Ok I'm going to throw something out there.
What are our chances of winning the Champions League?---are we going to beat Real Madrid, or Bayern, or Barca, or even Chelsea etc? Of course not. No chance.
And yet, the most we can hope for at this moment is coming in second in our group, which means we'll be facing one of the heavy hitters even if we DO make it to the knockout round. I think it's safe to say that considering how we're playing right now, we have extremely low chances of getting out of even the first knockout round. And then that's it. CL season over for us. Our only hope of getting back to CL is to finish in the top four.
But the odds of us finishing in the top four are similarly fading away. We're going to be without Sturridge for at least another month. Rodgers isn't going to drop Gerrard or Johnson. We'll be lucky to finish in the top half of the table at this rate.
But. There is one more option.
What if we finish third in the group? Ludogorets will likely lose away to Madrid. If we don't beat Basel then we'll finish third. That means we "drop" to the Europa League. BUT, this season, the winner of the Europa League gets automatic qualification for next season's CL.
What does everyone think about that? there really is no glory in moving to the knockout rounds just to get spanked by Barca or Bayern 10-0. But at least if we make it to the Europa League, we can put aside finishing top four in the league and just put all our eggs in the Europa League basket, bring in some reinforcements in January, and go all out to win the competition. We'll have a much better chance of winning it than of moving on in the CL.
That way we can still qualify for CL, and re-group in the summer.
Thoughts?
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