UEFA have announced wide-ranging plans to engage with fans through Facebook when the Europa League knockout stages begin in February.

The competition already has a presence on the social networking site with over 150,000 fans (http://www.facebook.com/#!/uefaeuropaleague) and Europe’s governing body will be hoping to attract far more with the launch of a series of initiatives between now and the final in May.

Ahead of the round of 32 a fans’ social mosaic will be launched which will create a picture of the Europa League trophy using users’ profile pictures.

In the next round of games fans will be encouraged to share their location and state which game they are watching as UEFA look to “light-up Europe”.

At the quarter-final stage supporters will be asked to upload pictures of their favourite Europa League memories which will then be voted on by other fans.

The completed social mosaic will return ahead of the semi-finals and users will be able to win prizes by finding special tiles among the profile pictures.

For the final, which is being played in Bucharest on May 9, fans will be asked for vote for their favourite Europa League player from a pre-selected list with the winners receiving a match ball.

Manchester United, Manchester City and Stoke are England’s three remaining teams in the competition which returns on the week beginning February 13.

(Ed: we did have pic of how the app may look but had to take it down. sorry)

By Mark Segal

With the World Cup now a thankfully distant memory for England fans, the focus is once again returning to domestic matters where Fabio Capello’s underperforming stars are made to look like world beaters with the help of some imported talent.

Although there is bound to be a hangover from South Africa, the Premier League looks like it could be an exciting close run thing this term with question marks hanging over all the potential title winners.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top contenders:

Chelsea

The reigning double winners have remained remarkably silent in the transfer market this summer with Liverpool forward Yossi Benayoun their only significant signing

Going the other way have been Joe Cole and, perhaps more importantly, Ricardo Carvalho who leaves a big hole in the centre of defence. John Terry will need to be better than last season if the Blues are to retain their trophy.

As ever Chelsea continue to be linked with a number of world class stars, so expect some transfer activity before the end of the month.

That said, Carlo Ancelotti will probably be quite pleased with his squad and believe he has the strength in depth and experience to mount another challenge. It’s just Europe that they still need to conquer.

Manchester United

Sir Alex Ferguson has also kept his squad in tact and added Chris Smalling (who looks hugely overpriced at £8m) and exciting Mexican Javier Hernandez.

Sunday’s Community Shield victory will have given the Reds a huge boost with Paul Scholes once again proving the star man.

But can United rely on Scholes and Ryan Giggs for yet another season? They need support from the younger legs around them.

Wayne Rooney can again be relied upon for goals and Michael Owen’s return will also help. But Antonio Valencia will need to continue to progress while Dimitar Berbatov must contribute more.

Arsenal

The big summer battle to hold on to Cesc Fabregas has been won, but at what cost? Will the midfielder be fully committed to the cause?

Away from Fabregas, Arsenal’s big problems remain in the centre of defence and in goal where Wenger knows he must bring in a reliable performer – Shay Given or Mark Schwarzer fit the bill perfectly.

The signing of Marouanne Chamakh give the Gunners options up front and that added dimension could be the key to success.

Manchester City

Eastlands is where the biggest story will be this season as Roberto Mancini’s all-star squad either take the league by storm or fail horribly.

At the moment, City’s squad is simply too big for the manager to form a cohesive unit to build a team around. Some serious pruning needs to be done even before the expected arrivals of Mario Balotelli and James Milner.

There’s no doubt City have the individual players to mount a challenge – but a team? Mancini will need to be City’s star man this season if they are to live up to expectations in Abu Dhabi.

Liverpool

Roy Hodgson has made a good start to his Anfield career by first signing Joe Cole and then persuading Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard to both stay.

But lurking in the background is the club’s woeful financial position and the takeover rumours.

Hodgson is experienced enough to keep his players’ minds focused on the pitch but talk of new owners, and possibly even administration, is bound to effect the team.

After last season Liverpool fans will need to be realistic and believe a top four place is the best they can aim for. I’m not even sure they are capable of that.

Tottenham

Spurs boss Harry Redknapp is another manager who has been suspiciously quiet this summer.

He has certainly been linked with a number of players – not least West Ham’s Scott Parker – but at the time of writing there are no new faces at White Hart Lane.

Surely this will have to change though if Spurs manage to get past Young Boys and grab a place in the Champions Leaue group stages. Attempting to compete both domestically and in Europe will certainly put a strain on a Spurs squad – many of whom are familiar with the physio’s table.

More cover in central defence will be key for Redknapp with injury-prone pair Ledley King and Jonathan Woodgate again injured, while keeper Heurelho Gomes has looked less than convincing during pre-season.

My top six:

1. Manchester United
2. Arsenal
3. Chelsea
4. Manchester City
5. Liverpool
6. Tottenham

Like many of the columnists on this site I view the growth of Social Media as a positive development within sport.

