This obsession with points, eurgh.
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
- Thread starter Samid
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This looks like it will be the first season since 18/19, where Haaland won't finish with a 1:1 games to goals ratio (or extremely close). 16 non-penalty league goals is actually kind of underwhelming considering the team he plays for.
I wonder if Pep will slowly transition away from him being a certain starter in the most important and difficult games. He'd still be really valuable in the games where City dominate anyway, but I could certainly see a situation where Pep realizes he can set up the team better without him for CL knock-out games and similar.
I wonder if Pep will slowly transition away from him being a certain starter in the most important and difficult games. He'd still be really valuable in the games where City dominate anyway, but I could certainly see a situation where Pep realizes he can set up the team better without him for CL knock-out games and similar.
Because getting that high amounts of points reflects a good league performance despite coming 2nd a bit like Ronaldo or Messi scoring the most in Europe with one scoring 55 and the other 50. Its still mental numbers.
It can also reflect poor league level overall. Scoring high amounts of points can show a big gap with the rest of the league. Lower points tallies can highlight very competitive league seasons. It's not black and white, and it's strange how the totals are used thinking they're a "gotcha" they're not really when you look beyond the surface.
But this was in the era where the PL has been ranked the toughest league in the world. It wasn't in the 90's.
By Pool and City fans? I don't doubt it.
The league has absolutely not been tougher these past few years.
True it can, but in the case of the Liverpool and City teams recently. The league's mid table teams have never been richer and managed by higher caliber names. You just have to listen to former players like Rio, Neville or Carragher who will point out how much more straightforward it used to be to face mid and lower table teams in the PL if you had better players compared to now.
Or it just means the League wasn't as competitive...
Points accrued don't matter on the caf, high point tallies are results of egomaniac managers who don't have youth players and don't rotate and don't take the eye off the ball
Which league was more competitive on a whole? Essentially a league that has the best players and managers in general?
I mean, you can put us, Chelsea, other clubs who spend a lot of money in that, and I'd argue a lot of teams have never been so weak/non competitive.
As for what those pundits stay, a lot of it is driven by a narrative they are spinning for their employers, a lot of it is recency bias, and a lot of it is them not being the brightest people around and just spouting what comes through their mind in the moment. Their word is far from gospel - you only need to listen to Gary talking about his own career and his time as a player to know that he lacks perspective and is very prone to recency bias.
How is it relevant to the competitivity of the PL that there is or isn't a more competitive league?
Just so it's clear, I'm not saying Pool and City weren't good teams in those years - I am however saying that the points tallies are not the be all and end all and are the result of a variety of criteria. Liverpool and City being so much better than the rest of the league (which is what the points show) isn't necessarily the crowning argument a lot of people believe it is.
The stuff about pundits spinning narrative is beside the point, that has always existed and always will. I was using those examples because they are of players of our own and would logically have no reason to praise the present as opposted to the standard stuff you hear from the likes of Souness and Keane about how everything was better in the past. You can't argue that we and Chelsea were never worse because you can go to any point in time and you can say the same about certain clubs. The level of the PL in the '90s and early '00s was just plain mediocre compared to the rest of Europe. Tactically it was behind with the second best team of the era who could go unbeaten for a season failing to make any inprint in the CL whatsoever. They haven't even made the semis until 2006. Apart from them, how good were Liverpool? Bar occasionally competing for the UEFA Cup or being known as one of the worst teams to ever win the CL?
The PL became very strong from the half way point of the '00s because money came in and Chelsea forced the rest to raise their level including us. We also had the best player in the planet and the influx of fresh ideas from the best coaching talent has raised the bar. Barcelona's greatest and a rejuvented Real ensured that the balance swung to La Liga from around the early '10s with the PL boasting limited teams compared to those two and Bayern. The PL was won back them by teams that were humiliated in Europe setting up defensively and failing at that, or teams that would go on the next season to be mediocre like Chelsea and Leicester. Once CR and Messi left Spain though and with the PL for the first time recruiting the best coaching talent in Europe, it's hard to argue that the quality has been at an all time high again the past 5 or 6 years. The teams performances in Europe and how much coaching talent exists in the league makes it one of England's top flight best eras.
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It's not beside the point as you brought pundits "opinion" as an argument - I responded with what I believe about those opinions. My view on punditry and "journalism" in football is extremely low and I wouldn't use it as a general barometer for anything.
On th rest, I just disagree in any case as I've said and I believe the league has currently been generally weak for a few years (with one or 2 outlying teams), and European football in general is a bit meh anyway. It's ok if we don't agree on this
Fergie playing the kids when the league title was sewn up in April so that he could focus on other competitions is definitely more important to us United fans than how many points you accured whilst failing to win more than one trophy in a season.
