonsense.
The fact that this dogs dinner of a format is what they plumped for tells you all you need to know. There is no other reason why they wouldn’t just use the NL rankings other than the most commercially lucrative team have made an arse of their last nations league campaign.
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8 minutes ago, The Master said:
The more you dig into it, the worse it gets.
It's entirely possible that if a team finishes 2nd in their NL group, they will end up in a lower WC qualifying pot than if they'd finished 3rd or even 4th.
That's what the "draw pot adjustments" are - if too many teams from the same pot (based on FIFA rankings) qualify for the play-offs, they'll move down the lowest ranked team in the play-offs, and move up the highest-ranked team not in the play-offs.
So if I've picked this up right, it would mean (e.g.) if too many pot 3 teams qualify for the play-offs, they'll move the lowest-ranked pot 3 team in the play-offs to pot 4, and move the highest-ranked pot 4 team not in the play-offs to pot 3.
I’m struggling to get my head round this
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4 hours ago, Pie Of The Month said:
There we go, if we want to be pot 1 we would need to finish top 2 in our group.
There is absolutely zero chance they use this convoluted format rather than just the NL rankings if England hadn’t made an arse if it and dropped down to league B.
They are clearly protecting the bigger teams with the big stars and are shit scared of a scenario where England and France end up in the same qualifying group and one of them not making it.
This is the absolute worst scenario for us as if we get a shoeing in this NL group then we will likely be in pot 3 for the World Cup qualifiers now, whereas before we’d have been pot 2 (or even pot 1 if we’d managed to finish above Poland). We’ve been absolutely shafted by this.
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8 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:
Somerset Park?
The Falkirk Stadium
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1 hour ago, PB1994 said:
No doubt they have the Sunday and Monday all ready to go for the Edinburgh dates.
Doubt it, Liam’s voice can’t handle 5 nights in a row.
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16 minutes ago, MazzyStar said:
The others you mentioned are shite, fontaines DC aren’t. Also, I don’t think they have much of a crossover of fan base with oasis.
Slightly less so Fontaines, but about 99% of Courteeners or Catfish fans will be into Oasis.
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47 minutes ago, JS_FFC said:
It’s a stick on that Cinnamon will support Oasis at the Murrayfield date. It’ll be Gerry Cinnamon in Edinburgh, Courteeners in Manchester, Catfish and the Bottlemen in Cardiff and Fontaines DC in Dublin. And probably one of the above for London.
Would be gutted with that as Cinnamon is easily my least favorite of the lot.
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2 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:
That’s entirely what’s happening. It’s a bit like a very big scale version of the Replacements reunion.
They can’t even get in the same room for the publicity shots.
From stills posted from their announcement video this morning it looks like they did have a photo shoot together
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6 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:
Oasis is not Indie Rock Subculture. It's Britpop.Potato potata. Everyone that grew up going to see the aforementioned bands across the 2010’s will be trying to get tickets for Oasis this Saturday.
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1 minute ago, MONKMAN said:
People are deluded if they think this will only be full of over 35's etc. Look at your current stadium/headline bands in the UK, Courteeners probably being the biggest out of the new generation. Their fanbase will overlap by about 95% of those who will listen to and want to see Oasis and there's plenty of kids who go to see them.
Yup, Oasis remain the biggest and most successful band of the British indie rock subculture. The generation who grew up going to see Courteeners, Kasabian and Catfish & the Bottlemen will all be trying to get tickets for this.
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11 minutes ago, dirty dingus said:
Seen Oasis a few times back in the day( Ingleston, Balloch and T in park)all good shows but this has a Roses reunion vibe to me where it's the nostalgia rather than the quality of the music to the fore and will be north of £150 I reckon. It'll also be like a Gerry CInnamon coked up ultras ned fest on steroids.
Liam’s voice is far better now than Ian Brown’s was when the Roses got back together. The price will be a joke but people will pay it anyway.
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2026 World Cup, seeding chat etc
in Tartan Army Ramblings
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Your inability to resist correcting someone on a minor point of pedantry while ignoring the rest of their contribution is really quite tiresome.