Liverpool and City are yet to really be tested. I imagine Liverpool will be exposed at the back by any of the teams left. As for City, I'd think they might just be the favorites to be honest.
The relative strength of the Premier League
- Thread starter Wumminator
- Start date
That talk is silly.
Another way of looking at it could be
In the past 10 seasons there has been
6 Spanish CL winners
2 English winners
1 German winner
1 Italian winner
5 Spanish EL winners
2 English winners
1 Portuguese winner
1 Ukrainian winner
1 Russian winner
So
11 trophies to Spain
4 to England
1 to each of Italy, Germany, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine.
Everyone has had to play second fiddle to Spain but English sides have done alright.
You're judging the barcelona-chelsea/juve-spurs ties by the standard of play of the games and the sevilla-united tie by the on paper prediction. Sevilla outplayed united and fully deserved to go through, they were clearly the better team over 180 minutes
Liverpool are a weird one. Defensively their weaknesses should be exposed by any top drawer team but they’ve often performed well domestically against the bigger sides under Klopp (not always, but generally speaking since his arrival) and their attacking talent’s certainly capable of beating anyone on its day. I think they’ve got the potential to cause an upset – but I don’t think they’ll go all the way.
That was due to United performing really poorly though. Sevilla looked pretty limited to me and a way off the quality of the best teams left in the competition.
When they first played us, they were 5th, four points ahead of mid-table Atletico. After the game at OT, their league season collapsed, and the two teams in question pretty much swapped places.
Sevilla are more Everton standard, usually in the europa league.
Last few years they've lost Bacca, Rakitic, Krychowiak, Banega (for a season) and Kevin Gamiero. Yet their level is still regular european participation.
West Ham lose Payet and cry about it for half a season. We lose Milner and Young when we were top 6 regulars, replace them with Ireland and N'zogbia and wonder why we're fighting relegation every season.
Spanish teams better constructing balanced 11s on competitive budgets, can effectively replace key players in the system (see Atletico Madrid succesfully replacing all the main strikers they've sold in last 10 years) and that helps maintain consistancy.
Sure! Doesn't change my point
Sevilla are more Everton standard, usually in the europa league.
Last few years they've lost Bacca, Rakitic, Krychowiak, Banega (for a season) and Kevin Gamiero. Yet their level is still regular european participation.
West Ham lose Payet and cry about it for half a season. We lose Milner and Young when we were top 6 regulars, replace them with Ireland and N'zogbia and wonder why we're fighting relegation every season.
Spanish teams better constructing balanced 11s on competitive budgets, can effectively replace key players in the system (see Atletico Madrid succesfully replacing all the main strikers they've sold in last 10 years) and that helps maintain consistancy.
This is why I prefer the coefficient rankings as they dispassionately award points to nations as their member clubs progress through European competition.
I think there are several teams in the PL who can beat anyone on their day. The problem is consistency, the Spanish clubs rarely make mistakes and always seem to come to the games at a guaranteed level of quality and with a manager who gets the tactics right.
So it turns out only two English teams managed to go through the first knockout round and both had it quite easy given the quality of opposition they faced.
Every English team that played against a half decent opposition got knocked out. Group stages were a false dawn, English football is still well behind Spain at the club level.
Every English team that played against a half decent opposition got knocked out. Group stages were a false dawn, English football is still well behind Spain at the club level.
You sort of forgot United within this formula.
Our opposition was fairly decent. Not great but decent and better than Porto and Basel.
I think it's the time we need to start claiming that European results do not matter because English clubs are too tired from their local competition to perform well in Europe.
That is indicator that the premier league is the league with more foreigners of all major leagues.
Your point seems meaningless all things considered. Spurs won a group with Real and Dortmund and Chelsea saw off A Madrid in the group stages. England had the most sides in the last 16 by 2. Spain have 3 left now, Italy 2 and England 2.
If you had watched a lot of the games I’m not sure how you can deduce any solid conclusions on relative league strength. All that remains to be seen in the last three stages.
Its the different nature of the leagues.
Just speculating: if two English clubs, lets say United and Liverpool, had the same percentual of relative power in their league as Madrid/Barca have in Spain, Liverpool could probably line up: Silva-Kante-Ericksen/Salah-Kane-Mané and United: Pogba-Matic-KDB/Alexis-Aguero-Hazard.
Just speculating: if two English clubs, lets say United and Liverpool, had the same percentual of relative power in their league as Madrid/Barca have in Spain, Liverpool could probably line up: Silva-Kante-Ericksen/Salah-Kane-Mané and United: Pogba-Matic-KDB/Alexis-Aguero-Hazard.
