Premiership is king

Zebra3

therecklessone wrote:

I don't think for one minute that anyone would claim the PL is the best league based on season past, but it certainly looks a lot stronger now and possibly for the coming season.

I was only responding to the topic.

thebaz

Zebra3 wrote:

I was only responding to the topic.

After last nights results i would say the Premiership is the strongest league -- 3 CL semi finalists -- Roma dumped 7- 1 , and Valencia beaten at home --
Chelsea , Arsenal , Man U and Liverpool are capable of beating any team in Europe -- i know there is a bit of a gap down to Bolton ,Spurs , Everton , Newcastle -- but the only league challenging the Premiership , would be the Spanish league, and right now i'd say premiership is better , and with tv money will continue improvement.

Bateman

Whether or not the Prem is the best is one thing, but if European success is going to be considered the proof, the managers are the single biggest factor; none of them English.

jesus_thats_gre

gimmick wrote:

An English team will not win the CL, or UEFA Cup this season.

You still got confidence in that statement?

Bateman

1/5 an English winner on betfair at the moment. :eek:

applehunter

Chelsea and united for me.

Both have great teams at the moment.

cardshark202

Premiership is clearly the strongest league in the world now, and since there is more money in it than any other leagues I can only see it getting stronger. I expect the english teams to begin a period of dominance over the next decade.

bucks73

Dunphy was saying tonight that English teams will be getting a total of 1.25 billion with the next TV deal. La Liga are getting 125 million for theirs. Ten times less. The top four in England are just going to get wealthier but this still does not guarantee success.

PHB

That can't be right, because Real Madrid will still get more than anyone in the Premiership.

thebaz

PHB wrote:

That can't be right, because Real Madrid will still get more than anyone in the Premiership.

aren't Real bankrolled by the King of Spain -- also i think the Spanish and Italian clubs negotiate there tv individually , which means the like of AC , Real, Barca , Inter will get a lot more than mid-ranking or lower teams . I think the English system is fairer, collective bargaining, even with this system , you still still have a 3 tier system.
Finally i wouldn't believe everything Eamon says, he has a tendency to exagerate ! Funny watching him choke on Tuesday after Rinaldo's performnces , he tried to squirm his way around saying he still wasn't convinced.

Zebra3

thebaz wrote:

aren't Real bankrolled by the King of Spain

Yes, of course they are. 5% of all state taxes are siphoned off to RM while the poor in the Basque country and Catalonia have to resort to eating their own kids to survive. :rolleyes:

gucci

so does the fact that three out of four semi finalists in the uefa cup are spanish mean that they have more "strength in depth" of theyre league than the premiership? they're second tier european sides are more tactically shrewd than they're english counterparts?

Mr. Presentable

therecklessone wrote:

I don't think for one minute that anyone would claim the PL is the best league based on season past, but it certainly looks a lot stronger now and possibly for the coming season.

For what its worth, here's the record of the last 4 in all European club competitions for the last ten years (1995/96 to 2005/06)

Your xls is skewed. At a glance, how can Italy have 4 runners up but only 3 semi finalists?

Fratton Fred

gucci wrote:

so does the fact that three out of four semi finalists in the uefa cup are spanish mean that they have more "strength in depth" of theyre league than the premiership? they're second tier european sides are more tactically shrewd than they're english counterparts?

I'm not sure it's that simple, Osasuna were dumped out of the Champ League so they aren't really a second tier side, but other than that I would agree with you.

therecklessone

nipplenuts wrote:

Your xls is skewed. At a glance, how can Italy have 4 runners up but only 3 semi finalists?

That should have been beaten semi-finalists. Sorry.

eirebhoy

The premiership is the strongest league in the world atm, no doubting that. I certainly wouldn't say it's the best. Chelsea v Man Utd or Liverpool v Chelsea does nothing for me at all.

Zebra3

eirebhoy wrote:

The premiership is the strongest league in the world atm, no doubting that. I certainly wouldn't say it's the best.

mike65

Best is not the same as strongest! Simple enough!

Mike.

bucks73

True but best is a matter of opinion also.

thebaz

mike65 wrote:

Best is not the same as strongest! Simple enough!

Mike.

