I don’t really understand why it seems so important for some that certain leagues are considered superior to others. In the end I only really care how United is doing and beside that enjoy a bit of other football games. CL is always interesting as nobody would have predicted Bayern demolishing Barca or City getting thrown out by Lyon, but I do not care what that might tell about the strength of domestic leagues. If this means the French league is at the top right now so be it.
Are the premier league sides ahead of the rest of Europe these days
- Thread starter Posh Red
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Indeed. I’d forgotten about it until I saw it todayOP must be thinking is it possible to delete threads
win some, lose some.Yeah the Jinx worked a treat
Utd will help you out hopefullyIndeed. I’d forgotten about it until I saw it today
It’s not really random thoughts. The English league has topped the coefficients for the past two seasons and that’s the best indicator there is of overall strength. It simply awards all sides in European competitions points for winning or drawing. It’s a much better indicator than drawing conclusions from individual games. Last season all four finalists were from England. That was the first time in history that had ever happened so claims that it has recently been the best league are not outlandish.
The standard of the PL did decline after 2012 but has come back in the past couple of seasons.
This aged well
I’d say the issue comes from judging the PL on Liverpool and City. They’re both miles ahead of anyone else in the league. The league itself is actually fairly weak at the moment. Just look at our run of form from January and we managed that despite still being way off from where we want to be squad wise. Wolves downwards there aren’t many particularly good sides outside of maybe Southampton and Arsenal who could do anything in Europe.
However, City/Liverpool along with Bayern are the best sides around. I know City went out yesterday and I’m just as chuffed as everyone else but you can’t judge overall quality on an individual knockout game where anything can and did happen. The one game structure makes it far more likely for results like yesterday to happen. Plus we have to remember City themselves lost 9 PL games this season and recently lost a semi-final to the 8th best side in the PL. It wasn’t even a massive shock, away from home they’ve struggled this year. A drop from the insane levels they were at previously was inevitable, but they’re still a top side. They are declining though and do have structural weaknesses defensively which Pep will put right by signing 5 players this summer like the true coaching genius that he is.
However, City/Liverpool along with Bayern are the best sides around. I know City went out yesterday and I’m just as chuffed as everyone else but you can’t judge overall quality on an individual knockout game where anything can and did happen. The one game structure makes it far more likely for results like yesterday to happen. Plus we have to remember City themselves lost 9 PL games this season and recently lost a semi-final to the 8th best side in the PL. It wasn’t even a massive shock, away from home they’ve struggled this year. A drop from the insane levels they were at previously was inevitable, but they’re still a top side. They are declining though and do have structural weaknesses defensively which Pep will put right by signing 5 players this summer like the true coaching genius that he is.
You can’t claim City are the best around anymore. They can dominate sides but they’ve now got a soft underbelly. Despite the stats they’re mentally weak. They’ve put in numerous performances like that one last night this season.
They’re still one of the top 3 sides for me. I think if they played every side in the CL over two legs 100 times they’d win more often than not against all of them except Bayern. I don’t think the quality across Europe is particularly great either. Like you say though they do have structural defensive problems which means they lose games they really shouldn’t be losing such as yesterday and Arsenal in the Fa Cup.
I would actually put Barcelona, City, PSG and Sarri's Napoli in the same bag. They have all been very good at various points in the last 5 years but are also overrated because of how they look when they are in form, these teams had high floors and high ceilings but neither reached that higher level that often, in the league they dominated because their floor was high and it was very difficult to beat them but in the CL you play against teams that will raise their games such as Monaco in 2017, Atletico, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Ajax or Lyon a few teams in the case of City and Juventus.
I think the bottom half of the premier league is stronger than ever. With all the money they got they have improved massivly, but also wasted it on championship crap etc.
It is a gap under the top two though.
Apart of post-imperial delusion, which is a sad effect of recent political blurb and tabloid fodder, it is the victorian love for freaks and outcasts that stands out these days. The Premier League surely lost its “pace merchant” or “hoof and puff” deregatory tag, mostly thanks to the influx of continental managers... only not the likes of Mourinho and Guardiola, two past-it mediatic super clowns offering no advancement, only entertainment and epic trolling... but Wenger, Mancini, Benitez and, on second wave, Ranieri, Pichettino and now Klopp, that is managers achieving success in the and together with the PL. All started with Zola and Vialli at Chelsea, though, well before Abramovich.
