The relative strength of the Premier League

[Korwas]

I think I counted this right. In the Europa League:
Last 3 seasons:
PL
Quarterfinalists: 5
Semifinalists: 4
Finalists: 1
Wins: 0

La Liga
Quarterfinalists: 4
Semifinalists: 2
Finalists: 2
Wins: 2

Last 5 seasons:
PL:
Quarterfinalists: 8
Semifinalists: 7
Finalists: 3
Wins: 1

La Liga:
Quarterfinalists: 7
Semifinalists: 4
Finalists: 3
Wins: 3

In the CL:
Last 3 seasons:
PL
Quarterfinalists: 7
Semifinalists: 4
Finalists: 3
Wins: 1

La Liga:
Quarterfinalists: 6
Semifinalists: 3
Finalists: 1
Wins: 1

Last 5 seasons:
PL
Quarterfinalists: 13
Semifinalists:7
Finalists: 6
Wins: 2

La Liga
Quarterfinalists: 10
Semifinalists: 5
Finalists: 2
Wins: 2

 

[GatoLoco]

Cup competitions are not the best way to determine the strength of a league. You only need to look at countries individually to see that it is very rare for the best side to win every cup in their country, however the league tends to be won by the actual best team. Leagues have always been the best way to determine the strongest, so you will never actually know the answer to this until a super league is actually created.

Real Madrid won the Champions League 3 times in a row, but they only managed to win La Liga once in that same period. Who is actually the best in two of these three years then? Is it Real Madrid or Barcelona, who beat Real Madrid to La Liga twice?

In 17/18, they only managed to get 76 points and finished 3rd, so were they actually the best team in Europe that season? It seems to indicate more that they had a knack of beating big sides, but seemed to slip up against lower teams. The Champions League doesn't consider the latter to the same extent as a league, even though it is a massive part of football.

You can't really even determine who is the actual best in La Liga in this period, so doing it across leagues is not possible. They also don't play each other enough to get an accurate view.

So does Napoli winning more Scudettos than Sacchi's Milan in the late 80s mean we cannot determine the Italian league was the strongest in Europe during that period?

 

[Sweet Square]

The first half of Tottenham vs Chelsea match was pure shite.

 

[Gasolin]

Yh the fact AC Milan were able to go on that run is what makes them a special club. My original point is that quarters, semis and runners up are relevant to assessing league strength.

So while Milan were either doing well or not doing so well, other Italian teams were reaching the latter stages of the UCL, Uefa cup and cup winners cup, which definitely contributed to the status of serie a being the best league at that time.

Indeed. I was impressed with Parma when they reached the UEFA Cup finals, think they even won one. I fully agree with you that at some point Serie A teams were ruling in Europe. We were afraid to meet them and who can forget the Kaka goal where our defenders collide each others and can’t stop him haha.

 

[Gasolin]

There's also pretty good correlation between success and "having Pep Guardiola as manager" which is what happened when Barcelona were dominating and when City are dominating. But presumably he's closer to the end than to the beginning of his stint there. So what's the plan, use the PL's financial might to clone him?

Probably going back to the tradition: having United lead the way of English teams in Europe.

 

[zee.robs]

Tldr: Comparing recent performances shows, that currently PL is the strongest by far. But only since around 3-4 years.

How to compare Leagues?

The easiest way to compare leagues is to use results based metrics like EUFA coefficient, where the Premier league is clearly leading. A drawback of the UEFA coefficient is, that it only covers teams playing in UEFA competitions and the point distribution is kind of arbitrary (like guaranteed points for entry to the CL group stage), that UEFA games are often skewed towards top teams due to seeding (historically successful teams play easier opposition in the group compared to upstarts) and that you get the same number of points for winning games regardless of opposition.

Nevertheless, it is possible to gauge the strength of teams purely based on the results. You just need a lot of them. The very useful website “clubelo.com” is using the ELO system which is also used in chess as well in order to compare the strengths of European teams using UEFA and domestic games.

What is ELO?