I'd certainly say Arsenal or Man Utd. can play some of the best football in the world , when they are at there best !
As an Evertonian , i know the football played by ourselves, Blackburn, Bolton ain't pretty.

eirebhoy

To be honest I'd mainly prefer to watch UEFA cup matches than Champions league matches as a neutral. Flair players and poor defences keeps me happy.

Zebra3

mike65 wrote:

Best is not the same as strongest! Simple enough!

Mike.

So what's the difference then?

mike65

The two are not the same, strongest league could have deadly dull football culture so hardly the best (For a while German football was the thing but it was rarely a thing of beauty), of course if you only measure value in terms of bottom line and Cups then Prem might be the best league for the next few years.

Mike.

kinaldo

What does Phil Ball have to say?

It's been a juicy week for La Liga's football followers, with sparks flying left, right and centre. Let's start in Europe.

In midweek, Valencia bowed out of the Champions League after an excellent game against Chelsea in the Mestalla, the London club's win being the first time in 40 years that a side from England's shores has won in Valencia.

Three English sides (Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool) then took their place in the semi-finals of the Champions League, sparking much comment from the European press, and from Richard Scudamore, the Premier League's chief executive, who crowed loudly that this was proof that the English top flight was now the best in Europe.

Well, maybe so. He needs something to cheer about, after the national team's appalling performances and the farcical process of electing a manager who everyone knew wasn't up to it. But this takes nothing away from Man Utd's annihilation of Roma, Chelsea's brave and astute performance in Valencia and Liverpool's pummelling of a poor-looking PSV side, who had nevertheless knocked out Arsenal in the previous round.

But does this mean that the power base of European football has shifted from La Liga to England, with even Cristiano Ronaldo apparently immune to the temptations on offer at either Barcelona or Madrid - both of whom were counting their money last week in an attempt to see if they could afford to really stump up a bid? And with Eto'o and Villa allegedly on their way to the Premiership, maybe Scudamore had a point.

I suppose that in the year 2000, when Real Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona all made the semis, it was easy to come to the same conclusion about La Liga's dominance, or even Italy's in 2003 when they had three representatives at that stage too. But there seems to have been little comment on the equally significant fact that Spain has three sides in the UEFA semi finals. It leads to the inevitable question - what is the true litmus-test of a league's strength - its biggest sides or its middling sides?

The UEFA Cup seems to be picking up in both quality and spectacle, and whereas some years ago few people seemed to take much interest, things have changed. Television has jumped back onto its bandwagon, and teams now see it rather like the play-offs in the lower divisions. It's something to aim for, something to keep the season alive. It's almost as if there has been a grudging acceptance that the Champions League is for a select coterie of clubs, with the occasional disturbance from the margins - like Villarreal's amazing achievement last season.

Indeed, a more cynical view of this year's semi-finals might be to view them as the four richest clubs in the world, perhaps with the noble exception of Liverpool who began the season under 'normal' ownership. Berlusconi, Abramovich and the Glazers. Welcome to sporting democracy! Well ok - it's neither the players' nor the fans' fault that this is the case, and Real Madrid and Barcelona aren't exactly paupers on the world's stage. But when you take a look at the UEFA, things are rather more interesting, from a purely sporting point of view.

Osasuna and Espanyol are very bog-standard sides in Spanish terms, although Espanyol have had some success in Europe before. Sevilla won the UEFA last year, and are still challenging for La Liga's title, but in strictly statistical terms have not won the national title since 1946. Hardly a major force, although always a prominent and feared side.

Osasuna's 0-3 win at Bayer Leverkusen was much more significant than Liverpool's win at PSV, and almost matched Man Utd's win over Roma for surprise value. Espanyol had Benfica on the ropes in Barcleona in the first leg, only to give away a 3-0 lead (to 3-2) and endanger their chances of getting through in Portugal. The fact that they made it is remarkable, though they rode their luck at times.

Sevilla v Tottenham, however, was symbolic of the issue. Spurs were a shade unlucky in Seville, and played well in London too (in patches), but as sides of similar status (if one takes away Spurs' golden years) La Liga's representatives looked too canny for the English side. In the end Sevilla had more on offer, just as middle-ground Spain has more to offer than does the Premiership. The fact that Reading have done so well this season in England is also a testament to the Premiership - but it depends how you look at it. Reading haven't made the UEFA yet, and if they do, how will they fare?