I like the way it brings the ordinary supporter closer to their favourite team or player, the way it allows fans to question some of the big-hitters in the media and also the opportunities it offers clubs and organisations to develop their brands and eventually open up new revenue streams.

But before we all run off and set ourselves up as Social Media consultants it’s worth considering the limitations of the medium.

While calls for openness and accountability all sound good in theory we have to appreciate the reasons some clubs are reluctant to get involved. To us it may seem negative and secretive, to them it’s just good business practice.

The Social Media standard bearers in the Premier League have been Manchester City. With the backing of their mega-rich owners they have reached out to fans like no other with Twitter, Facebook and Flickr feeds all helping City fans feel part of the club.

And by linking these feeds, plus adding supporters’ blogs, back to their impressive new website they are doing everything that any self-respecting Social Media expert would tell them to do.

But they still own the message and they are the ones who decide what to publish.

For example when Mark Hughes was sacked by the club in December last year, for obvious reasons the club’s Twitter feed put out the official announcement and refused to respond to questions from fans.

It’s the same at the FA who, to their credit, have been increasing their involvement in Social Media in the past year.

The two biggest stories to come out of Wembley in the last two months have been the sacking of John Terry as England captain and the resignation of chief executive Ian Watmore.

On each occasion an organisation which insists it is trying to engage with its audience slipped back to the traditional media stance of putting out a brief statement and then staying quiet.

It’s an approach which is eminently sensible and in the same position I’d probably do the same. Which to me proves that the dreams of the Social Media evangelists will never be met in the real world.

When I first started in journalism, which is not that long ago, some clubs would routinely give you the mobile phone numbers of their players if you wanted to do a quick interview with them. You’d also be guaranteed an interview if you went up to the training ground on a given day.

It’s very different now with all media activity around most clubs tightly controlled. So after winning this battle, it’s clear why clubs are unwilling to get fully engaged in Social Media. Most treat it with suspicion and only pay lip-service to it.

They also resent their players having their own accounts fearing some will go off message and will use any excuse to stop their players Tweeting.

Darren Bent was forced to stop his hugely popular Twitter feed because Sunderland had lost a few games. It was claimed Twitter was somehow distracting him from doing his job. It should be noted that Bent never tweeted from either the pitch or the dressing room!

But again it’s quite easy to see the sense behind this stance when you see what happens every time a player makes a slightly controversial comment on their feed. The remark gets re-tweeted across Twitter and then finds its way into the papers, usually with a less-than-flattering headline.

When clubs continually strive to control the message and make sure nothing is printed which could upset the morale in the dressing room, why would they tolerate loose cannons?

Again, I am a big fan on Social Media and wish football club especially would use it more and engage with their fans. But there are good reasons why they don’t.

And until we realise this and appreciate where they are coming from the medium will remain predominantly a place for fans to chat rather the place where real conversations and interactions could take place.

Did you know that last week three out of the four FA Cup fifth-round replays were broadcast live – not on the TV but on the internet.

And also that the games were not broadcast illegally by foreign sites such as iraqigoals.com but by the FA’s official website and by ITV.com (who I happen to work for).

While many of us who work online would like to think that this heralds the start of something big, the actual reasons behind last Wednesday’s events are much more mundane – The FA have been showing games on their site all season following the collapse of Setanta, while ITV were showing Inter Milan v Chelsea on the same night and couldn’t persuade any of the FA Cup teams to play on Tuesday or Thursday.

That said there are many people who believe the future of football broadcasting lies online.

A story in the Daily Mail last week claimed that the Premier League have decided to set up their own TV operation to service the overseas market and in future could look to go it alone in the domestic market as well. If this were the case there’s no doubt they would look to screen games online using a pay-per-view model.

The FA are also thought to be thinking along the same lines especially following the success of this season’s Cup matches. New chief executive Ian Watmore is known to be a big fan of new media and could decide to go down a new route if the FA fail to attract big offers for the next round of their TV rights. Although this issue is slightly clouded after the FA sold the rights previously held by Setanta to ESPN who begin their FA Cup coverage next season.

And even newspapers could have a stake in a new online future after the relative success of last October’s experiment when England’s World Cup qualifier in Ukraine was broadcast live on a number of national newspaper sites.

It’s clear the technical problems which have previously hampered such plans  have now been pretty much solved with online streams offering decent, if not brilliant, picture quality while issues around buffering are not as common as they were.

But for online streaming really to take off, the likes of Sky, ESPN and ITV would have to be persuaded of the economic benefits of moving some of their games exclusively onto the web and at the moment the arguments just don’t exist.

But that’s not to say they never will.

At the moment it’s possible to watch all ITV games live on their website, while you can also watch Sky games live if you’ve bought certain subscription packages so it’s clear that the broadcasters have not completely ruled the web out of the equation.