Clubelo.com: “The Elo system works with only a single number, the Elo value. The difference in Elo points between two teams directly translates to a likelyhood of winning against that team. When a club with a 20% winning probability (and 80% losing probability, draw counting as half win/ half loss) wins it will gain 4 times more Elo points than when it loses so that the two clubs Elo values will remain stable relative to each other if the club actually wins 20% of the games. Should the club win more than 20%, their Elo values will converge accordingly.”

The advantage of the ELO system is, that it can be applied to all games played. While UEFA games redistribute points between the top teams playing in the tournaments, domestic games redistribute points within the league according the domestic results. This means we gain in a proxy for comparing teams that don’t play internationally.

So what is the relative strengths of the Premier League?

In the figure below the current ELO rating for all first tier teams of the English, Spanish, French, German and Italian League are shown.


So what can we see here? Each symbol represents the ELO of a team. The teams are ordered according their strengths. So we can compare the team’s strengths across leagues, by comparing the symbols vertically. What we can see from this for instance, is City slightly edging Bayern, more significantly Real and Napoli and shitting on PSG. In general, we can see that all PL teams are stronger than the respective teams from the other leagues. We can also compare horizontally. What we can see from this, is for instance that the 11th best team from the PL (WestHam) is better than the 8th best Buli & SeriaA Team, the 6th best PD team and the 4th best L1 team. Lastly, we can also see that the ELO system has some issues with capturing rapidly changing form/ strength of a team. Hence United is still trailing Barca somewhat and even Liverpool (which are still rated 2nd best in the PL, bohoo).

So how has the relative strength of the Premier league evolved over time?

What is nice, is that clubelo.com also offers a look into historical data. So we can check the situation in the past, for instance in March 5th 2016 (which coincidentally is the starting date of the thread). The ELO is shown below.


What we can observe here is a fully reversed situation. PD teams were clearly dominating. So much, that the 5th best team from Spain (Villareal) was ranked slightly above the PL’s best (City).

So since when is the Premier League the best?

It depends on the metric. If we take the average ELO of all teams in the league, then the Premier League overtook PD in Spring 2019, see below. We can also see, that at the time the thread was started PL wasn’t even clearly 2nd best. We can also take from the chart below, that the biggest lead, a league had over the others, was SA in the early 1990s followed by PD in the early 2000s followed by PD in the middle 2010 followed by PL now. The most equality between top 3 leagues was in the late 1990s and early 2010s.


So how did the situation look in Spring 2019?

Apparently PL was a total clusterfeck, with 6 teams dominating (Arsenal being the 6th best in the PL and 13th best in Europe) and the worst teams on a similar level as in France. Just look at the point gap between 6th and 7th.


But in general the PL is most competitive? What about the “big 4”? Surely the bottom teams of the league is the best in the world.

Below is the average ELO of the top 4 teams, bottom 4 teams as well as the difference between top 4 and bottom 4. Since January 2019 the PL has the strongest Top 4. Since Autumn 2020 it also has the strongest bottom 4. Regarding the difference between top and bottom (last plot), a general trend of increasing gap is visible in all leagues. This is driven by the improvement of the top teams. Currently, the PL is the second most imbalanced, only beaten by SA. In March 2016 it was much more balanced indeed, however, PD was more balanced at the time still.

 

[Andrade]

Well yes, consistently reaching the last 16 by qualifying from your group is much better than finishing 3rd in your group then going on to win the weaker competition

This is why people who like the Premier league will never admit it's not the best league, whatever the evidence to the contrary. They cannot see their own bias. Try and imagine for a second if Premier League teams had won 8 out of 10 CLs and 8 out of 10 Europa Leagues (or similar) and completely dominated the Ballon D'Or awards and was top of the UEFA coefficient. Then try and imagine a Spanish person trying to argue that La Liga was in fact better during that time because more Spanish teams qualified from the CL group stage. They'd be called crazy on a forum like this. I mean you couldn't make it up.