The fact that Barcelona and Real Madrid have looked more human in the last few years in La Liga is surely due to the competitiveness that abounds there - witness Santander's win on Saturday night and Barcelona's struggle to beat lowly Mallorca the next evening. The gap between the top three/four in Spain and the rest is a big one, but it is surely not as immense as the chasm that separates Man Utd and Chelsea from the rest. Scudamore should think twice before opening his mouth again on this issue. Middle England still looks pretty poor to me. Middle Spain looks in good health.

full article

My sentiments exactly.

PHB

Em, Sevilla are in the top 4 in La Liga, challenging for the league, Spurs are 8th place.
Were it not for some dodgy reffing, Spurs could easily be in the next round.

Sevilla are not the middle ground of Spain, they are the upper groud, 3rd/4th place really, and I wonder how they would do against Liverpool/Arsenal

kinaldo

PHB wrote:

Em, Sevilla are in the top 4 in La Liga, challenging for the league, Spurs are 8th place.
Were it not for some dodgy reffing, Spurs could easily be in the next round.

Sevilla are not the middle ground of Spain, they are the upper groud, 3rd/4th place really, and I wonder how they would do against Liverpool/Arsenal

Well they did both finish 5th last season, and both may do so again this year.

PHB

Maybe, but Spurs are clearly, clearly, in the second tier of English football, you cannot say the same about Sevilla, who are btw, 2nd in La Liga.

A more apt comparision would be Chelsea to Sevilla, and then maybe Recreativo to Spurs, who I think we would all agree, Spurs would beat.

A Dub in Glasgo

Here is what Gabriele Marcotti has to say in the Sunday Herald

5 reasons why English clubs dominate Europe

To some of the English press, it's open-and-shut. If there are three English clubs in the semi-finals of the Champions' League, there can be only one reason: the Premiership is the best league in the world. Of course, this thinking is riddled with inconsistencies. If three semi-finalists is all it takes, was Serie A the best league in the world in 2003? And if the Premiership is the best league in the world, why did it not supply any Uefa Cup semi-finalists unlike, say, Spain, who provide three of the four? Also, all that European success tells you about is the relative strengths of the better sides in each league: how do you even begin to know how to compare Wigan and Chievo, Arminia Bielefeld and Levante? You don't. Which is why any debate about the best league in the world is best left to the Department of Length-of-a-piece-of-string at the Ministry of Spurious Arguments.

That said, there is a theme to the English success this season. You can clearly look at five areas in which Premiership sides have outperformed the opposition and for which, to varying degrees, they deserve praise. This is the season when English club football finally grew up, when it finally lived up to the hype. And here are the reasons why.

1. Healthy finances
The top four English clubs (and, yes, might as well throw in Arsenal) have more money than the top four in any other league. Sure, Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain, Inter and Milan in Italy, and possibly Lyon and Bayern in France and Germany can all match England's Big Four. But no other league comes close to having as many clubs with such deep pockets.

It's not rocket science. Money allows you to attract and - just as importantly - retain talent. Cristiano Ronaldo extended his deal at Manchester United on Thursday, becoming one of the five highest paid players in the world. This does not mean he'll stay indefinitely of course, but it does make it that much harder for him to leave. From Thierry Henry to Steven Gerrard and from Michael Essien to Rio Ferdinand, English clubs can now hang on to their big guns like never before.

The Premiership is the best run league in the world from a commercial standpoint. It surpasses every other domestic competition in terms of marketing, revenues and hype. It has obviously taken some time for the quality on the pitch to match the success on the balance sheet. But the latter has inevitably raised the level of the former and English clubs are reaping the benefits.

Incidentally, all of the above also applies to AC Milan. Commercially, this has long been the best run club outside of England. And while their deep pockets weren't deep enough to hold on to Andriy Shevchenko, at least they made sure they got a cool £30 million for him.

2. Faltering opponents
It certainly helps when your adversaries self-destruct. And, simply put, this has been a nightmare season for Europe's footballing royalty outside the Premiership.

