The relative strength of the Premier League

As a United fan, you have to want City to win the league next year again. Otber than them only Liverpool can.

It's a big summer, if Mane or Salah or even both leave, you can give City the title. If Haaland stays fit, they can win at least 34 games, the gap between them and the rest will get even bigger.

The only team I could see challenge apart from the is Tottenham. With Conte in charge and a solid base, with that front 3, and a couple of signings, they could be a surprise package. (unlikely)

Apart from them 3, I feel other teams are mediocre, Chelsea will struggle even more, Arsenal have a poor mentality and United have too many bad eggs. I fear the gap between the top and the rest will only get bigger.
 
Bebestation said:
La Liga is still just a 2 team battle of a league. Sometimes that is not even there.

You check the quality of teams like Leicester, United, Brighton, West Ham, Arsenal - it just shows what a different season PL teams have.
Click to expand...
Right, lots of quality here... :lol: The PL in general is of course the strongest league purely because of the financial strength of the clubs. However the gap is nowhere near as big as some make it out to be and those "quality" teams like Leicester, Brighton, West Ham etc. would very likely finish in similar positions in La Liga or Serie A. I think clubs in other leagues are capable of building better teams with less resources, many of the PL clubs are just brainless like us.
 
do.ob said:
It's so hard to tell if these posts are satire or not.
Click to expand...

I mean sure. I remember how much even I was celebrating when Dortmund were finally winning titles over Bayern.
Felt like an actual competition again.

maybe it’s gone a bit back to normal recently with Bayern again for you not to understand it.
 
dove said:
Right, lots of quality here... :lol: The PL in general is of course the strongest league purely because of the financial strength of the clubs. However the gap is nowhere near as big as some make it out to be and those "quality" teams like Leicester, Brighton, West Ham etc. would very likely finish in similar positions in La Liga or Serie A. I think clubs in other leagues are capable of building better teams with less resources, many of the PL clubs are just brainless like us.
Click to expand...

United our PL’s no 7 whilst Villareal is La Liga. The quality is so obvious.

Then West Ham beat bloody Sevilla who is 4th in the league whilst West ham is our conference league team :lol:
 
Bebestation said:
United our PL’s no 7 whilst Villareal is La Liga. The quality is so obvious.

Then West Ham beat bloody Sevilla who is 4th in the league whilst West ham is our conference league team :lol:
Click to expand...
I don't see how quality difference between West Ham United and Villareal is so obvious. I would always bet on Villareal achieving more in Europe than West Ham.
 
Bebestation said:
United our PL’s no 7 whilst Villareal is La Liga. The quality is so obvious.

Then West Ham beat bloody Sevilla who is 4th in the league whilst West ham is our conference league team :lol:
Click to expand...
Is this the same West Ham that got beaten over two legs by a team that finished 11th in the bundesliga?
 
Bebestation said:
I mean sure. I remember how much even I was celebrating when Dortmund were finally winning titles over Bayern.
Felt like an actual competition again.

maybe it’s gone a bit back to normal recently with Bayern again for you not to understand it.
Click to expand...

I really don't understand how you can make arguments so disconnected from reality and then go all condescending.

I mean you wrote this: "You check the quality of teams like Leicester, United, Brighton, West Ham, Arsenal - it just shows what a different season PL teams have."

When Leicester got eliminated in their EL group stage and then kicked out of the midtable cup, too. Clearly no other league has a team of this mythical quality.
West Ham got beaten twice by the team that finished 11th in Bundesliga. Clearly no other league has a team of this mythical quality.
Last year Villarreal won the EL, beating mythical United and Arsenal teams, clearly underlining how they can't compete with thieir PL counterparts. This year they beat Juventus and Bayern to a CL semi final.

It's like you're going all in on both ignorance and Dunning-Kruger-effect.
 
Last edited:
dove said:
Right, lots of quality here... :lol: The PL in general is of course the strongest league purely because of the financial strength of the clubs. However the gap is nowhere near as big as some make it out to be and those "quality" teams like Leicester, Brighton, West Ham etc. would very likely finish in similar positions in La Liga or Serie A. I think clubs in other leagues are capable of building better teams with less resources, many of the PL clubs are just brainless like us.
Click to expand...