City have gone out at the quarters for the past 3 seasons. It isn’t really good enough considering the mind boggling investment. Similar to PSG in recent years. Barca have been on the end of some incredible second leg reversals too, there’s something wrong there.
That's my point, these teams are built for the league not cups, over 38 games they will most likely dominate but in a game or two against a very good opponent or well coached team, they are all likely to be beaten. It's the same thing with Conte"s teams or Bayern under Guardiola. At the same time teams that were inconsistent in the league like Liverpool and Real Madrid were able to raise their games in cup formats.
For me it's crazy how low the quality of all teams is right now.
There is two very good team in all of Europe in Bayern and Liverpool and the rest have major major flaws.
There is two very good team in all of Europe in Bayern and Liverpool and the rest have major major flaws.
Not sure Liverpool have been "very good" in 2020, they built a huge lead in 2019 and hasn't looked that great this year.
That's not special, I think that with time people idealize past teams. Take the 2007/2008 season most historical big teams outside of Chelsea and United were flawed and in transition.
It's pretty much always like that. For the past decade it has always been Bayern/Barca/Real.
Now the latter two of those three are in transition and it's Bayern/Liverpool/PSG.
I don’t see how this can be discounted as a factor in how the competition has played out. This is the first time since in nearly 30 years that there has been no English, Spanish or Italian teams in the semi-finals of the CL while the semi-finals are made up of teams from the leagues with the most rest. It seems a pretty obvious thing to speculate about to me.
You could look at the EL as a counter argument with two German teams being knocked out but you could argue that the four semi finalists are very strong sides with all four already in the CL next season. Rennes have been awarded the CL place that usually goes to the winner of the competition.
Great performances in the UCL/UEL = High-quality league -> More viewers -> More money from TV rights and sponsors -> More money to sign better players -> more chances to win games/trophies -> Happiness..
I still remember when a few years ago we were so poor we had to ask to mid-table PL team Everton one of their rejects (Deulofeu) on loan with option to buy. That guy immediately became our best player but we didn't have the money to sign him at the end of the season. Depressing.
In EL Leverkusen definitely didn't play at their normal level. Also, City were much better than Lyon yesterday and PSG barely got past Atalanta. I really think people are looking for excuses.
Psg without a long lay-off would have smashed Atalanta.
I disagree. You have a 30 year outlier event in the CL this season so you have to ask if theres something unusual about this season. There is something highly unusual about this season obviously and that has been expressed in some teams having much longer rest periods. The other factor is one legged ties which make a smash-and-grab a la Lyon last night much more likely.
Would the outcomes have been the same with two legged ties and a normal season. I’m sceptical.
You got your lenses on the opposite side, though... the actual game showed that the "smashing" team could only sneak through by two late goals, and only once the "to-be-smashed" oppos went clearly out of steam?
On a more serious note, I don’t get the fascination with “7th placed side in league x, beat 2nd place side in league y = can draw conclusions from there”....it’s a cup competition.
You need to consider trends (for an annual competition that would be more than 1 year) and historic performance - ergo something like the coefficients of each league(s). PSG & Bayern being in the semis isn’t really a surprise to anyone. Lyon & RB being there, sort of is.
I’m not advocating for the “farmers league” crowd, because that is disrespectful, albeit somewhere in there, they have a point about the disparity in those leagues. But those leagues having disparity within them, doesn’t mean the gap between the “rest” of the league is miles away from the gap between the rest in the EPL.
You need to consider trends (for an annual competition that would be more than 1 year) and historic performance - ergo something like the coefficients of each league(s). PSG & Bayern being in the semis isn’t really a surprise to anyone. Lyon & RB being there, sort of is.
I’m not advocating for the “farmers league” crowd, because that is disrespectful, albeit somewhere in there, they have a point about the disparity in those leagues. But those leagues having disparity within them, doesn’t mean the gap between the “rest” of the league is miles away from the gap between the rest in the EPL.