Juventus, of course, are stuck in Serie B, so they didn't even enter the competition. Bayern are in fourth place in the Bundesliga and have had to make an acrimonious mid-season managerial change, ditching Felix Magath and bringing back the Old Master, Ottmar Hitzfeld.

After storming to the top of the Dutch Eredivisie, PSV fell apart just at the right time to suit Liverpool: when they hosted Rafa Benitez's men they were in freefall, winless in the previous month.

The same can be said for the Spanish sides. Valencia began the season with a furious (and very public) row between the manager, Quique Sanchez Flores and the club's sporting director Amedeo Carboni. Not coincidentally, they sit in fifth place.

At Real Madrid, of course, Fabio Capello has been on the verge of getting the sack for much of the year, with dirty linen being washed in public as part of his rows with the likes of Antonio Cassano, Ronaldo, David Beckham, Jose Antonio Reyes, Mahamadou Diarra and Robinho.

And, of course, all this happened while being crucified daily by the Madrid press and by a portion of the supporters, whose bile got so vicious towards some of his signings that Capello stopped playing Emerson at the Bernabeu to spare him the boos.

Things have been only marginally quieter at Barcelona, where Frank Rijkaard, another boss likely to be on his way out, endured criticism from Samuel Eto'o, all the while negotiating a difficult situation with Ronaldinho (with the Brazilian's agent flogging him left, right and centre across Europe) which may yet see him dropped.

Compounding matters is the fact that this is the tightest La Liga race in years, with as many as five teams still in with a chance to win. The domestic race has proved to be so energy-sapping that the top Spanish clubs necessarily paid a price in Europe.

Further down the food chain, things have been bumpy as well. In the six weeks before getting knocked out of the Champions' League by Roma, Lyon lost four times in all competitions - they had lost just once in the four months prior to that.

3. Managerial excellence
Rafa Benitez, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho are arguably all among the top five managers in the world right now. (You can make a strong case that Carlo Ancelotti, the Milan boss, is in there too, which would explain the rossoneri's presence in the final four).

They've all won the Champions' League before (as has Ancelotti) and they all served up a tactical masterpiece on the way to the semis.

Benitez's decision to play Alvaro Arbeloa at left back in the Camp Nou (with John Arne Riise in midfield) was the tactical key to the game. It neutralized Leo Messi and left Barcelona with a constant thorn on the flank. Over two legs, few coaches are as effective as the Spaniard.

The same can be said for Sir Alex in the return leg against Roma. Down 2-1 on aggregate and with four regulars (Louis Saha, Gary Neville, Nemanja Vidic and Paul Scholes) unavailable, he shocked most observers by pulling Alan Smith - who had not started a Champions' League or Premiership game in 14 months - out of the hat as his centre forward.

Smith was devastating, tying up the Roma defence with his physical presence, working tirelessly and opening up channels for Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. Not coincidentally, he was the one man who Sir Alex himself singled out for praise.

Jose Mourinho reinvented Lassana Diarra as a right back and John Obi Mikel as a holding midfielder against Valencia, displaying the guts to bench veterans such as Paulo Ferreira and Claude Makelele. But his true achievement this season has been emotional as much as tactical.

The fact that Chelsea are still a compact unit with the players firmly behind him in a season which has seen the club rocked by controversy (from the Shevchenko and Michael Ballack signings, to the disputes over his future, to the in-fighting with Peter Kenyon and Frank Arnesen).

Whatever else one thinks of these three men, only a fool would doubt that they are among the very best the managerial world has to offer.

4. Stability
Of the 16 clubs who advanced to the knockout phase of the Champion's League, seven are led by managers who have been in charge for two seasons or more. And, of those seven clubs, four are English.

The other three are Barcelona, Lille and Milan (who, again not coincidentally, are also in the semi-finals). The fact that Mourinho, Ferguson and Benitez have had time to mould their squads into a cohesive unit that fully comprehends what they are asked to do on the pitch cannot be underestimated.

Of course, time alone does not guarantee success (Gerard Houllier had as many five year plans as Chairman Mao and look where that got Liverpool). But time has a multiplier effect on managerial ability: the longer a good manager is in the job, the more effective he usually turns out to be.

Today, each of the English sides left in the competition has a distinctive style and philosophy which is deeply ingrained in the players and that can only be a result of managerial stability.

