I am impressed how well the teams from Portugal do despite always selling all the best players. I am not sure what they do with the money they earn since they rarely buy big star players.
The relative strength of the Premier League
- Thread starter Wumminator
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People finding this argument funny clearly proves that PL is the best league
It is the best league, but it doesn't mean that it's the reason why PL clubs don't always perform in the CL. It's a different competition that requires different qualities.
Real Madrid won the CL several times while having a bad la liga season, and also won it while winning their league, but they just know how to play this cup. On the other hand, the almighty City lost against fecking Lyon.
People don't get jokes anymore
Evidence disagrees with this though. This period of best PL sides needing monstrous points total has coincided with PL dominance over the CL, just like how Madrid and Barcelona dominated back when they had to break 90 points to win the league. In general, a strong league and the need to keep high concentration and fitness levels because of it seems to translate to better CL results as well.
Having lots of money is a huge advantage and the Premier League is the best league currently but sometimes the gap gets exaggerated. If a pl team cost as twice, or more, than other team from europe it doesn't necesairly translate to that team been twice as better. The other leagues keep producing good players and despite the economical advantage of premier league teams you there are only 11 spots per team so you can't concentrate all the talent in the few top sides in England.
Sometimes with having those big investments in the squad there is some urge for inmediate results which han handicap a team when it comes to building a functional side. Lastly it is almost a rule that pl teams will overpay for their players and will have inflated prices and salaries. Anyway despite all this the teams from portugal will keep getting dismantled so they have no choice to keep producing and scouting for talents.
PL is the best league, but their quality it's highly overrated because of the so called 'financial gap' with other leagues.
Having more expensive players doesn't mean that such players are better.
Many PL teams overpay for average players that would be cheaper if they were still playing in France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, etc
Arsenal (best PL team this season until now) getting eliminated by a portuguese team who is 15 points behind Benfica in the Portugal speaks volumes.
Having more expensive players doesn't mean that such players are better.
Many PL teams overpay for average players that would be cheaper if they were still playing in France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, etc
Arsenal (best PL team this season until now) getting eliminated by a portuguese team who is 15 points behind Benfica in the Portugal speaks volumes.
2008 United literally won the league title on the last day.
The Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez team? That was a freak team and reinforces my point rather than refuting it. Unless you have a once in a generation agglomeration of talents its not possible to win the PL and CL together. Of the current lot, only City seem capable of doing it and they'll probably need Haaland to not go invisible in tougher games to achieve that.
Liverpool were couple of kicks away from winning both PL and CL. Lost CL finals and PL on the last day. In 2018-19, they lost title on the last day and won CL.
City won the league and lost finals in CL.
You don't need freak season or all time great team to win both. City and Liverpool were so close to do that 3 times in last 3-4 seasons.
Feels odd that there has been very little said about the possibility of City winning the treble. Usually from Christmas onwards you begin to hear murmurings of trebles and quadruples. Not a peep this time around.
Those City and Liverpool sides were all time great teams though
No, Liverpool aren't.
I don't think there's much of a relationship between the league you compete in and your CL performance. Individual clubs have different relationships to the competition.
For example, Real Madrid have won multiple CLs without winning the league title; in fact they rarely do a league/CL double. On the other hand, Barcelona only do league/CL doubles. You could use each club's track record to make completely different arguments about La Liga's competitivity.
A similar dynamic exists in the PL between Liverpool (who've reached 5 finals in the 21st century, both in good and bad periods) and Manchester United (who reached 3 while completely dominating the PL from the early 90s to the early 10s).
For example, Real Madrid have won multiple CLs without winning the league title; in fact they rarely do a league/CL double. On the other hand, Barcelona only do league/CL doubles. You could use each club's track record to make completely different arguments about La Liga's competitivity.
A similar dynamic exists in the PL between Liverpool (who've reached 5 finals in the 21st century, both in good and bad periods) and Manchester United (who reached 3 while completely dominating the PL from the early 90s to the early 10s).
The PL is so hard to win right now because you have to beat a freak team(s) to do it. You are mistaking causation for correlation
Thats what I'm saying though. The bar to win the PL is much higher than the other leagues because of the depth that City has built. And if they have a poor season once in every 5 years, there's some other team that'll breach 90. It used to be Liverpool till now, but all of Chelsea, Arsenal and Utd are capable of having a 90+ point seasons. Newcastle might join that list soon.
I mean, people are expecting Arsenal to play their first team in the Europa League when they have only a 5 point lead with City away still to play - so effectively a 2 point lead.
ancelotti is an everton level manager, emery an aston villa one
You are conflating two very different things into a single one:
- Competing to win the Premier League against a team that gets a lot of points.
- Competing to perform well in the Premier League against many teams that are good.
