Scottish football 2015/16

[Holyjoe]

So the race to finish third in the SPFL Premiership behind Celtic in first and Aberdeen in second begins in earnest soon, but perhaps once more the greater focus will be on the Championship season where Pretendy Rangers will spend one more season battling to get up to play with the big boys. They can probably rest safe in the knowledge that if they fall short in the playoffs once more then there will no doubt be reconstruction of the league set-up to facilitate their presence in the top flight. Hibernian and St. Mirren, along with the likes of Falkirk and Queen of the South, will have other ideas of course.

On St. Mirren, they were doomed to relegation pretty much as soon as they unveiled their horrendous barcode kit at the beginning of last season, so credit where credit's due they've unveiled a new kit for this coming season that demands to be worn by a successful side. It's an absolute cracker. Hope to see them bounce back, the last time they went down they were out of the top flight for five years.

There's an interesting daeguowl v RothesaySaint clash coming up in pre-season with St. Mirren traveling down to Hillsborough on August 1st to take on Sheffield Wednesday in a pre-season friendly. Also worth pointing out that there are four pre-season matches scheduled to be played at St. Mirren's home stadium but only one of them will actually involve St. Mirren. Although the Saints are at the moment pencilled in to face Bradford at home, Celtic will be playing three friendlies at the ground because for some reason Parkhead cannot be used (relaying the pitch?), they're in action as early as July 1st against Den Bosch and they'll then face Dukla Prague on July 4th before taking on Real Sociedad on July 10th. Tempted to head over to one or two of those just to add the opposition to my list of teams seen.

[Rothesay Saint]

There we go, it should pretty much impossible to mess up black and white stripes, that's what it should look like every year.

Looking forward to the league fixture draw today, I'm going to back in Scotland the first week of August so anywhere but Ibrox for the first game of the season would be nice.

Nice to see Aberdeen fans getting overconfident this summer, that should be sorted early July after Airbus UK give them a hiding in the Europa League. I notice that Skonto are another possible opponent on that day, Aberdeen fans would surely fancy a bit of them?

[Rothesay Saint]

I'm going to back in Scotland the first week of August so anywhere but Ibrox for the first game of the season would be nice.

Yeah, thanks fixture computer.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/teams ... n/fixtures

[Holyjoe]

All red should be even easier to pull off than zebra stripes but somehow Aberdeen have managed to fuck it up:

[Holyjoe]

Good to see the grand Scottish tradition of getting pumped out of Europe early has been upheld by St Johnstone, they managed to get themselves eliminated at the first hurdle last night by the team that finished fourth in the Armenian league.

Aberdeen did their best to get themselves put out to Macedonian outfit Shkendija but have somehow conspired to go through on away goals. Next up is Croatian team Rijeka, parent club of rather good Jeonnam loanee Mislav Orsic and former home of Mato Neretljak (though he has since retired). It's this round that Inverness enter also, they're drawn to play Romanian side Astra Giurgiu. Three Scottish sides out of Europe by July 23rd looks a pretty good bet, and all before Celtic get make an arse of their Champions League qualifying campaign too. Not good.

[Holyjoe]

Actually I tell a lie, Celtic are in action the next two Wednesdays against Stjarnan of Iceland so could in theory be out of Europe by the time Aberdeen and Inverness exit on the Thursday second leg. They should sneak past them and at least guarantee a Europa League spot when they lose in the following round...

[nzfooty]

Congratulations to all Aberdeen supporters here. 3-0 win in Croatia is a decent effort - on that form qualification for the group stages might be doable.

[Holyjoe]

Tremendous result, Derek McInnes is some fucking manager. I probably should stop being so surprised as results and performances like this are becoming the norm, he doesn't mess about in the transfer market and he seems to have finally solved the goalkeeping problem that has plagued the club for the last 10+ years. This is not what following Aberdeen should be about!