Yeah, fundamentally this: neither all the superstars in the world, nor all the very good players from lesser leagues are flowing to the PL yet. Simply put, if you want to consider the Serie A of the ‘80s as the showtime of international football, then in the PL there is no Udinese with Zico and Edinho, no Torino with Leo Junior, no fecking Napoli with Maradona and Careca, no Atalanta with Stromberg and Caniggia, etc.
 
Mogget said:
Is this the same West Ham that got beaten over two legs by a team that finished 11th in the bundesliga?
Click to expand...

yeah! All the injuries and time in such a pressured league leads constantly Villareal to beat United in the Europa League for example or the Spanish team that beats English teams in the CL final.

If you think the work rate involved in the PL and La Liga is the same then so be it. That’s how you view it.
 
Bebestation said:
yeah! All the injuries and time in such a pressured league leads constantly Villareal to beat United in the Europa League for example or the Spanish team that beats English teams in the CL final.

If you think the work rate involved in the PL and La Liga is the same then so be it. That’s how you view it.
Click to expand...
I think you clearly don't watch any football outside PL and the occasional CL game. You should, I think you will be surprised that football exists overseas too.
 
Bebestation said:
United our PL’s no 7 whilst Villareal is La Liga. The quality is so obvious.
Click to expand...
Villareal went farther into the CL this season than United have since Ferguson was manager and won the EL against them, not sure what is so 'obvious' here other than the name.
 
Bebestation said:
yeah! All the injuries and time in such a pressured league leads constantly Villareal to beat United in the Europa League for example or the Spanish team that beats English teams in the CL final. If you think the work rate involved in the PL and La Liga is the same then so be it. That’s how you view it.
Click to expand...
PL teams should perhaps consider running around less.

Bebestation said:
Ancelotti was the last manager of Everton and is winning titles all over the place with Real Madrid again.
Click to expand...
To me this fact is a perfect demonstration of "the limits of having more money." Yes, a mid-table PL team can afford a top manager that a mid-table La Liga team couldn't. But can they turn this financial advantage into competitive advantage? It is not so clear that they can.
 
Last edited:
People make a lot of stupid arguments around this subject. Cup competitions throw up a lot of statistical noise by their nature. A 38 game league season gives better impression of the quality of sides. The best measure of the relative strength of leagues are the coefficients for both clubs and league as they award points for all win and draws for all clubs in all the European competitions.

They show that over the past 5 years the PL has been a decent margin stronger on average but that this season the English performance was a step down from the high water mark of last season. That the idea that there are only two strong sides in England and the rest are poor is a false one. I’m not sure why anyone would make that argument when Chelsea won the CL last year.

https://www.uefa.com/nationalassociations/uefarankings/country/#/yr/2022

https://www.uefa.com/nationalassociations/uefarankings/club/#/yr/2022

I would add the ECL has distorted the coefficients for the Dutch league this season with them having 3 clubs in the bottom tier competition.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
People make a lot of stupid arguments around this subject. Cup competitions throw up a lot of statistical noise by their nature. A 38 game league season gives better impression of the quality of sides. The best measure of the relative strength of leagues are the coefficients for both clubs and league.

They show that over the past 5 years the PL has been a decent margin stronger on average but that this season the English performance was a step down from the high water mark of last season. That the idea that there are only two strong sides in England and the rest are poor is a false one. I’m not sure why anyone would make that argument when Chelsea won the CL last year.

https://www.uefa.com/nationalassociations/uefarankings/country/#/yr/2022

https://www.uefa.com/nationalassociations/uefarankings/club/#/yr/2022

I would add the ECL has distorted the coefficients for the Dutch league this season with them having 3 clubs in the bottom tier competition.
Click to expand...

Yet when you made this thread back in 2016 the EPL was third in coefficients.

https://kassiesa.net/uefa/data/method4/crank2016.html

At that time you were arguing that European performances don't dictate the strength of leagues, now you are?
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I didn’t make this thread.
Click to expand...

Oh bro sh*t, it was the Wumminator! :nervous:

My apologies.

That being said, the EPL is still the best league in the world, but it is based on the strength of the top 2-3 teams. Below that, I don't think they are much better than the respective teams in the other top 4 leagues. Spurs might be better now than they were earlier in the season with Conte, but teams like Arsenal, us aren't much better than Leverkusen, Leipzig, Frankfurt.
 
Usual questions but the Prem inarguably remains the strongest league in world football. Not even a debate.
 
