It's not a great system but I think people overreact a bit.

If you fail in the league system - not finish high enough - you go in the first round of the FA Cup. If you succeed, you join at the third round.

If you fail to finish top four in the Prem, you either go into the Europa or nothing. Top four gets you CL or at least the play off game.

Football is full of examples of teams "failing" to reach a certain point and going into a lesser competition (or the same one at an earlier stage).

Granted they went into the CL and then came third in the group, but one can argue that other teams failed in the very same competition - the qualifiers and the play offs - and still went to the Europa. Nobody seems to complain about that.

However, my main lack of objection is that there are plenty of clubs who are happy to get that parachute and the reward for coming third keeps the group alive and the last matches competitive - reducing the chance of the 'fix' in the final games, or the easy match because the opponents have nothing to play for.

Of course, ManU and Man City last time didn't seem interested once there, but they were exceptions.

I'm also unconvinced that the "typical" Europa club is unhappy at suddenly finding a ManU or a Chelsea in the same competition.

It's possibly a bit like when ManU, Spurs and Chelsea were relegated to the old second division. The second division clubs didn't think what are these clubs doing here, taking our promotion places, our jobs and our women.

The second division got a boost. Maybe the Europa will get a boost from having the current champions in the same competition?

Thats true regarding the CL and Europa but I think the FA cup is a bit different as every club in the land can enter and once you are out thats it.

I would like to see the CL and Europa just go to a straight knock out every team out of the hat format. This would get rid of qualifiers and group stages all together. Seeding teams is just BS and means that the same few mop up all the money year after year. I think this would avoid fix games and make all matches competitive

There's plenty of evidence of that changing.

I'm a fan of the old three Euro trophies but a lot of people forget seeding existed then too.

I think the CL is a good balance. All I'd change would be a maximum of two teams from the top leagues - putting a bit more glamour in the Europa, while opening the CL to more teams - and keeping the seeding but do away with the geographical separation.