My own team (Aberdeen) qualified for the UEFA cup groups stages two seasons ago and subsequently got out of them with a win and a draw and onto the last 32 for a knockout tie v Bayern Munich. It was fantastic to play Atletico Madrid/Panathiniokos away and Copenhagen and Moscow at home. The chance this year for us will be extra tough since the introduction of new qualifying rounds means that by the time the final knock out round comes about we may have to play Roma, Everton, Genoa or a host of other CL dropouts to get into the group. But it goes via co-efficient meaning that even if you are a seed you still have to play someone half decent. I am optimistic though that the chance is there to qualify but UEFA have squeezed the Europa League into a CL II type format that is seeded against the lesser type teams.

If you look back the number of smaller type teams that have got to the UEFA cup groups stages the list is endless (Getafe, Amica Wroki, Lech Poznan, Nancy, Blackburn, Aberdeen, Bolton). This year one or two will get through but less than normal.

Believe me if your teams experienced what we did with trips to Madrid, Greece and the home games you would not want the return of an anti-climax type knockout tournament.

Yes, the Europa League is a shell of its former self, but it’s Europe and in the modern footballing world of haves and have nots us smaller clubs simply can not compete at ECL level.

The real answer is to return the ECL to its pure form, why should England have four teams in it and Poland, Norway, Austria, Eire etc etc none unless they overcome numerous qualifiers. It won’t happen.

The second option is to return the Europa League to a knockout competition with some hard work on the marketing. It needs to be the FA Cup of Europe, it needs to capture ‘the magic of the cup’, where the little team can be heroes and status and history count for nothing.

It seems to me UEFA could do a lot more to have a serious second-tier contest mean more, surely the Champions League has eaten into its prestige, and the group stage makes it much less likely a smaller team like Ipswich would make it to the final than in times past.

The UEFA Cup could have kept more of its identity by staying as a knockout tournament in contrast to the drawn out Champions League, but money talked for UEFA again.

The post-ECL UEFA Cup was a shadow of its former self, but the footballing landscape had changed so much in the 20 years that had passed that for a supporter of a smaller club like Ipswich you’d thought Europe was always going to be a distant dream. In the 80′s a small club like Ipswich with clever stable management on and off the pitch could compete with the giants, in fact in one case Arsenal backed out of a transfer deal with Ipswich becuse they couldn’t afford the wages we were paying. Fast forward 20 years to the world of all seater stadia and TV deals and Europe was for the ‘big four’ and we’d spent a long spell in the 2nd tier of English football.

In their first season back in the Premiership (2000/01) Ipswich were unlucky not to land the big prize, 4th place and the Champion’s League, but finished 5th and Europe was coming back to Town (and Man City got relegated from the Premiership after 1 season – see how quickly football changes). We didn’t care that it was the UEFA Cup – for us the dream was real, Europe.

OK the clubs weren’t always the glamour ties (no offence Avenir Beggen!) and some were just weird, 12,500 in the cavernous Luznikhy Stadium, Moscow vs Lokomotiv Moskow with the attendances highest to lowest being travelling Town fans, Russian Security Forces and finally Lokomotiv fans, but then we landed the big one, Inter Milan over two legs.

Back in the 70′s and 80′s when we’d been European regulars we’d never lost a home game, and that record had stood through the 2001/02 campaign and so far through the 02/03 campaign. When Alum Armstrong scored with a header in the second half we might as well have won the World Cup. We beat Inter Milan 1-0 and Portman Road, despite the fact we had been relegated at the end of the 2001/02 season and only got into the UEFA Cup on the fair play ticket.

We took 12,000 away to the San Siro, me included. On the night the attendance was around the same as our sell out home game, around 30,000, and that’s decidedly empty in the San Siro. We got spanked, Christian Vieri running riot and a cameo from the real Ronaldo (the podgy Brazilian one) coming on for the last 10 minutes. Our consolation penalty was celebrated like we’d won the whole competition, probably because we knew it was going to be the last European goal we’d see in a long time.

So the Europa League, is it a waste of space? Well no, not for clubs like Ipswich.

I really don’t see how some teams can consider a European competition not worth it, after all I’m sure the supporters of any team in Europe would prefer to see the captain lift the trophy than to just leave the UCL in the quarter finals.

It is clubs ( Premiership clubs mostly – As you mentioned Spurs – and teams like Bayern who have this issue that they are too good to be in it or that cup football distracts from the important stuff).

But being in the Europa league for supporters in a massive thing for fans whether they support Man Utd or Bayern. The reason is that the Champions League has a same-ness to it every year and over familiarity season after season. The Europa League allows fans to go to well known but exciting places from say Getafe in Spain, Lokamotiv Moscow to Dneipropetrovsk in Ukraine. For fans of clubs in the Europa League it is great to be in European competition and the away trips to unknown and well known parts of Europe are the highlights of the season rather than the annual jaunt to Barcelona/Liverpool that the Champions League offers.

I think UEFA rebranding and re-jigging the format of the thing is done wholly for the benefit of clubs and not fans. The groups stages this year will make it harder than ever for smaller sides to qualify for the groups as more bigger guns will be in the final qualifying round than ever before e.g. from Roma to Everton. This is being set up more like a Champions League II rather than a unique event with its own identity and rewards.