[SteveW]

After last night was quietly confident of making the play-off round as we were seeded in the draw but we've pulled some mega-bucks Kazakh mob out the hat and I have a feeling we might get pumped now.

This trophy is a joke - 4 ties just to get into the damn group stages.

[Rothesay Saint]

After last night was quietly confident of making the play-off round as we were seeded in the draw but we've pulled some mega-bucks Kazakh mob out the hat and I have a feeling we might get pumped now.

This trophy is a joke - 4 ties just to get into the damn group stages.

FC Kairat, formerly owned by the National Railway and proud winners of the 1971 European Railworks Cup, when Kairat beat FC Rapid Bucharest 2–1.

I've been on wikipedia.

Wonder if there was an Asian Railworks Cup?

[nzfooty]

After last night was quietly confident of making the play-off round as we were seeded in the draw but we've pulled some mega-bucks Kazakh mob out the hat and I have a feeling we might get pumped now.

This trophy is a joke - 4 ties just to get into the damn group stages.

Agree that this tournament is far too big. I actually liked the old Cup Winners Cup. You great diversity of clubs qualifying for it, even from associations where leagues tended to be dominated by only two or three clubs. But maybe that made it somewhat unglamorous?

[SteveW]

Last season Aberdeen put out 2 sides and then gave a top Spanish team a run for their money. It wasn't too long ago they qualified out of the group stages to face Bayern (who they drew at home with). They've also won the ECWC and Super Cup in their history.

ICT have never played in Europe.

Guess which one was seeded higher in the competition and got to start a round later?

[eujin]

Last season Aberdeen put out 2 sides and then gave a top Spanish team a run for their money. It wasn't too long ago they qualified out of the group stages to face Bayern (who they drew at home with). They've also won the ECWC and Super Cup in their history.

ICT have never played in Europe.

Guess which one was seeded higher in the competition and got to start a round later?

The one that won the cup?

Botosani finished eight in the Romanian league but still got in because all the clubs above them failed to get UEFA licences.

Go Ahead Eagles of the Netherlands were relegated from the Dutch first division but still got in thanks to some very odd fair-play system. If you're going to go down, you might as well go down in style. It's a shame they didn't go deeper into the tournament as they're quite close to me.

[Holyjoe]

After a wee scare last night Aberdeen came back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 and beat Rijeka 5-2 on aggregate. Now it's off to play Kazakhstan mob Kairat Almaty in the next round, some of you in Korea could probably look out your window and almost wave to them when they're kicking off such is the distance they'll have travelled.

Changed days in European and indeed world football these days, but I saw this tweet regarding Aberdeen's current Euro campaign and their 1982/83 ECWC winning season:

Trip to Almaty for Aberdeen will take them up to 16932 miles for the campaign. They clocked 632 miles less when winning the Cup Winners Cup

They won the ECWC in nine matches, to qualify for the group stages of the Europa League alone they'll have played eight games.

[nzfooty]

Right, basically a stone throw away from China.
Kazakhstan is one massive country and Almaty is near the eastern border.
Almaty to Oral (in the western part of the country) is 2113 km (and about 2300 km to the most extreme western point which is just located in Europe)

That's more than Aberdeen to Ukraine (1900 km to Lviv, 2250 to Kiev) while Aberdeen to Moscow is 2419 km (and 1893 km to St Petersburg) in Russia.

After a wee scare last night Aberdeen came back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 and beat Rijeka 5-2 on aggregate. Now it's off to play Kazakhstan mob Kairat Almaty in the next round, some of you in Korea could probably look out your window and almost wave to them when they're kicking off such is the distance they'll have travelled.

Changed days in European and indeed world football these days, but I saw this tweet regarding Aberdeen's current Euro campaign and their 1982/83 ECWC winning season:

Trip to Almaty for Aberdeen will take them up to 16932 miles for the campaign. They clocked 632 miles less when winning the Cup Winners Cup

They won the ECWC in nine matches, to qualify for the group stages of the Europa League alone they'll have played eight games.