This Coming Week in Europe from the Perspective of Southampton FC

Obviously, Southampton needs a result that gets them through to the group stages of the Europa League.  It would also be slightly helpful if Manchester United qualifies for the Champions League, both to keep them out of the Europa League and to improve England’s European Coefficient. However, if Southampton qualifies for the group stage of the Europa League, additional favorable results would be quite helpful.

In group play, Southampton will be matched up with three other clubs.  Because of the way these clubs are chosen, things that happen next week can make a significant difference for us.

 

The groups are chosen by random draw.  Each group consists of one club from Pot 1 which contains the twelve clubs with the highest coefficients, one club from Pot 2 which contains the next 12 clubs, one club from Pot 3 which contains the clubs seeded 25 to 36, and one club from Pot 12 which contains the clubs ranked 37 to 48.

 

As it stands right now, Southampton FC might make it into the third pot.  This would be very helpful because in the third pot, we will face one lower ranked club along with the two higher ranked clubs.  In the fourth pot we will face nothing but higher ranked clubs.  This is the difference between having two purportedly easy fixtures and no easy fixtures.

 

For my analysis, I am relying upon the Kassiesa website which is permanently linked on the first page of my blog.  The page of that website dealing with Europa League seedings is found here.

 

According to Kassiesa, if the higher ranked teams advance out of all qualifying matches, Southampton will be the 37th ranked team.  This means that we will be the highest ranked club in the fourth pot.  Alas, there is no prize for being the highest ranked club in a pot.  To make it into the third pot we simply need one extra game to go our way.  However, this assumes that all of the relevant Champions League games go our way and this is not guaranteed.

 

Of the 20 clubs playing in the Champion League playoffs, ten of them will drop into the Europa League group phase.  Of these 20 clubs, only five have lower coefficients than Southampton.  If any of those clubs qualify for the Champions League group stage, a club with a high coefficient drops in to the Europa League and increases the number of other games we need to go our way.  With this in mind, we care about these Champions League fixtures.  The clubs we wish to prevail are shown in bold with the results of this week’s fixtures:

 

1              Bate-Partizan                                 0                             

3              Celtic-Malomo                               2
1              Skenderbeu-GMK Dinamo          2
1              Astana-Apoel                                 0
0              Rapid Wein-Shakhtar                   1

In this round of the Europa League, we are a seeded club but only two of the 21 other seeded clubs have lower coefficients than us.  That means that we do not care about the games involving those clubs, Krasnodar and Belenenses.  No matter who wins those fixtures, we will be seeded ahead of them.  In each of the other 18 fixtures, there is one club we strongly prefer prevail.  These are the results of this past week’s fixtures with the club we wish to win in bold.

3              Astra Giurgiu-AZ Alkmaar                           2

2              Dinamo Minsk-FC Red Bull Salzburg         0

0              FK Qabala-Panathinaikos                            0

1              Ajax-FK Jablonec                                           0
2              Molde FK-Standard Liege                            0
5              PAOK Salonika-Brøndby IF                          0
1              Slovan Liberec-Hajduk Split                        0
3              Sparta Prague-FC Thun                                1
0              Zorya Luhansk-Legia Warsaw                    1
1              Milsami Orhei-St Etienne                           1
0              Atromitos Athens-Fenerbahçe                  1
0              BSC Young Boys-FK Qarabag                      1
1              Rabotnicki-Rubin Kazan                              1
0              Steaua Bucharest-Rosenborg                     3
3              MSK Zilina-Ath Bilbao                                  2
1              Bordeaux-Kairat Almaty                             0
3              Odd Grenland-Borussia Dortmond          4
3              Viktoria Plzen-FK Vojvodina                      0
3              Lech Poznan-Videoton                               0

Combining the two lists, we want six bolded clubs to win.  (18 would be even better because that would get us into the second pot, but that is not going to happen.) Of the 24 relevant fixtures, we are ahead in eleven.  Two are even.  Thus, we appear to be in good shape to qualify for Pot 3, assuming we can advance ourselves.