 

[jm99]

This is why people who like the Premier league will never admit it's not the best league, whatever the evidence to the contrary. They cannot see their own bias. Try and imagine for a second if Premier League teams had won 8 out of 10 CLs and 8 out of 10 Europa Leagues (or similar) and completely dominated the Ballon D'Or awards and was top of the UEFA coefficient. Then try and imagine a Spanish person trying to argue that La Liga was in fact better during that time because more Spanish teams qualified from the CL group stage. They'd be called crazy on a forum like this. I mean you couldn't make it up.

Well like I said during the time Madrid and Barcelona won 7 out of 10 champions leagues they were the strongest

But the Europa League is less of a barometer of strength in depth than having all 4 of your teams qualify for the last 16 as has happened quite often over the last 5 years.

Obviously getting knocked out at the group stages and winning a weaker trophy isn't as good as teams qualifying from their groups, that should be clear to anyone

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

How often did English teams take europa seriously though?

You cannot use "we didn't want to win" as a reasonable explanation for anything. Even if it's true.

 

[jm99]

You cannot use "we didn't want to win" as a reasonable explanation for anything. Even if it's true.

Well how about the explanation I've given that 4 English teams have all qualified from their groups more often than not in the last 5 years, on one occasion 5 qualified.

If they routinely dropped into the Europa League they might win it but that would not make the league stronger

 

[norm87cro]

Yeah but it's Barcelona, what they do in Europe isn't indicative of anything, they've been a laughing stock for years

Well mate I congratulate your club for being the boss in the CL and really showing grit and determination in the latter years of your certain success but in your league Barca seems to have your number and is the better team in the last 10 years and Im quite sure it stings a little bit. But just a little since your club is the most dominant club in the World

 

[Lay]

How often did English teams take europa seriously though?

Ah yes, the reasons English teams failed was because they didn't take it seriously enough. @Iker Quesadillas made a valid point, its always ifs and buts for EPL teams failing but any other league its simply down to a lack of quality.

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

The Premier league has about 6 teams that if they qualify for the champions league you'd back to make at least the quarter finals, la liga has 2, 3 at push.

Who are these 6 clubs?

Liverpool? Yes. They have made it to the QFs 4 out of the last 5 seasons and played 3 finals.
Manchester City? Yes. They have made it to the QFs in most recent seasons.
Chelsea? No. They have made it to the QFs 3 times in the last 10 seasons.
Manchester United? No. They have made it to the QFs 2 times in the last 10 seasons.
Spurs? No. They have made it to the QFs 1 time in the last 10 seasons.
Arsenal? No. They have not made it to the QFs a single time in the last 10 seasons.

By what basis can you claim that you can back 6 PL teams to make the QFs at least when they have a long track record of not doing that?

 

[Acrobat7]

You cannot use "we didn't want to win" as a reasonable explanation for anything. Even if it's true.

It is along the lines of the dreaded „the PL is so competitive that our teams are exhausted in the CL and EL“ excuse.

 

[Lay]

It is along the lines of the dreaded „the PL is so competitive that our teams are exhausted in the CL and EL“ excuse.

Indeed. The only reasons trotted out when English teams go out

 

[Andrade]

Well like I said during the time Madrid and Barcelona won 7 out of 10 champions leagues they were the strongest

But the Europa League is less of a barometer of strength in depth than having all 4 of your teams qualify for the last 16 as has happened quite often over the last 5 years.

Obviously getting knocked out at the group stages and winning a weaker trophy isn't as good as teams qualifying from their groups, that should be clear to anyone

Ok, I'm no longer clear what we're talking about here. Are you trying to say that the PL was a better league than La Liga during the period when La Liga won all those CLs and ELs? No one is debating the last few years.

 

[jm99]

Ok, I'm no longer clear what we're talking about here. Are you trying to say that the PL was a better league than La Liga during the period when La Liga won all those CLs and ELs? No one is debating the last few years.

No, I'm saying that usually these things are cyclical and by and large the richest leagues wil dominate. It happened when Serie A was the richest league, then in the late 2000s the Premier league started to look dominant. The Madrid and Barca superteams over the last decade bucked this trend, but now its the PL again, and given the levels of money I don't see that changing anytime soon

 

[Andrade]

No, I'm saying that usually these things are cyclical and by and large the richest leagues wil dominate. It happened when Serie A was the richest league, then in the late 2000s the Premier league started to look dominant. The Madrid and Barca superteams over the last decade bucked this trend, but now its the PL again, and given the levels of money I don't see that changing anytime soon

Ok, so from 2008 -2018, La Liga was the best league, right?

