I would of preferred to of seen Burnley v AC Milan on the turf tonight!

Yes I would "have" prefered to "have" seen Burnley v AC Milan on the turf tonight as well.

In case you weren't aware - we wouldn't have simply had the same ball that Olympiakos had. The draw changed format after our tie and therefore wouldn't have been in the same group as Milan.

Will be glad when the group stage is over. Every matchday I can't help but contemplate what might have been!

Well unfortunately we support a club that couldn't be arsed even attempting to try and progress.

ClaretAndJew wrote:Well unfortunately we support a club that couldn't be arsed even attempting to try and progress.

Is that why we beat Aberdeen and the Istanbul team?

Leisure wrote:Is that why we beat Aberdeen and the Istanbul team?

Luckily and undeservedly in both instances.

I'm sure Dyche tried to win, but if he REALLY wanted to win he wouldn't have played a reserve defence in the hotbed of Athens.

It remains unforgettable,, and, sadly, unforgivable.

CrosspoolClarets wrote:It remains unforgettable,, and, sadly, unforgivable.

To quote most of the Germans at Nuremburg 'I was only following orders'

Olympiakos away certainly wasn't the place for a keeper playing his first game for a year and a centre back pairing who'd played together once. Will probably bug me for the rest of my days as a Burnley fan, unless by some miracle we get to play in Europe again, which is extremely unlikely.

jrgbfc wrote:Olympiakos away certainly wasn't the place for a keeper playing his first game for a year and a centre back pairing who'd played together once. Will probably bug me for the rest of my days as a Burnley fan, unless by some miracle we get to play in Europe again, which is extremely unlikely.

Don’t worry, they’re starting this Europa League II soon so youll be watching us away in Armenia before you know it

CrosspoolClarets wrote:Luckily and undeservedly in both instances.

So when we won we were lucky but when we got beat it was because we wanted to lose! You couldn't make it up!

Leisure wrote:So when we won we were lucky but when we got beat it was because we wanted to lose! You couldn't make it up!

Milan want to lose maybe....or maybe not 2..1

Penalty to olympiakos

AC Milan must be sh!t getting beat by this lot in Athens...

Rick_Muller wrote:AC Milan must be sh!t getting beat by this lot in Athens...

No ....sh!tting themselves more like it. Olympiakos cheats of the highest order.

Leisure wrote:So when we won we were lucky but when we got beat it was because we wanted to lose! You couldn't make it up!

They already have, notice how I never mentioned him or her as I just don't know, that bits not made up

Leisure wrote:So when we won we were lucky but when we got beat it was because we wanted to lose! You couldn't make it up!

Surely if we wanted to lose, we must have been unlucky when we won.

Tall Paul wrote:Surely if we wanted to lose, we must have been unlucky when we won.

We were unlucky when beating Aberdeen.

I feel somewhat better about us losing to them now.

I don't

We absolutely battered them at the Turf and no one would have complained if we'd won 5-0.

But we didn't take our chances, and that is what happens in football

CrosspoolClarets wrote:Luckily and undeservedly in both instances.

I'm sure Dyche tried to win, but if he REALLY wanted to win he wouldn't have played a reserve defence in the hotbed of Athens.

It remains unforgettable,, and, sadly, unforgivable.

You still banging this drum you tart

Not good with reality is Crosspool you have to say

IF we had beaten Olympiakos we would have held the ball that was given to Bordeaux due to our national seeding. So it could have been Zenit St petersburg, Slavia Prague and FC Copenhagen as they got, but, then again, everyone else would have moved up too so apart from Zenit it is anyone's guess.

Lancasterclaret wrote:Not good with reality is Crosspool you have to say

Lancs, yet again when you play the man not the ball with me it means you have lost the argument.

I'm not going to play the old "where were you in Athens" card, I fully appreciate it was difficult, but to spend a grand going all that way on my tod, risking life and limb to get to the stadium, only to discover a reserve defence trying to handle an unbelievable atmosphere?

When people say "still banging thay drum" - thats what unforgivable means folks. I will happily clap him off at matches and will support his team but it doesn't mean I forgive what he did to our one chance in Europe. Dyche did this, not me. His choice.

What you really mean Lancs, just like in our poltical discussions, is you are risk averse (which is fine) and worry about the alternative. In our brief life I think we should all be braver, and demand higher standards.

P.s. well done Olympiacos for knocking out Milan. I've emailed a few of the bars over there to congratulate some of the guys I was chatting to.

I managed to do Athens without risking life or limb, maybe it is better we are out for your own sake.

Our defence that night was
Heaton , Bardsley ,Gibson Long Ward
In fairness hardly an inexperienced lot

JohnMac wrote:To quote most of the Germans at Nuremburg 'I was only following orders'

So are you saying you think Dyche was following the boards orders? Anything is possible but I find that hard to believe.

