Im all for it on two fronts really i think europe is vital to the development of the club both on and of the pitch and basicly were we want to be as a club. Beleiving also that it could be used as an incentive at present to help us in the leauge:
Thinking back to our qualification for the champions leauge one of the reasons we didnt qualify for an autamatic inclusion to the leauge (money spinning) stage was the lack of our european pedigree in recent seasons. The reason we had to play Villareal was because we had not acumalted any points in terms of the uefa ranking (seeding system) which saw us miss out autmaticly on what was basicly 20 million down the drain and drawing Villareal who if you remeber was the toughest possible draw we could have got. Had Newcastle or Liverpool finished fourth that season they would have qualified automaticly for the leauge faze due to their involvement in both Uefa and Champoins Leauge since the development of the Uefa Cup and Champions leauge in the mid ninties. As a club with a delicate finacial balance we can ill afford to pass up the oppurtunity of passing up an opurtunity to improve our European seeding and ranking if we are looking at developing both in finacial sense and being a club with ambition of qualifying and being resopectable in Europeam compition on a regular basis in the next few years. It just makes from a footbaling and finacuial sense.
Secondly and in terms of this season our application may act as an incentive to the players for the remaining leauge fixtures, as if qualifcation for the Uefa Cup is not automatic it means the on average the non international players will get a maiximum 5 week holiday, while the internationals anything from 3-4 weeks. With this in mind perhaps this may act as motivation for the players to pull out all the stops to qualify automaticly rather than have a short summer. Moyes basicly saying this is our ambition, this is the goal and its up to you to decide what way you want to acheive it.
