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The UEFA Cup was definitely harder to win back in the day. As you say it had more high quality teams plus there was an extra round and also until the late 90s had a two legged final.
When we first played in it 1976/77 we had: Juventus, both Milan clubs, Barcelona, Feyenoord, Ajax, Köln, Red Star Belgrade, Porto, Celtic, Slovan Bratislava (with 5 or 6 players that had won the summer's Euros)
1984/85 was probably even tougher, we had: Hamburg, Mönchengladbach, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, PSV Eindhoven, Ajax, Anderlecht, Bruges, Inter Milan, Dundee Utd, PSG, Sporting Lisbon in the draw.
I think the last time a club qualified for Europe's top club competition and finished outside a normal qualification place was Aston Villa after they won in 1982 and finished 11th in the first division that season.
I've always thought in cases like this where the team who were runners up and just missed out on automatic promotion should be given a bye to the play off final as some sort of reward for the fantastic season they've had and then let the four teams below fight it out to meet them.
I think it should be done in the EFL play offs as well, the team who just misses automatic should go straight in the final.
You'll have to ask Gerry Francis why he seemed to favour Coco The Clown over Stejskal, many - me included - couldn't fathom it out. I'd have had him in over that useless tosser every time.
People have said he wasn't great with his feet after the backpass change but even if it was the case, I never saw Big Jan chuck one into the net like Coco did against Ipswich, Norwich, Barnsley and others.
I've never understood why the BBC haven't done something like this on BBC Four with old Match of the Days. Perhaps they haven't got the archives of the early 70s episodes (a bit like the TOTPs from the same era) but I thought from the late 70s onwards - about 1978 - they stopped routinely wiping tapes of old shows and a proper archival policy was put in place.
Is that the episode where Phil talks about his 'revolutionary' goalie gloves (basically an early prototype of what they use now) that he was given by the West German reserve keeper on the pre-season tour?
Sorry loftboy, as I explained in my earlier post we would have missed out that season. Pre the ban, only 2nd-4th in the first division back then qualified for the UEFA Cup via the league.
That is unless the league champions or one of the teams finishing 2nd-4th or the FA Cup winners also won the League Cup as happened in 83/84 (Liverpool league champions and Milk Cup winners), meaning we qualified then through finishing fifth.
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