AlargeClaret wrote:Our defence that night was
Heaton , Bardsley ,Gibson Long Ward
In fairness hardly an inexperienced lot

That's as maybe, but subsequent games have shown that that line up is not his first choice - which I think we all knew at the time.

Hardly going all out to win IMO.

CrosspoolClarets wrote:Lancs, yet again when you play the man not the ball with me it means you have lost the argument.

I'm not going to play the old "where were you in Athens" card, I fully appreciate it was difficult, but to spend a grand going all that way on my tod, risking life and limb to get to the stadium, only to discover a reserve defence trying to handle an unbelievable atmosphere?

When people say "still banging thay drum" - thats what unforgivable means folks. I will happily clap him off at matches and will support his team but it doesn't mean I forgive what he did to our one chance in Europe. Dyche did this, not me. His choice.

What you really mean Lancs, just like in our poltical discussions, is you are risk averse (which is fine) and worry about the alternative. In our brief life I think we should all be braver, and demand higher standards.

P.s. well done Olympiacos for knocking out Milan. I've emailed a few of the bars over there to congratulate some of the guys I was chatting to.

Well said mate. There are still, unbelievably, many on here who refuse to blame Dyche for our poor Europa campaign (campaign is not really the right word, perhaps foray might be more appropriate) and think he did the right thing dropping half the players who got us there in the first place to supposedly 'prioritise' the PL. I said then and I will continue, as you do, to say he was wrong and he threw away a chance for a much better run and maybe play some big teams in Europe in favour of the boring sh!te that is the PL, and what good did it do? Currently 4th from bottom with a team that, until the last couple of games, didn't seem to want to play, maybe, as I have said before, because of the sheer betrayal in Europe, 'Okay lads, thanks for getting us into Europe, you can forget playing in it though because you have work to do in the PL'. No wonder they looked demotivated and p!ssed off.

houseboy wrote:Well said mate. There are still, unbelievably, many on here who refuse to blame Dyche for our poor Europa campaign (campaign is not really the right word, perhaps foray might be more appropriate) and think he did the right thing dropping half the players who got us there in the first place to supposedly 'prioritise' the PL. I said then and I will continue, as you do, to say he was wrong and he threw away a chance for a much better run and maybe play some big teams in Europe in favour of the boring sh!te that is the PL, and what good did it do? Currently 4th from bottom with a team that, until the last couple of games, didn't seem to want to play, maybe, as I have said before, because of the sheer betrayal in Europe, 'Okay lads, thanks for getting us into Europe, you can forget playing in it though because you have work to do in the PL'. No wonder they looked demotivated and p!ssed off.

Could not put it better and that has been the root of all evil for our short comings this season - and if i was one of those players i would feel the same.

Have to say I agree with Crosspool on this one.

Nope, You are just ****** off cos we lost in Athens, and reckon that is Dyche fault.

Anybody else will remember it was 1-1 at half time and we were well in control. Referee had a shocker of a second half (thought not his fault we defended poorly for the 2nd) and we failed to take our chances in the 2nd leg.

Its reality mate.

You don't win any arguments by claiming I'm playing the man when you are ignoring reality. It just weakens your argument even more.

And you post screams "Proper Fan". I do hope you get a badge for that.

houseboy wrote:Well said mate. There are still, unbelievably, many on here who refuse to blame Dyche for our poor Europa campaign (campaign is not really the right word, perhaps foray might be more appropriate) and think he did the right thing dropping half the players who got us there in the first place to supposedly 'prioritise' the PL. I said then and I will continue, as you do, to say he was wrong and he threw away a chance for a much better run and maybe play some big teams in Europe in favour of the boring sh!te that is the PL, and what good did it do? Currently 4th from bottom with a team that, until the last couple of games, didn't seem to want to play, maybe, as I have said before, because of the sheer betrayal in Europe, 'Okay lads, thanks for getting us into Europe, you can forget playing in it though because you have work to do in the PL'. No wonder they looked demotivated and p!ssed off.

Sadly Dyche never embraces cups European or domestic,why i don't know know,it seems to be Premier League survival at all costs,and that's by no means guaranteed,i really hope we take the Barnsley tie seriously it's a game we should win and then let's see what the draw throws up next.

Lancasterclaret wrote:Nope, You are just ****** off cos we lost in Athens, and reckon that is Dyche fault.

Anybody else will remember it was 1-1 at half time and we were well in control. Referee had a shocker of a second half (thought not his fault we defended poorly for the 2nd) and we failed to take our chances in the 2nd leg.

Its reality mate.

You don't win any arguments by claiming I'm playing the man when you are ignoring reality. It just weakens your argument even more.

And you post screams "Proper Fan". I do hope you get a badge for that.

Why doesn't Dyche get any blame for his team selection?