Dansk said:
And it really is beyond dispute. You only have to look at the money involved. Since the Americans are not terribly invested in football (soccer, for their benefit) and the OZ/NZ ones aren't either, it can't be claimed that sheer global linguistic weight is what carries the PL to prominence. There are probably two or even three times as many people in this world who are interested in football and have Spanish as their native language, and yet the Premier League is the one that remains vastly more profitable in terms of both advertisement and viewership deals. It's because this is a league that actually has more than two or three teams worth paying attention to. And that was the case before the various takeovers, too.

It's difficult to express it without sounding like an arrogant cnut, but the PL ranks far above any other league in the eyes of the world. It's why teams stand to gain like £150m from promotion into it, and why a club like United can be absolute garbage for an entire decade and still remain one of the most supported clubs in the world. If Barcelona should happen to go through a decade of shit, do you think all these kids from Switzerland and Turkey will remain staunch supporters? Of course not. That's why they're in financial trouble. Unlike Bayern and PSG, they don't have an utter monopoly on their league, so - much like the Italians - they face financial breakdown the moment they stop being the team du jour.

Real Madrid have their legacy and their firm control over the Muslim world, where they are basically the only team anyone cares about. Aside from that, if you go almost anywhere in the world where the domestic league carries no real weight, the locals will support a PL club. All of Scandinavia, for instance, is entirely devoted to English football. As a Dane, I can attest to the fact that nobody here gives the slightest of fecks about the Bundesliga despite it being our neighbour. It isn't even really televised here. Everyone supports a PL club.
Click to expand...

Rich doesn't equal good though. IMO, the EPL is the best league in the world, too, but not by as big of a margin as people in here like to believe and also not relative to the financial strength. First because other leagues are better at a) developing/scouting young players and b) coaching in general. Lots of the EPLs financial strength is also bound by paying far too much for English or EPL players and also diminishing returns. A player you sign for 80m in the end isn't twice as good as a player you can sign for 40m.

For me, what makes the EPL so good is that they have 6 top clubs. But the teams behind them aren't anything special.
 
Bebestation said:
I look at La Liga’ no 7 in table vs PL’s no 7.

Ronaldo wouldn’t play for Villareal. Pau Torres is more likely to leave Villareal to join PL’s top 7.

Then in the last 2 decades I have seen - city, Liverpool, United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Leicester city win titles. Team’s like Tottenham, West ham, Everton, Newcastle getting big at different moments in the past or future, some even reaching cL finals.

Its not about Sevilla and Villareal not being able to perform in the PL - it’s more that more clubs would make it harder for the La Liga top 2 plus half of atletico madrid.

Ancelotti was the last manager of Everton and is winning titles all over the place with Real Madrid again.
Click to expand...

This post makes no sense, I'm sorry to say.
 
Ranchero said:
Usual questions but the Prem inarguably remains the strongest league in world football. Not even a debate.
Click to expand...
It is a debate though. No English clubs have won anything in Europe this season. Your post is typical English arrogance
 
AndySmith1990 said:
It is a debate though. No English clubs have won anything in Europe this season. Your post is typical English arrogance
Click to expand...

The most objective measure we have is the nation ranking and England is clearly in the lead there. So I don't think it's arrogant to say the PL is currently the strongest league. I think arrogance and ignorance mostly enter the discussion when it comes to the question how big that lead is, say when putting down the teams below Real and Barca in Spain, when Vilarreal has just had two excellent season in Europe, or putting West fecking Ham on a pedestal the same year Eintracht Frankfurt has won the EL.
 
do.ob said:
The most objective measure we have is the nation ranking and England is clearly in the lead there. So I don't think it's arrogant to say the PL is currently the strongest league. I think arrogance and ignorance mostly enter the discussion when it comes to the question how big that lead is, say when putting down the teams below Real and Barca in Spain, when Vilarreal has just had two excellent season in Europe, or putting West fecking Ham on a pedestal the same year Eintracht Frankfurt has won the EL.
Click to expand...

I am not sure what you want to achieve, though? This is a forum of/for Man Utd fans, and the great majority of fans everywhere just watch their own team / league. It also happens there is a concentration of fans from abroad that makes the international sections more open-minded at large. In spite of that, we still are not the MIT department of football. At the end of the day, who cares about this constant d**k measurements, if you are not that into that (I am asking, innocently)?
 