I think it's your eyes that are failing you. I clearly said a PSG without a long lay-off.
Basis for that? Same of City smashing Lyon? Mind, I can even agree with your statement, but not for the reasons you seem to consider relevant.
Not at all. Since it's mostly the same group of clubs that do well in Europe, those coefficients speak to the relative quality of the top of different leagues, but is says little to nothing about leagues as a whole.
It’s the best measure available. There are 7 sides from the highest nations in the coefficients. That’s 40% of German Bundesliga teams.
Which measure do you think is better?
I quite like it when English teams get knocked out of European competitions (apart from Man United of course) so I am glad this thread didn't age well. Well done Lyon. Credit to Atletico Madrid, Seville and Bayern for their part too.
...How did they score 2 goals then?
A few of those seven are cannon fodder every year, regardless of who makes it in, so it's indicative of maybe five sides, which tend to be the same every year. So I'd say that these coefficients rather speak to the width and longevity of a league's top and I would still maintain that they say next to nothing about the rest of the league, especially the bottom half.
Except if you let the non-stop team face each other competitively, I don't think there is any measure to meaningfully compare leagues. The best you can do now, is simply watch a lot of football and base your judgement on that; but that's also difficult, because countries have different approaches to and trends in their football. It's hard to say how they would really measure up if the teams would really face each other.
Oh, maybe transfers are a proxy. The best leagues might be where good players most tend to and want to go - on all levels. In that sense, I'd put the EPL on top. That's also a matter of money, of course, but if having more money attracts better players, then the point remains. This isn't just about top players; good players (the tier below the best) from the Netherlands, for example, tend to go to low-ranked clubs in England, but to sub-top clubs elsewhere.
Prem clubs are overrated simply because of how much money they have. They keep getting ripped off in the market and some equate that to quality. Also wrong coach appointments doesn't help. We're coached by Ole(never coached at this level), Lampard(championship coach), Mourinho (washed up) and those are some really big clubs with huge finances.
I don't know why Prem clubs are so poorly run. It's a mystery to me. Lots of the time prem clubs pay prices for players that other clubs in those leagues wouldn't even think of paying. Another thing is people strangely equate the up and down, end to end nature of the prem to quality, which doesn't make sense.
I don't know why Prem clubs are so poorly run. It's a mystery to me. Lots of the time prem clubs pay prices for players that other clubs in those leagues wouldn't even think of paying. Another thing is people strangely equate the up and down, end to end nature of the prem to quality, which doesn't make sense.
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That’s why I said it’s the best measure there is. There’s no real other way of objectively comparing. Subjective judgements on the quality of the lower sides is speculation and unprovable. Emotional conclusions after watching a couple of games are of far less value than the coefficient, in my opinion at least.
Transfers and loans do give an indication. Speaking of the Erdivisie. I follow the progress of young English players and nearly all that have gone abroad to Holland in recent years come back to Championship sides and find it harder at that level than they do in the Erdivisie. That led me to the conclusion that the level is pretty weak outside of the top couple of sides and why you should be wary of some of crazy stats some players post over there.
Agreed about the Eredivisie. But I would still say that, even if coefficients is the best available stat (and it might well be), it means very little for a league as a whole. If that means that there is then no way to properly compare leagues, then so be it. It's not like it hurts anyone to suspend judgement on this.
I meant the first leg, zero shots on target in that match. Losing at home too was just the icing on the cake.
Meh. Atletico didn't really create anything beyond their goal either
In the second leg liverpool could and should have won 3-0 in regulation. Atletico did a job on them like they did against Bayern in 2016. Smash and grab win
There are no could and shoulds, they weren't robbed by the ref or anyone, lost home & away against an average Atleti, i.e, they got what they deserved.
Long may it continue. Shipping off heroes like Haller or Joelinton to the best league in the world for stupid amounts has proven to be a lucrative source of income. We don't want you to gain any semblance of competence, you're doin fine as is.
Wasn’t an easy job for Sevilla but they did it
Probably what every executive/director in the other leagues is thinking. I refuse to believe the majority of prem clubs have big scouting networks. I understand spending decent money on Haller but why would any organization sanction the signing of Jolington for 40 million pounds? What could they have seen?