The points thing doesn't mean that much IMO for a number of contextual reasons: points totals have been rising steadily over the past 30-40 years. In the superclub era that we are in, there is a much bigger financial gap between the haves and the have nots than there was in the 70s and the 80s
If you look at the actual in-era dominance of Keegan's Liverpool (European Cup and League double in 76/77 plus numerous other trophies in the years before and after - when it was only 2 points for a win in any case) or the Rush/Dalglish Liverpool (European Cup/League/League Cup treble in 83/84 plus scores of other trophies in the years before and after) then I don't see how that 97 point side is close. But then I'm not a Liverpool fan, I wonder what they would think about it. Those who are old enough to have seen all these teams that is. Personally, I don't think the 97 point side is even as good as the late 80s Barnes/Beardsley team, but that's more my opinion rather than any kind of dogma.
As United fans we need to understand that when you are the GOAT manager, your record does not need much defending from us. SAF is not any less of a manager because of his point tallies at the end of the season. And trying to diminish laudable feats like point tallies because SAF doesn't have those is silly.
And bar City in 2017-18/Liverpool in 19-20, recent high point tallies were driven by competitive title races between 2 elite teams, where points were rarely dropped.
So Arsenal and Man United didn't have competitive title races in the late 90s and early 2000s? Everton and Liverpool didn't have competitive title races in the mid 80s?
Not on the same level. For me the City season 2017/18 was in a way a watershed moment. From this point on it was clear you had to aim for a 100 point season to be sure to win the title. That was never the case before, you could aim for about 90 points in the 2000s to win a title and around 80 points was enough in the late 90s. Liverpool was the only team to respond to that in the late 2010s and to raise their level accordingly, but this challenge simply didn't exist in the 90s as no team pushed as high.
I didn't say they did not
I'm saying that a competitive race where teams involved in the race don't drop points is indicative of the quality of both sides, more than a competitive race where teams involved in the race are dropping points.
You know as well as I do that points tallies are often used by Liverpool fans when trying to prop up Klopp as equal to, or better than Fergie. Therefore, a lot of us are predisposed to emphasising the importance of number of trophies being a better metric than number of points.
Also, getting to that points total was not unique. City also did, which suggests that the league was far less competitive than previous years.
117-1
Those times Liverpool and City were also doing it in Europe which shows they were 2 of the best 5 sides in Europe at that time. Unlike those times with Man Utd and Arsenal in 90s and 2000s when they werent making much of a dent in Europe
Dented yous lot.
As if a Bayern fan made that comment
1 CL final between Man Utd and Arsenal in those time
5 CL finals between City and Liverpool in the last 7 yrs
Europe wasn’t as gash then as it is now.
Points tallies that have won the title since 2018
89
93
86
This season the max city can get is 91. Needing 100 points is not necessarily an every season occurrence as much as people seem to imply it is.
Should also factor in that nowadays teams can make five subs and carry squads of 20 elite footballers due to financial disparity. All these things mean they’re better equipped to get higher points tallies.
It is absolutely not the case that teams didn’t push as hard. There were cracking title races in the 90’s and 00’s. And them not having 85+ points was absolutely nothing to do with teams not pushing as high. Football was different back then in terms of squad depth. Far easier to win more games these days when you can stockpile a squad and make 600 substitutions.
Oh good. Wonder if we'll see 120?
Which continent is the dominant one these days? Or is the theory that in a time were more hours, money, science, careers are spent on football than ever before, the level of football has plummeted worldwide compared to the 90’s and 00’s?
If you can choose between a theory that one team had an abnormally good couple of seasons or 20 000 teams had an abnormally bad couple of seasons, both are possible, but one theory looks stronger than the other.
Hehe, was waiting for the mention of “sports science”.
Everyone loves Sports Science:
Man United and a host of other teams prodding along with 69 injuries and players who can’t stay fit for half a season but the sports science is amazing ….
Bit of a silly way of phrasing things. It’s quite obvious that most of the top teams across Europe now are significantly weaker than they were in the 90s/00s, in relation to the Premier League. It’s also quite obvious how much financial muscle the PL has in relation to the rest of Europe now.
Also below 90 points won lots of titles in the earlier decade. What I meant with "aim for" was an amount that (almost) guarantees you to win the league in that decade.
They are wrong to use it to make that point and it almost validates them some of our fans are taking the bait. There is no world where Klopp’s body of work is equal to Fergie. Equally it’s just plain small to try and downplay their achievements and how points tallies can indeed be relevant as @adexkola wrote. Reactionary arguments often become too binary and go for the other extreme instead.
I mean, flip it in terms of wins/losses, it's the same thing. It was their best ever performance in the league. In a season in which the PL was so strong it managed 2 all english finals in europe, too
Was Pellegrini's final season Real Madrid's best ever performance in the league?
No. Mourinho's 100 points season is
Pellegrini's was better than anything that had come before though
I meant at the time it happened. Mou's season came after Pellers.
That Pellegrini team was actually awesome, but were most RM fans calling it the best ever performance because it was, at the time it happened, the highest ever points/wins total?
Haaland goes missing again in the last few pages on his own thread.