Still have to watch your team lose though… 
It’s true, that there’s a weird geographical layout of next year’s Premiership, and the Championship is spread far more evenly across the country:
Both the Premiership and the Championship are going to have 5 or 6 London (and home counties) teams.
The remainder of the Premiership will be 10 or 11 from the north, 3/4 in the Midlands, plus Portsmouth.
The Championship has: 5/6 in the Midlands, 6 in the north, and five spread evenly around the south, from Norfolk to Wales.
(Make that 4-6 in the north for the Championship…any other mistakes in my counting are to be ignored, because you get the gist of it… 
…)
apologies if it’s been asked already, but…
Why are Arsenal and ManUtd playing for this cup today?? Didn’t Chelsea win the regular season with the best record?? Why do # 2 & # 3 play for a cup and not #1?? Judging by the hype and coveage on a UK paper website, this Cup seems to be a big thing.
The FA Cup and the Premier League are separate competitions. The FA Cup is a straight knockout competition, which begins with something like 600 fairly-competent amateur teams. They have various stages to get through, and those which succeed meet the teams from the First and Second divisions, in the ‘First Round Proper’. Two rounds later, the Premiership and Championship teams enter, and from there it’s a straight knockout to the final.
So it’s theoretically possible for any of the 600 clubs to end up in the final - although reality takes priority!
The Premiership title is completely separate from the FA Cup - Chelsea lost to Newcastle, which knocked them out of the Cup, but that didn’t affect their League position.
Oh, and…
Yes, the FA Cup has historically been the biggest prize in English football (although recent years have changed that)
The FA Cup is run separately from the league.
It’s a knock-out competition open to any football team in England registered with the FA - and that includes small semi-professional teams, as well as the big boys.
Part of the appeal of the FA Cup is that tiny teams get the chance to play the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea, although it obviously tends to be the bigger clubs that reach the latter stages.
So Chelsea were included in this cup, but they were knocked out in an earlier round - league position has no effect.
ok, got it. It’s hard for us to understand because all we have is 1 baseball, basketball or (american) football season, running straight thru and the top 8-12 best go at it.
There it seems to us they have the FA Cup, and the premiership season going on at the same time, as does that lesser 2nd league where the worst of the premiership end up at the end of the year, I think. And then there’s ‘Friendlies’ where ManUtd might go over and play Real Madrid one day, and Juventus will go to London to play Arsenal the following week seemingly during the season. Then the following week Beckham and a few others will go up to England to play Denmark, then throw in the World Cup and the Olympics every 4 years, with qualifying, and it’s very confusing to some. I know Mancester U has been to Chicago here recently too.
It sounds like fun though, wish we had something like that.
Yes, you’re right, that they’re all running at the same time (as are the other lower leagues). It creates some bruising schedules at times particularly for those teams also playing in Europe…
They’re not friendlies!! The Champions League and the UEFA Cup are Europe-wide competitions, which teams qualify for by success in their national league, through a very complicated system. Basically, England, Spain & Italy each have 4 teams in the Champions League and 3 in the UEFA cup, and lesser national systems enter fewer teams at earlier stages of the competitions.
And commiserations to Glasgow Celtic. The title wasn’t decided until 3 minutes from the end of the 38-match season, when Motherwell equalised against the Hoops to put the Blues in pole position - on goal difference. A second goal for Motherwell (sorry - don’t know their nickname offhand!) ensured that Rangers won the title by a single point.
And yes, the third place team (Hibs - who Rangers beat 1-0) finished a staggering further 31 points behind.
So the reds take on Milan tonight. In an unusual step, UEFA have instructed that the match be played with two footballs, so that the Liverpool lads can have a kick. 
I think its a safe bet that Milan will hand out a lesson, without running the score up particularly, maybe 1-0 or 2-1. There’s a large gulf in class between the teams, and a corresponding one in experience, with none of the Liverpool team having played at this level before. I’ll be interested to see how Gerrard performs, he’s been extremely streaky this season. If he can’t get into a game he makes like Caspar the friendly ghost. This is actually an improvement on previous seasons, where he exercised his frustration in these situations on opponents knee ligaments.
In the interests of maintaining the commendably positive tone of this thread, I’ll post no more anti-Liverpool sentiment. Anyone think that they can pull it off?
yes, i think they could pull it off. There are no poor teams in a champions league cup final, and the gravitas of the situation could go either way. It could intimidate the Reds, or it could inspire them to play their hearts out. I wouldn’t write this game off just yet.
Definitely in a one-off. Maybe they’ll play for penalties like Arsenal.
It’s important that Hamann and Cisse play, and that Xabi Alonso creates a threat to keep Milan on their toes. Then add in a wonder strike from Luis Garcia, a performance from Gerrard, no clangers from Dudek, no sending off for Hyppia or Carragher for pulling Schevchenko’s shirt, Milan’s disappointing end to the season (Liverpool must rate almost as high as Palermo), and a surprise is on the cards. And my guess is that at least twice as many Scousers as Milanesi will be making the trip to the Ataturk.
2-1 to 'Pool.
The German, Italian and English Champions whom Liverpool beat on their way being irrelevant, presumably. And I will take great delight next season in the progress of the Blue Pride of Merseyside, who might even win their qualifying round to add to the glory of their single Cup-Winners Tin Pot which now sits rusting in a Stanley Park-keeper’s shed next to his local darts trophies.
Having almost eaten my own fingers off in past rounds and sadly failed to get anywhere near a ticket for the match despite all kinds of favours being called in, I think all one can do in a final of the greatest club prize in the world is enjoy it and shout oneself stupid. Truly, these are decade- if not life-defining games - we even appear to have all of Spain supporting Rafa’s Beneatles. And if we gallantly lose, at least we fucking beat Chelsea.
If we win, you might not hear from me for a few days.
GO EDD STEVIE LA.
Yes I do. 
I bet though you wish you could edit your post.
I’m probably the least football-savvy English male doper there is, but I am an LFC fan and they beat Milan on penalties.
I was at work, with no TV 
but they, er, won
I went to the (non-football-showing) pub at half time. Whoops.
WOOHOO!!!
COME ON YOU REDS!!!
What a night
3-0 down at half-time, and then haul it back… immense performance, fantastic game of football
Am still buzzing - I’ve no fingernails left whatsoever, and I cannot believe we pulled that off :eek: :eek:
One of the best finals ever - we didn’t dominate but we got the job done… magnifico!
Great come back but Dudek should have been penalized for the first penalty and warned about his subsequent shenanagins.
Yep, and we should have had a first-half penalty when Maldini handled in the box, and Gattuso should have been shown a red card for chopping Gerard when he was through on goal.
Didn’t hear much about that from the Milan boys
“You Never Walk Alone”