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Worrying how the number of English players being played is falling. We really don't produce many good players as a country.
Yeah, but City reached a CL final and Liverpool made 2 while accruing 97 and 93 points in the PL, losing both by 1 point. Essentially it's actually a freak occurrence that there hasn't been a PL/CL double winner over the last 5 years than the other way around. From '11 to '17 there were 3 CL/LaLiga doubles, all with title races won above 90 points. Simply put City have underperformed in CL, but it's not because of the PL
But they didn't win both, it doesn't matter how close they went, the fact is they didn't win both.
Yeah so?
What you said is that you don't need to be a freak team, then gave examples of teams that didn't even win both.
The conversation was how team can't compete in CL if they have to in PL and viceversa, when 2 teams were so close to completing double 3 times in 4-5 seasons. So PL teams can't compete in CL because of how hard it is to win CL is just nonsense. City and Liverpool were just one kick away from doing it 3 times.
How can Liverpool count as an all time great team when they've only won 1 league and 1 Euro cup over a 5-6 year period?
But that is the point, one game or not, they didn't win it. Your point is literally invalid, because neither won it the same year as winning the league.
They also won two domestic cups, got to 2 other CL finals, got 99 points when they won the league and 90+ points the other two seasons. No need to have the United glasses on all the time, they were a great team. At one point they won 26 out of 27 league games, we were the only team to take a point off them for 6 whole months. I guess that’s ordinary.
They were a really good team for sure. It's the "all time" bit I'm querying.
They weren't even the best of their own few years lifecycle.
Sacchi‘s Milan are widely regarded as one of the greatest teams of all time. They barely won more than this Liverpool team.
Depends what way you look at it. City were better in the league, but 1 CL final + no wins vs 1 CL win + 2 CL in Europe for Liverpool.
Worth mentioning Real Madrid only won one La Liga between 2012 and 2020. In 2018 for example when they won the CL, they weren’t even 2nd in their league, they were 17 points behind Barca. They weren’t even the best team in their own country by that logic.
Those teams had 90+ point seasons in 2017, 2004, and 2009, respectively. Arsenal might break the barrier this season but there's absolutely nothing indicating that the other two are capable of it.
Only Arsenal have proven that this season. For Chelsea, United and Newcastle, it remains to be see whether they can still muster that level of ruthlessness.
There is literally an exceptional number of young English talents. Probably more so than any other country in the world bar maybe one or two.
Leicster city and a surprising decade plus Arsenal make this league more interesting to watch. Already United are looking as the come back team for next season after not being a title favourite for ages.
As a gambler, the odds or likelihood of the winners of the other leagues are too simplistic for my interest.
The top 2 teams have been city, tottenham, united, chelsea, arsenal, liverpool, leicster. In the future we may get top 4 entrees of Newcastled or even Brighton. The league is just always chopping & turning and its just more interesting to watch. The financial ability of clubs, the quality of scouting in leicsters kante/mahrez season or brightons mitoma/caceido season, the return of Arsenal after working from the bottom with players like saliba, partey & pl winners like zinchenko & gabriel jesus, its just the most interesting to watch
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As a gambler, the odds or likelihood of the winners of the other leagues are too simplistic for my interest.
The top 2 teams have been city, tottenham, united, chelsea, arsenal, liverpool, leicster. In the future we may get top 4 entrees of Newcastled or even Brighton. The league is just always chopping & turning and its just more interesting to watch. The financial ability of clubs, the quality of scouting in leicsters kante/mahrez season or brightons mitoma/caceido season, the return of Arsenal after working from the bottom with players like saliba, partey & pl winners like zinchenko & gabriel jesus, its just the most interesting to watch
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Who are you counting in that list?
I don’t think he counts players outside of England as they don’t count as real players.
Once you leave England, you cease to exist, fact.
To be fair, England could play put out a front six of:
Foden Rashford Saka
Mount Rice Bellingham
Aged 19 - 25. All of those would attract interest from top clubs if they became available.
Not as strong as France or Brazil, but our youngsters give most nations a run for their money.
Chelsea are outspending City, so they can definitely do it. Utd and Newcastle also have the finances. Arsenal and Liverpool are likely to fall off, but both of them are well managed, so they should be there or thereabouts.
The point is that there's very less chance of any team half assing it to the League title in the PL.
In fact, you can make a semi-decent under 25 XI (though you'd have to sneak Chilwell in at 26)
Foden(22) Rashford(25) Saka(21)
Mount(24) Rice(24) Bellingham(19)
Chillwell(26) Guehi(22) White(25) James(23)
Ramsdale(24)
It's pragmatic selection that keeps are young players out (though this has seen us get the closest to tournament success for half a century - so it's understandable).
I do not rate them as highly as you do, some of them are really not stand out imo.