 

[jm99]

Ok, so from 2008 -2018, La Liga was the best league, right?

Yeah I wouldn't disagree with that, it had the two best teams in the world in it and won 7 CLs. I think the Premier league was a bit stronger in depth, but overall on the strength of those two plus atletico, yes I'd say it was the strongest league

 

[Andrade]

Yeah I wouldn't disagree with that, it had the two best teams in the world in it and won 7 CLs. I think the Premier league was a bit stronger in depth, but overall on the strength of those two plus atletico, yes I'd say it was the strongest league

What evidence do you have that the Premier League had greater depth?

 

[jm99]

What evidence do you have that the Premier League had greater depth?

Well I guess it seemed during those years, though less in the middle granted that whichever 4 teams qualified from the Premier league, and there was usually competition, you'd backthem to qualify for the last 16 more often than not.

During that time us, Arsenal, City, spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool and Leicester all qualified for the champions league and every single one of those teams reached at least the quarter finals in that time period. Seven separate teams reaching the quarter finals, with I believe all apart from Leicester and arsenal also reaching semi finals. Its quite a lot of strength in depth

 

[giorno]

Well mate I congratulate your club for being the boss in the CL and really showing grit and determination in the latter years of your certain success but in your league Barca seems to have your number and is the better team in the last 10 years and Im quite sure it stings a little bit. But just a little since your club is the most dominant club in the World

It stings for sure right now because they're really nothing special, just been ridiculously lucky and gritty while we pissed away too many games we should have won

That said, barcelona really aren't a barometer of anything in europe these days, at the first sign of trouble they cover themselves in piss and shit. They're basically PSG, catalan edition

After United hammer Betis and they and Arsenal dominate the EL over the spanish sides we can talk

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

During that time us, Arsenal, City, spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool and Leicester all qualified for the champions league and every single one of those teams reached at least the quarter finals in that time period. Seven separate teams reaching the quarter finals, with I believe all apart from Leicester and arsenal also reaching semi finals. Its quite a lot of strength in depth.

La Liga sent six clubs to the QFs of the CL in the same period (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico, Sevilla, Málaga, and Villareal). Pretty much on par.

PL sent more beyond QFs, but here the time period is inflating 'depth,' as there is not much overlap between Arsenal/United and Liverpool/Leicester/Spurs/City. The former fell off as the latter rose.

 

[jm99]

La Liga sent six clubs to the QFs of the CL in the same period (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico, Sevilla, Málaga, and Villareal). Pretty much on par.

PL sent more beyond QFs, but here the time period is inflating 'depth,' as there is not much overlap between Arsenal/United and Liverpool/Leicester/Spurs/City. The former fell off as the latter rose.

My point is more that in any given premier league season there's 6 teams, any 4 of which could make the top 4, and if they did could usually hold their own with any side apart from Real, Barca, bayern and psg.

I don't see why la liga fans are so defensive over this, you had the two clear best teams in the world, but a lot of that came as a result of massively lopsided TV deals, which naturally meant less strength in depth

 

[Red the Bear]

I'd say la liga was the best league from 2011/12 to 2017/18.

2011/12 was the starting point for ours and Chelsea's decline while Madrid was starting to find their stride while 2017/18 saw the rise of city/pool with real having a last hurrah worts of win.

 

[giorno]

My point is more that in any given premier league season there's 6 teams, any 4 of which could make the top 4, and if they did could usually hold their own with any side apart from Real, Barca, bayern and psg.