Will there ever be a way to test this theory of which league is strongest?

example: tournament for the mid/low table clubs of Europe?

i know you can try to use statistics... for example, which league has the most international starters in it in the bottom 16 teams. But that isn't really going to prove anything.

or you can just use your eyes, but that's prone to bias, error and stuff
 
I have watched enough of all the topic leagues to guarantee that I and almost everyone else has no idea about which league has the best bottom 10 teams. Almost no one knows how the teams between 5 and 10 would rank either. The only thing that is somewhat clear are top 5 when you look at them as a group but no when you look at teams one by one because match ups and mismatches are a thing. As a whole the difference between the top 5 leagues is marginal, it exists but it's not as big as people think.
 
Eli Zee said:
Will there ever be a way to test this theory of which league is strongest?

example: tournament for the mid/low table clubs of Europe?

i know you can try to use statistics... for example, which league has the most international starters in it in the bottom 16 teams. But that isn't really going to prove anything.

or you can just use your eyes, but that's prone to bias, error and stuff
Click to expand...
Yes, it's called the UEFA Coefficient and England have won it 4 times in the past 5 years.
 
JPRouve said:
I have watched enough of all the topic leagues to guarantee that I and almost everyone else has no idea about which league has the best bottom 10 teams. Almost no one knows how the teams between 5 and 10 would rank either. The only thing that is somewhat clear are top 5 when you look at them as a group but no when you look at teams one by one because match ups and mismatches are a thing. As a whole the difference between the top 5 leagues is marginal, it exists but it's not as big as people think.
Click to expand...

This makes me think we should set up a league where only the top 5 of each one can enter.
 
Eli Zee said:
Will there ever be a way to test this theory of which league is strongest?

example: tournament for the mid/low table clubs of Europe?

i know you can try to use statistics... for example, which league has the most international starters in it in the bottom 16 teams. But that isn't really going to prove anything.

or you can just use your eyes, but that's prone to bias, error and stuff
Click to expand...

Every league has its own strengths and other tactical ideas. It actually could be that one team that fares great e.g. in the EPL would do a lot worse in La Liga or Bundesliga or vice versa.
 
EPL has been the best league in recent years, but the Spanish sides has an absolute iron grip on European cup finals(whenever they reach them) and its not just us, it must be said.

Has to end at some point, probably soon, but the record speaks for itself.
 
criticalanalysis said:
This makes me think we should set up a league where only the top 5 of each one can enter.
Click to expand...

I think there should be European football for every team in the top 5-7 leagues. There should be 5 or 6 tier European competitions. The bottom tier competition would pit Norwich/Watford against Alaves/Levante and Furth/Bielefeld.
 
I've been saying for years that the differences between all top leagues isn't actually all that big. Some seasons it's larger, some seasons that that gap is smaller. And while CL, EL and now ECL might be the only way to properly compare, it's still a cup competition. And more importantly it only represents the top clubs in each league. If one league wins all cups in one season, that doesn't automatically mean that the rest of the teams from that league are weaker or stronger than in another year where that league's European competitors perform worse.

I don't doubt that the Premier League currently is the best in the world, but even if the teams spend lots of money top to bottom, that doesn't necessarily translate proportionally to team quality. Not to mention that you can't really have 20 teams ranging from excellent to good from the top of the table to the bottom, even if there are some expensively assembled squads at at the bottom. Even just psychologically a lot of teams fighting relegation end up playing horrible football, although on paper the squad should be capable of more. On paper Everton shouldn't have been near relegation, but there's a reason they were and that's not just because the competition is so strong. It's because they weren't good, and the same happens in other leagues all the time.

It's a hypothetical scenario, but I reckon if for a season all top leagues were merged into one league, a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome of the final table. Surely lots of Premier League clubs would be near the top, but midtable and bottom third of the table would be very unpredictable in my opinion, even if on paper that shouldn't be the case.
 
La Liga has something special in the finals that the rest of leagues dont.

Its a fact.

"In last 21 years, La Liga teams have played 17 CL and EL finals against non-Spanish teams. And won all 17."
 
Remember when Barcelona/Madrid were thrasing lower La Liga sides during 2010-15 and this was used as an argument as to why La Liga was weak? I remember.
 
Ridge Racer said:
Remember when Barcelona/Madrid were thrasing lower La Liga sides during 2010-15 and this was used as an argument as to why La Liga was weak? I remember.
Click to expand...

Scorelines like 9-0 only happen in farmers league

Bournemouth already at -14 GD in matchday 4
 
You must log in or register to reply here.