But, personally, I believe it could be the top clubs who could be the drivers of change although not necessarily in a positive way.

The Premier League may have it faults but its collective bargaining policy where all the league’s teams benefit from TV money is one area where it can be admired.

However I often wonder how much longer the big clubs will tolerate this for, especially given the precarious financial position many find themselves in.

While Manchester United and Chelsea have full-fledged TV channels many other clubs offer smaller online versions on their websites which, with a bit of investment, could be transformed into the broadcasting platforms needed to show live games.

It is coming, but we may have to wait some time before Chelsea v Manchester United is live on your PC.

The Guardian’s ever-excellent David Conn’s report on Monday that the Premier League is proposing to introduce a play-off for the final Champions League place is the sort of story which gets people talking from the boardroom to the pub.

The simple plan, if approved by 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs, would be for the teams finishing from fourth to seventh to meet in a mini end-of season tournament to decide who plays in the following season’s Champions League. The final could even be held a Wembley – or Kuala Lumpur!

Predictably a number of Premier League chairman have already backed the idea, although West Ham’s David Gold and Wigan’s Dave Whelan should probably be more worried about keeping their sides in the top-flight rather than planning a European adventure.

On the face of it, the idea is a good one. For too long the so-called “Big Four” have dominated English football and with such riches on offer in the Champions League have further opened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Surely an idea which would help distribute some of the wealth to more teams should be considered a positive move.

And the chance of a play-off would also help keep the season alive for more teams. As well as the race for the title and the relegation battle, the final day of the season could further be enlivened by the race to grab a play-off spot and the chance to mix it with the big boys of Europe.

And if there’s more to play for, the crowds will keep on coming through the turnstiles which would no doubt please clubs, sponsors and broadcasters.

But despite seeing some of the benefits of the idea, I’m firmly in the No camp for this one.

My first concern is that it’s the Premier League who has initiated the plan. This is the same Premier League which completely misjudged the mood by proposing the 39^th game a couple of years ago.

If the Premier League are proposing it, you know it’s because the Premier League think they will make money from it so I’m immediately suspicious.

Then there’s the thought of the play-off final suddenly overshadowing the FA Cup final which would no doubt be played around the same time.

The narrative of the English season has become hugely dominated by the Premier League, but the FA Cup still retains enough of its shine to be grand finale and it must stay that way.

With a Champions League place on offer, even more teams would begin to field weakened sides in the FA Cup. At the moment the top four, with perhaps the exception of Chelsea who have such a strong squad, clearly see the FA Cup as their third priority of the season. With the introduction of the play-offs more teams would start to think this way.

Although he initially backed the idea, West Ham’s Gold also suggested that the lure of Champions League football would encourage more teams to spend beyond their means. And with so many clubs in financial trouble at the moment, surely you don’t want to be giving them further reasons to increase their debt.

Fixture congestion, the integrity of the league and the failed experiment in Holland are further reasons why this one should be a non-starter, although worryingly it was reported that it was only one of a number of ideas to be discussed. Lord knows what they will come up with next.

For me, the final nail in the coffin of the idea is the fact that English clubs will not always be guaranteed four Champions League places. The decision is based on past performances of English clubs in Europe.

It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that at some point this could revert to three teams. After all, Liverpool didn’t make it out of the group stages this year and no one knows what the implications will be of UEFA’s planned rules about only allowing clubs free from debt into the competition.

If it suddenly goes down to three teams, do the play-off positions move? And keep shuffling around?

For me having to introduce a play-off is actually an admission by the Premier League that their competition is inherently unfair and they don’t know how to fix it without completely changing the nature of the league.

Personally, I’d award the fourth Champions League spot to the FA Cup winners at a stroke making it available to far more teams and also leaving the Big Four to battle it out for just three places. Now that would be exciting.

In the end, transfer deadline day actually proved quite busy this year with Adam Johnson signing for Manchester City, Robbie Keane joining another of his boyhood clubs and my own team, West Ham, signing three strikers in a day.

But for much of the time the day was looking like yet another damp squib with TV hosts and bloggers everywhere searching for even the smallest of deals to report on.  It was during one of these quiet moments while running a deadline day “online chat” on my own website that I began to realise how silly it has all become.

It’s very easy to mock the way Sky Sports News cover the day with their gaggle of reporters standing outside training ground counting 4x4s go in and then go out again, but the seriousness they attach to the day does deserve ridicule.  This year their studio reporter had borrowed Andy Gray’s fancy computer and was seen scrolling round a carousel of players telling us the latest news of each one.

And heaven help us when a deal actually went through!

But it was, of course, not only Sky. The BBC website’s transfer day blog was up and running from 7am (how many footballers are even up at that hour?) while every football website worth its salt had some kind of live blog which mostly filled their time with general football talk rather than any actual transfer gossip.