True, Mourinho won the Premiership and Benitez the Champions' League in their first seasons. But Mourinho, frankly, is a managerial freak of nature (or what statisticians might call an "outlier"). And Benitez's European triumph was the function of the greatest comeback in the history of the game: a miracle performed with Houllier's spare parts. That Liverpool was a blood and guts hodge-podge group of men, this Liverpool is a well-oiled machine.

5. Luck
Or, if you think this is a pejorative term, you can call it "happenstance". But the reality is that - without taking anything away from the four semi-finalists - one does not win major silverware without a spot of good fortune. And that can manifest itself in many different ways.

When United played Lille away, the French side had a perfectly good goal disallowed, while referee Eric Bramhaar controversially (if correctly) allowed Ryan Giggs' quickly taken free-kick score to stand. A different official, on a different night, might have acted differently.

Even in their 7-1 dismantling of Roma, a night where everything went right for United, their opponents still managed 16 shots on goal (eight of them on target): rarely can you concede so many shots and get away with it.

As for Liverpool, it took the away goals rule to see them past Barcelona, while, as illustrated above, they faced PSV at a time when the Dutch were imploding. Furthermore, with the exception of Momo Sissoko, Liverpool's campaign has been largely injury-free, unlike some of their competitors'.

Chelsea found themselves a goal down at home (and 2-1 down on aggregate) against Porto, before goalkeeper Helton went into meltdown and gifted the Blues two goals. And, against Valencia, Santiago Canizares saved everything in sight before making the crucial error which allowed Michael Essien's shot to trickle past him at his near post.

And, of course, while we're on the subject of good fortune, Milan enjoyed some as well. Following their role in last summer's Serie A scandal, their very participation in the Champions' League was in doubt until the very last minute. Fate also smiled on them against Celtic, when referee Konrad Plautz failed to spot Paolo Maldini's handball early in the return leg.

The point here isn't to suggest that these are "lucky" sides. Rather, they are, on balance, not "unlucky".

Football is, ultimately, a sequence of individual episodes, some of which can change the course of the game.

Had Bramhaar made a different decision, had Liverpool suffered an injury crisis, had Helton not made a dog's breakfast at Stamford Bridge, had Uefa taken a harder stance with Milan we might be looking at four different Champions' League semi-finalists right now and drawing entirely different conclusions.

It's something worth remembering before making broad generalisations about the state of the game in this or that league based on a knockout competition.

patmac

No threat from the French league these were the results from last Saturday:
Toulouse 2 - 0 Auxerre
Lille 2 - 0 Sochaux
Le Mans 0 - 0 Rennes
Nantes 0 - 0 Lens
Valenciennes 0 - 0 Marseille
Troyes 0 - 0 Nancy
Lorient 0 - 0 Monaco
Bordeaux 0 - 0 Paris SG
Yawn, only 4 goals in 8 matches 14 out of 16 teams failing to score even Andy Gray would have difficulty talking that up.

DerekD Goldfish

Thats a very well wrtinn article you quoted a dub in glasgow didnt bother quoting it again becase overquoting destroys message boards.
You can make geraral statements on one of knockout competitions.
If the same trend continues that assumptions can be made but the teams in the later stages of the Cl will always have as always have as much if not more to do with the individual teams rather than the league they are in.

bucks73

DerekD Goldfish wrote:

Thats a very well wrtinn article you quoted a dub in glasgow didnt bother quoting it again becase overquoting destroys message boards.
You can make geraral statements on one of knockout competitions.
If the same trend continues that assumptions can be made but the teams in the later stages of the Cl will always have as always have as much if not more to do with the individual teams rather than the league they are in.

mike65

As for Liverpool, it took the away goals rule to see them past Barcelona, while, as illustrated above, they faced PSV at a time when the Dutch were imploding. Furthermore, with the exception of Momo Sissoko, Liverpool's campaign has been largely injury-free, unlike some of their competitors'.

Funny thing though, Pool won it while enduring a season which at one point had 9 first team players crooked, so injuries prove nothing in my book! Also how is winning against Barca on away goals rule luck? Its the rules!

Mike.

DerekD Goldfish

bucks73 wrote:

Doh

I mean to say Cant not Can
you cant mkae statements on the strenth of a league based on one years CL results