To be fair the defence were even worse a few days later at Fulham though so I don't know how different it would of been?

tiger76 wrote:Sadly Dyche never embraces cups European or domestic,why i don't know know,it seems to be Premier League survival at all costs,and that's by no means guaranteed,i really hope we take the Barnsley tie seriously it's a game we should win and then let's see what the draw throws up next.

I hope you are right mate but as we know one of Dyches' strengths is also his one of his weaknesses. He doesn't change things easily and that has brought many rewards over the time he has been with us but as we have seen this season he is glacially slow to change things when maybe a little more urgency is needed and as you say he seems to have no appetitie for cups.

I hope I am wrong but I fear that we will see the same old half team trotted out against Barnsley.

Wouldn't necessarily say we were unlucky in the 2nd leg. If your strikers aren't up to scratch and you fail to strengthen adequately in the transfer window there's no one to blame but ourselves. Our subsequent league form and negative feeling around the club has been caused by Dyche deciding to not take the Europa seriously, however much the Dyche can do no wrong brigade will deny it.

You can blame him for the team selection if you want

What you can't do is blame him for the result. Over the two legs we created more than enough to go through. We didn't.

Hey Ho, thats football.

It was conceding 3 out in Athens that did for us. Don't think we would have done with Hart and Mee and Tarkowski in front of him.

No, it was not taking the host of chances at home that did for us.

If we didn't concede 3 and to be fair did well to keep it down to 3 after playing the final half hour with 10 men, then we simply wouldn't have come out all guns blazing and produce the best performance of the season by a country mile.

We would do the usual keep it tight see what happens.

I think we all are trying to guess why we've been **** this year to be honest.

It looks like (at least to me) that we forgot just how hard we have to work to be competitive at this level, and that we've put far too much faith in the same players being able to have the same seasons as last season.

And everyone rotates teams for cup competitions. Its far more likely to be that our lads just were not used the demands. If we get there again, then this experiecne will have been invaluable. If we don't, then we all have the memories of being there for our European adventure.

jrgbfc wrote:It was conceding 3 out in Athens that did for us. Don't think we would have done with Hart and Mee and Tarkowski in front of him.

Yeah it is not like any other side (even those with far more European experience than ours) would concede 3 away to Olympiakos not even as recent as last night, nor would it be likely being down to 10 men. Also it is even more unlikely considering we haven't conceded 3 goals in a game this season.

Good point

And to be fair Crosspool I think we had the best of the European weather on our adventures.

I don't think it would be quite the same sat in the square beer in hand when it's 8 degrees.

houseboy wrote:So are you saying you think Dyche was following the boards orders? Anything is possible but I find that hard to believe.

Obviously I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, nobody on here does. I think there is a strong chance a number of conversations have taken place between SD and MG over time that possibly aren't in the best interests of the paying fans. Not fact, just an opinion shared by others I have spoken to.

The players look as though they are trying but failing to present your best side time and time again without some form of agenda is a bit suspicious!

JohnMac wrote: I think there is a strong chance a number of conversations have taken place between SD and MG over time that possibly aren't in the best interests of the paying fans.

Hi John - I'm very intrigued to hear just what these supposed conversations consist of? And how they are not in the best interests of fans ( but I presume are supposedly in the best interests of the club)?

CrosspoolClarets wrote:Luckily and undeservedly in both instances.

I'm sure Dyche tried to win, but if he REALLY wanted to win he wouldn't have played a reserve defence in the hotbed of Athens.

It remains unforgettable,, and, sadly, unforgivable.

Even the happiest of happy clappers surely can't argue with this.

It was a massive letdown and could perhaps be part of the reason for our shaky start.

Again it's purely speculation Pete but to go from a team to be feared, to a team that is mocked implies something is amiss.

Maybe 'Don't dwell on the Cup competitions, get us out and make sure we stay in the Premier League' is a recurring theme.

As a fan I feel we have put very little effort into any of the Cup competitions since SD arrived. As a fan I want us to compete and would love a Cup win at Wembley as would many I speak with, you included I'm sure.

We aren't talking about losing to Man City, it's the Accrington, Lincoln, Burton type debacles that rankle.

I don't think we put much into Europe because we didn't play our strongest available players.

The money from the Premier League is important to the club but not to me, as a fan.

We didn't have it when we were a side to be feared in cup competitions not too many years ago.

I think the players busting a gut last season only to miss out on a chance to play in Europe may have unsettled the squad, hence our poor indifferent form.

No facts here, just opinion as you would expect on a message board.

Back to last night's game, how shite must AC Milan be!

claretdj wrote:Back to last night's game, how shite must AC Milan be!

Neither side are as good as past glories.

But that's why they're playing Europa rather than Champions league.

Perhaps Dyche should have picked Hart ahead of Heaton for the olympicaos away game?