Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
No, but there would be less games to endure and less impact on our domestic season. It's just money replacing excellence again, isn't it? Another way to scalp the fans. We've even had to cut the amount of teams in our leagues and play less games to accommodate this shit. The whole group stage thing is shit, it's even seeded to favour the big clubs. We know who's getting through and then it becomes a knockout comp anyway so why bother with all that boring shit beforehand? It's just for the money.
When it was pure knock-out it was easier to win as well. Lesser clubs doing the odd giant-killing and the random selection meant that there was a good chance you could get an easy path to the final, especially if you got one that included a lot of league winners from the smaller leagues. The group stage means that in the knock-outs you are going to come up against more serious opposition on the way. In terms of effort and skill requirement, CL > EC.