Champ League

[hibs1989]

Right a couple of talking points there has being a lot of discusion about finishing second and a lot of the people that see hibs week in week out will realise that on our day the spl is easy as we can beat any team! (if only we could carry out being 2-0 up but that not important) anyway back to my points, should we finish second taking into account hearts last year in champ league got AEK and got put out by them how would we cope against the big teams in europe for qualifing! not talking about the giants YET also to get into the champ league would be very good to hibs bank balence, i ask Good enough to keep Thomo or Brown and i think they should think about that! IMO Thomo would be the one to stay! but surly they would stay if we got into champ league they arent going to get that at Reading are they! its the biggest Comp! would they walk away!

[HibeeJibee]

Let me clarify that getting knocked out of the Champions League Q2 is light years worse than winning in the UEFA Cup First Round. Although we'd all take the prestige, glory and experience of playing in the Champions League (provided game(s) were at Easter Road).

[Deeks Second Coming]

I think it depends on how many players Rodski Petrieovski shells out for in january.We know we can split the in firm and we know we are good enough on our day to beat anyone in the spl.Give us three years and we could be one of the top teams in europe.......

We should be looking to make the new east stand a 20,000 capicity then the in firm would be realy quaking. Maybe sign a few world cup stars in january and you never know...

Believe folks!!!!!!

[Deeks Second Coming]

Also i am beginning to think maybe the spl is not a big enough league for the Hibees....European league anyone....

We seem to be get stiffled in this league with all the wee teams.....

[HibeeJibee]

From a serious point of view - Easter Road is now too small, you hear on these boards how hard it is for non-season ticket holders. If the East Stand was build up like the others, and the NE and SW corners filled in two-tiered, plus the NW one-tiered, we would hit about 27,000 to 28,000. A half-size third tier on the East later on gives 30,000 to 31,000 which would be in the long term the target for the club, if we were challenging for titles most seasons and qualifying for Champions League or UEFA Cup (anyone notice Michel Platini standing for UEFA President in couple of months? "Only 3 Champ L places per country - enlarge UEFA Cup").

Having a ground like that also opens up possibility for hosting UEFA Cup finals, and European Championship, Confederations Cup or Club World Cup games.

In the shorter term, we have a £3M complex being built in East Lothian. It would, IMO, be better to sell Thomson OR Brown, and use their £3M to pay for the complex, and use the money earmarked for that spread over a few years to start work on the East Stand. Then, since we would probably get rid of the other one in the summer for £3M, that can be combined with any funds from qualifying for Europe to get better players in (though I hope we would not become like the OF and simply buy up other SPL players who've got a bit too good for their liking. Look at the past week alone - Naismith, Stokes, Brown, Thomson, Anderson, Smith).