You had four teams in European finals last year, the eventual champion not among them, and you say the league is weak? IMO, this is the strongest EPL I've seen and I'm watching football since 2001.
How can their metrics be better than last year when they've already lost and had as many draws as they did last season?
Because metrics isn't the same as results. Their performances haven't changed and they should have a lot more points. Just think back to the game at Anfield where they played really well but lost 0-3.
They played well at Anfield? Their midfielders were clueless, their defence is terrible and playing Fernandinho as a center back and Rodry as a defensive midfielder is a terrible swap so far. They conceded 23 goals last season and already reach 19 now and we're not mid-season yet. So yeah, they can stil score 4 or 5 goals occasionnally but their metrics are far from being better. Bernardo Silva is the shadow of the player he was last season, Sterling is still good but not amazing, basically it's KdB carrying the team far too often.
having 4 CL & EL finalists was due to a decline in quality of the other European teams rather than the PL teams becoming better. The league by definition isn't competitive when you have huge points differences between the winners/+/runners up & the rest. The Utd teams of 99 & 2008 are at least on par with peak Pep City & current Klopp Liverpool. We didn't win the league by the massive margins seen in the last couple of years. This was due to the league being more competitive.
City do it every time, basically. They beat them six times in a row now
Ok so the PL teams stayed exactly the same and the rest declined. I suppose the all German/Spanish finals in recent years were also simply because they stayed the same as they were previously while the rest declined and so on.... If so, then god help us because this means that football has been in a death spiral for decades.
Cool, could you give us the definition of a competitive league so that we can then verify whether the PL was indeed competitive as you say in previous years?
Maybe this was just because everyone was equally shit? By your own reasoning, looking at English teams' performance in the CL in those years seems to indicate teams from other teams performed well simply because of a decline in the quality of English teams and essentially, Man Utd were just the biggest fish at that time in a pretty small PL pond.
Last year was an outlier. These happen every so often in football. It was very much the same circumstances of Leicesters title win. The European teams were generally poor which left a void.Ok so the PL teams stayed exactly the same and the rest declined. I suppose the all German/Spanish finals in recent years were also simply because they stayed the same as they were previously while the rest declined and so on.... If so, then god help us because this means that football has been in a death spiral for decades.
If you really think that the Utd teams of 99 & 08 were shit then words fail me. I know City & Liverpool fans want to believe that their teams are on a different level than anything ever seen in the PL era. This isn't the case though. It is the decline of the traditional big clubs & the general poor standard of the teams below that have made you look so good.
Well said! I think we have more worries than to worry about an exceptional manager and a exceptional neighbor team. We must get ahead of them every day, each day of the year, every year. Think about Ole and our team to begin with.
Sorry, bro, but "played really well but lost 0-3" is too large of an oxymoron
You may want to reconsider that particular take...Pep is good at knowing when to run away. It's also a talent. He's nowhere close to anybody even considering to sack him, but eventually he will leave, way before they decide to sack him. He is no Arsene Wenger and won't overstay his welcome, for sure.
No evidence for that, at all. Fergie's peak teams brought home the league title and European Cup in the same season, twice.
It's not the strongest since 2001. from 2004 - 08 every single top 4 English side: United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal appeared in the Champions League final at some point, in 2008 three of four semi finalists were English. Liverpool actually won the Champions League while finishing 5th in the Premier League.
Did any of those teams win 97 points?
Why are you even pointing out "twice"? Those successes were almost a decade apart which means it were two different teams. The success of the first hould have absolutely zero influence on the assessment of the second and vice versa, from a logical point of view.
This post is terrible.
Steady on there.
You're clueless unless you are able to be "pragmatic" and/or set up looking for a point. Come on, do you even brexit?
Yeah that was outrageous.
Yeah, they would be competing for league title, coming up with nonsense like "wipe the floor with United 2008 team" is hilarious.
He only goes out to win every game because generally speaking he's expected to win every game - they have such a strong squad City that even with the injuries they currently have, they could easily field a team strong enough to beat most of the premiership.
This simply isn't true.
I loved our teams, but we didn't play at the same level Liverpool do now. They would press us to death and expose our lack of pace in midfield unless Fletcher played.
I'm not sure if you're misrembering but a team with Rooney/Tevez/Park would out press any defence and we did so, frequently, they never stopped. Not only that but a midfield of Scholes and Carrick were always outs for the defence and you could count on one hand the number of times they lost the ball in a season. Plenty of teams tried to press us methodically but it didn't work and they got blitzed on the counter. Rio was perhaps the best ball playing defender in the world. That defence really was the best i've ever seen. Warrior mentality, Pace to burn in Rio and Evra, and peak Vidic was an absolute monster. It's hard to compare playing styles across eras. But i'd say if anything, this United team would be perfect to destroy liverpool. They play with fullbacks as wingers, against the likes of Ronaldo, tevez, Rooney, they would get murdered on the counter and simply wouldn't be able to push up.
So your saying this team would get 99+ points then?
There's nothing terrible about it. Rodri and Gundogan were clueless and KdB was good but too high on the pitch to prevent them from being crushed in the midfield. Most analysts were even wondering why Guardiola was so passive and didn't change anything since it obviously didn't work. It didn't work at all.
That's just silly. We often didn't beat Liverpool as they were THEN, never mind 'absolutely destroy' the current version. I'm all for bashing Liverpool but there's no guarantee that any of Fergie's teams would destroy Liverpool as they are now.
We pressed alright,but not as good as many modern teams. We had great speed and skills in our attack though and much more depth than pool. Still got destroyed by pool in 2009 and could not stop barca. The mentality was amazing though.
Well, if they'd won their first 17 games they'd be a couple points ahead of Liverpool this season (let's assume Utd and Liverpool haven't played each other). Hardly winning at a canter.... I'm even including the 2 points we dropped at Utd in your favour
Player by player you were better, yes.
That pep team is not this pep team. They had GOAT playing for them and arguably greatest ever midfield trio. Not comparable to this City team.
We lost 4-1 at home against them in 2008/2009. We did destroy the weaker teams back then, but against the big teams we didn't really destroy anyone and often lost.
Not in 08/09 until later in the season.
Yeah we had lots of 1-0 win with Van der Sar keeping clean sheets in over 10 games in a row. Although some great games against Spurs and Chelsea that season.
The comeback from 2-0 down against Spurs is an instant classic
What a terrible post. SAF could only dream of. The lengths that you would go to for making a simple point that you think the current Liverpool and City teams are better!