But we all buy into it. We all tell our friends that someone on the BBC site has just seen Fernando Gago at Manchester airport, or that a car with the registration KEANO had just driven through the gates at Upton Park.  Maybe we enjoy it because we like to think it could be the day which changes the destiny of our club’s season, when it very rarely is. Or maybe it’s because we as fans love dreaming, if even for a moment, about the superstar who has been linked with our club.

The biggest indicator of how important “Deadline Day” really is comes from looking at the teams involved in the selling and buying, or more precisely the teams that weren’t.  Of the top seven clubs in the Premier League only two did business on February 1, Manchester City who have a manager still settling into his job and attempting to quickly put his own stamp on a team, and Tottenham who have a manager with a pathological aversion to keeping a settled squad.

None of the top three were even linked with a deal on Monday, with Manchester United quite sensibly wrapping up the signing of Fulham’s Chris Smalling last week when it could be done in a ordered manner away from the deadline day spotlight.  To me the last day frenzy has always been about teams who fail to plan properly, after all they’ve had the whole of January to do a deal so why wait until the final minutes.

And it’s also been about middling clubs desperate to make sure they don’t get dragged in to a relegation battle in the final months of the season and panic buying – note West Ham’s decision to add three strikers to their squad on Monday.  In the time before 24-hour sports news channels and football websites, deadline day, which was usually in March, used to pass off with a whimper and everyone got on with the important things such as the matches on the pitch.

But in the modern information age those days are long gone and unless FIFA and UEFA decide to abolish the transfer windows, deadline day chaos will continue to grow.

Cue Sky Sports News’ David Craig standing in a bleak car park in the north east telling us that Hartlepool have just signed a 19-year-old defender.

If most football fans were asked if they’d like a multi-national company to pump £100m into their club they’d jump at the chance.  Tell them that in return their historic ground, which has been home to their club for over 100 years, would have its name changed to reflect their new backers and suddenly the atmosphere would change.

For it seems that football fans will accept almost any commercial activity surrounding their club except the selling of naming rights. And even during one of the deepest recessions in generation this attitude still prevails, although some change does seem to be on the horizon.  The most recent example of a club getting into hot water over naming rights was at Newcaslte where, perhaps understandably, fans were riled on being told their ground was now to be called Sports Direct@St James’ Park – it hardly rolls off the tongue.  It’s also unlikely it would have secured much more income for the Magpies as Sports Direct is the company owned by club owner – and PR disaster – Mike Ashley.

Another owner of similar standing to Ashley among his fans, Malcolm Glazer, has also been reported to be considering selling the naming rights at Old Trafford.  In a business sense, for a club a reported £700m+ in debt to try and claw back some money it makes sense. But to fans it’s just the latest example of the way Glazer and his family are slowly killing the club and all its traditions.

But naming rights can work and are accepted by fans. Think The Emirates, The Reebok Stadium, the Ricoh Arena as just some examples of  clubs who play at branded stadiums.  The difference? The grounds have been built over the last decade or so and therefore have no history or heritage.  Arsenal’s deal with Emirates was reportedly worth over £100m which for a club who, unlike many, like to keep their finances on an even keel was a godsend.

Some Arsenal die-hards continue to call the ground Ashburton Grove, but in the media, where it really matters for the sponsor, the Emirates name has stuck.  Perhaps the secret is not to give fans any alternative options. When Southampton’s new ground opened, it was originally called the Friends Provident St Marys Stadium.  A bit of a mouthful, the obvious thing was to cut out the sponsors name so St Mary’s stuck and Friends Provident probably asked for a refund from the Saints marketing department.

The next battle in the name game could come on Merseyside where Liverpool owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett have announced that they will sell the naming rights of Liverpool’s new stadium in Stanley Park once (or is that if) it is built.  Again, perhaps because the owners are already mistrusted by the majority of fans, at first the plan was criticised by Reds fans who said they would call it Stanley Park or the New Anfield.

But then an interesting debate took place between supporters who, maybe having spent a day thinking about things, came to realise that at this moment in their history money is more important.  As one fan on a messageboard put it: “I’d rather see Torres and Gerrard playing at the Budweiser Stadium, than see Ngog and Lucas playing at the New Anfield”.  And that attitude does seem to be catching on. When Tottenham announced plans for their new ground over the road from White Hart Lane little fuss was kicked up when fans were told naming rights were up for grabs.

Supporting a football club is as much about knowing its history as it is about knowing who your best left-back currently is.  But the reality of the football business today means clubs always need to find new revenue streams and if it is done the right way and at the right time many fans can now see the financial advantage of selling naming rights.

They might not like it, but when their £20m centre forward scores the winning goal in the Champions League final, they probably won’t care.