I don't see why la liga fans are so defensive over this, you had the two clear best teams in the world, but a lot of that came as a result of massively lopsided TV deals, which naturally meant less strength in depth

It didn't though. In the period of LaLiga dominance over Europe you had Barcelona, Real Madrid, later Atletico consistently among the top 4 best sides in the world, and behind those came serious depth with Sevilla, Atletico(early on), Malaga(under the Qatari), Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao and Valencia. Even random teams like Celta Vigo would qualify for EL and reach the Semifinal. During that period the league was by far the strongest in the world, both at the top and in depth

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

My point is more that in any given premier league season there's 6 teams, any 4 of which could make the top 4, and if they did could usually hold their own with any side apart from Real, Barca, bayern and psg.

I don't see why la liga fans are so defensive over this.

I just think you are exaggerating. Like how you said earlier that you could back 6 PL teams to make it to the CL QFs even though only 2 PL teams have been regularly reaching the QFs in the last decade.

 

[jm99]

I just think you are exaggerating. Like how you said earlier that you could back 6 PL teams to make it to the CL QFs even though only 2 PL teams have been regularly reaching the QFs in the last decade.

Chelsea have won 2 champions leagues in the last decade, well ok just over a decade, Liverpool have reached 3 finals, City have reached the semi finals a couple of times, and regularly make the quarter finals, spurs have made the quarter finals twice with one leading to a final, which of these teams are you talking about?

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

Chelsea have won 2 champions leagues in the last decade, well ok just over a decade, Liverpool have reached 3 finals, City have reached the semi finals a couple of times, and regularly make the quarter finals, spurs have made the quarter finals twice with one leading to a final, which of these teams are you talking about?

Spurs making two QFs since 2008 is the textbook definition of not regularly reaching the QFs.

Chelsea were a non-entity in the CL between their two wins, making it past the R16 just once and failing to qualify multiple times. Again, the textbook definition of not regularly reaching the QFs.

I go back to the same point others have made. Think about how this would sound like to you if we simply changed the names. If I told you, "I would back Villareal to make it to the QFs of the CL any time they qualify" even though they have done that once in the last ten years, would you take it seriously?

 

[giorno]

Chelsea have won 2 champions leagues in the last decade, well ok just over a decade, Liverpool have reached 3 finals, City have reached the semi finals a couple of times, and regularly make the quarter finals, spurs have made the quarter finals twice with one leading to a final, which of these teams are you talking about?

Time period is all over the place, but counting number of teams making X round over such a stretch of time is pointless - it doesn't say how many good teams there were in any given season

 

[Acrobat7]

What evidence do you have that the Premier League had greater depth?

He just watches that league more

 

[jm99]

Spurs making two QFs since 2008 is the textbook definition of not regularly reaching the QFs.

Chelsea were a non-entity in the CL between their two wins, making it past the R16 just once and failing to qualify multiple times. Again, the textbook definition of not regularly reaching the QFs.

I go back to the same point others have made. Think about how this would sound like to you if we simply changed the names. If I told you, "I would back Villareal to make it to the QFs of the CL any time they qualify" even though they have done that once in the last ten years, would you take it seriously?

Well I guess beyond feeling its the very tangible wealth that most premier league clubs have compared to those on the continental, it's not a 1 to 1 exact outcome but largely money and the strength of your team in football are pretty well correlated.

More diffeent premier league teams have reached quarter finals, semi finals etc but all of this is just written off by you. Real and Barca were clearly the two strongest sides of the last decade, I don't think you'll find anyone argue that. But the last 5 years, more and more premier league teams are reaching the layer stages of the champions league, and before that it was still slightly more in the Premier leagues favour, not by much I'll grant you, the biggest difference was that real and Barca seemed capable of just knocking out any side they faced, along with bayern.

Like I said though with the sheer amount of money in TV deals and sugar daddy type ownership, I don't see it cycling away from the Premier league any time soon

 

[jm99]

I'd say la liga was the best league from 2011/12 to 2017/18.

2011/12 was the starting point for ours and Chelsea's decline while Madrid was starting to find their stride while 2017/18 saw the rise of city/pool with real having a last hurrah worts of win.

Nah after Ronaldo left and we didn't replace him, and arsenal and Liverpool continued to decline, I'd say definitely from 10/11 onwards, and maybe even 09/10. By 10/11 real and Barca were so much stronger than everyone else in Europe that their semi final was the de facto final as both were far better than us by that stage

 

[Red the Bear]

Nah after Ronaldo left and we didn't replace him, and arsenal and Liverpool continued to decline, I'd say definitely from 10/11 onwards, and maybe even 09/10. By 10/11 real and Barca were so much stronger than everyone else in Europe that their semi final was the de facto final as both were far better than us by that stage

Yeah I meant 2010/11 the season we made the cl final i had it mixed up in my mind.

I'd still consider pl to have been stronger than la liga in 2009, Real were kinda pathetic before jose went there, for all the criticism he gets he did jump start an era of utter success for them.

 

[jm99]

Yeah I meant 2010/11 the season we made the cl final i had it mixed up in my mind.

I'd still consider pl to have been stronger than la liga in 2009, Real were kinda pathetic before jose went there, for all the criticism he gets he did jump start an era of utter success for them.

Yeah in 2009, wasn't that the season Liverpool smashed real, and us, Arsenal and Chelsea all reached the semi finals, and as good as Barca were, they were seriously lucky to get past Chelsea. It was only after that the Premier league really dropped off.

Yeah before Jose, real struggled to get past the last 16 I think for years, then they've been in the semi finals every season from then til Ronaldo left

 

[Andrade]

Well I guess it seemed during those years, though less in the middle granted that whichever 4 teams qualified from the Premier league, and there was usually competition, you'd backthem to qualify for the last 16 more often than not.

During that time us, Arsenal, City, spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool and Leicester all qualified for the champions league and every single one of those teams reached at least the quarter finals in that time period. Seven separate teams reaching the quarter finals, with I believe all apart from Leicester and arsenal also reaching semi finals. Its quite a lot of strength in depth

I mean, if that's the entirety of your evidence, it's a pretty weak argument with all due respect. 7 Spanish teams also qualified for the CL round of 16 during that decade and all but one of them made at least the Quarter Finals. Also, in only two years did more English teams qualify for the R16 than Spanish teams. In two of the years more Spanish teams qualified than English teams. All other years it was exactly the same number from both countries. This gives the lie to your notion that Spain only dominated the Europa league because their teams couldn't qualify for the CL R16 whereas the English teams could. That's simply false. I don't think there's much there to say the PL had better depth in all honesty, it looks pretty close to me.

 

[André Dominguez]

Somethings money cannot buy. There's a lot of banter between PT and Spain, but our spanish nieghbours really know how to make competitive teams in almost every sport. Even if the budget is more limited.

 

[Andrade]

He just watches that league more

I suspect this is the issue, with all due respect to that poster. It just feels like one league is stronger because you are more familiar with it.

 

[Acrobat7]

I suspect this is the issue, with all due respect to that poster. It just feels like one league is stronger because you are more familiar with it.

I don't watch the PL outside of some "big name" games, and I have no idea who random teams like Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth or Southampton are. They could be playing in the Championship and I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Andrade]

My point is more that in any given premier league season there's 6 teams, any 4 of which could make the top 4, and if they did could usually hold their own with any side apart from Real, Barca, bayern and psg.

I don't see why la liga fans are so defensive over this, you had the two clear best teams in the world, but a lot of that came as a result of massively lopsided TV deals, which naturally meant less strength in depth

I don't class myself as a 'La Liga' fan, I watch a few leagues, including of course the Premier League. I think the problem is that what you are saying simply isn't true if you critically examine the evidence of the results. First of all you seem to ignore the presence of Atletico Madrid in trying to frame it as Barca/Real Madrid and the (not as good) rest. Not a completely unfair narrative because those two have the most money, we all know that. But AM reached 2 finals in that decade, which is better than any English club's return apart from United (you could maybe throw Chelsea in there because they won it once, but they only reached one final). And in addition to that, as I and others have stated, there was little difference in the number of clubs in each league making it to the CL round of 16, which was a key component of your argument. I also don't agree with your dismissal of the success in the Europa League as a metric to demonstrate league depth. All the European competitions are relevant IMO, even if none are definitive.