Dortmund have been average at best this season and are about to get knocked out from Europe by Salzburg. Not sure if there are any real conclusions to be gathered from that victory.
England had the most sides by 2 partly because they were the only country that had 5 teams in the first place.
Chelsea knocking out Atletico was an achievement and a huge surprise admittedly.
I wouldn't say it it was an achievement or a huge surprise the English champions bettering Spain's 3rd best team, Chelsea have x10 a higher transfer budget than Atletico per season, so should be getting the better of Atletico when they come up against them.
By rights the Premier League should have had 4 English teams in the quarter finals, Spurs going out was a shock and let's face it they didn't deserve to go out, Seville deservedly knocked Manchester United out, but they aren't stronger or a better side than Manchester United.
I never had any faith in Manchester United anyway though, if you look back in this thread i called United the weakest of all the English clubs in the Champions League and the least capable English team knocking out another European giant over 2 legs a few weeks back.
Other than Manchester United, there's certainly progress from the English teams anyway and i can see City winning the whole thing this season.
Was it? I don't think going out to Juventus would be a shock for any team let alone an inexperienced Tottenham team.
I expected Atletico to top the group. For the last four years the only team that beat them in Europe was Real Madrid - four years in a row they were knocked out by Real, no other team beat them and they faced Bayern and Barcelona multiple times. It was a big surprised to see them go out but then again they also drew twice to Qarabag.
England had 5 teams as one of their non top 4 sides won the Europa League, that is indicative of strength in the league. All those 5 teams then had to qualify for the knockouts. It is indicative of a strength in depth no matter how you try to spin it.
Well the fact that after the first knockout round only 2 out of 5 are left while all 3 Spanish teams made it through, including a team that is not even a top La Liga side, is also indicative of strength of both leagues.
To be honest Sevilla v Man Utd showed exactly where the difference lies. A mid-table, out of form La Liga team was still more than a match for the second best team in England this season, mainly because of how technical and organized in attack they were. It goes for a lot of mid-table and lower tier Spanish sides who have been abused and disrespected by PL fanboys here - plenty of them try to play in similar way which is why facing their English equivalents I'd suspect they would mostly do the same what Sevilla did to us.
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The Spanish League is strong but their performance overall has declined somewhat whereas England has improve quite a lot this year. A couple of years ago Spain were completely dominating both the CL and EL.
United's result was more a reflection of us shitting the bed than the strength of the league. I'd say any other club from the top 6 (even Arsenal) would have gone past Sevilla - we were that bad. And apart from United's result, all the other ones panned out as you'd expect.
It's only Atletico that has really declined though, isn't it? I don't follows Europa this year that much but I see Athletic are still in it, and 3 of them are still in CL.
Well the same Sevilla team also held Liverpool twice in the groups, though the games were completely different. I don't know how other teams would have done against them, the entire forum (me included) was convinced they had very little chance against United too and see how it turned out.
I will bet almost anything that Sevilla do not make it to the semis. Even Roma will dispose of the easily. We really showed them way too much respect. Spartak Moscow scored 5 against them. And it was not even the only time they conceded 5 this season.
Exactly. We almost gifted the tie to them. Sevilla are good team but out approach to the game just played it to their hands. Probably their easiest 180 mins in the season.
I think Sevilla are by far the weakest team left in the competition. They really aren't very good and even domestically they lag some distance behind the top 4, not to mention they are awful away from home and have had their share of embarrassing results out there.
Still doesn't change the fact they were absolute miles better than us over two legs. We have not been outplayed like that in Europe for quite a while and to be fair last season the team that gave us the most trouble in EL was also a mid-table Spanish club.
What is quite a while? We finished behind PSV and Wolfsburg in CL group not that long ago.
English teams have generally improved, no question about that. Spurs are easily a top 8 team in Europe on current form and deserved to be there. Think they are better than Liverpool and would have created more problems to the top teams.
A couple of years ago the Spanish had 4 teams in the Europa League at this stage, granted that Valencia had been dumped of the CL at the group stages, there was an all Spanish tie in the round of 16 and and all Spanish tie in the quarters. In the end Sevilla won the competition but only Villareal were knocked out by a non Spanish opponent. In the CL there were three Spanish quarter finalists, A Madrid knocked out Barca in that round. The final was an all Spanish affair.
So out of 7 Spanish sides in the knockouts of both tournaments only one was eliminated by a non Spanish opponent as both competitions were won by Spanish sides.
There has definitely been a relative decline since then in the performance of Spanish sides across the board.
I think it is likely that Spain will top the coefficient rankings again this year but England have already bettered their highest total over the past 4 years and could still better Spain but that remains to be seen.
As for next season, it all depends what happens in the transfer window. I think United, City and Liverpool will be stronger next year. What happens with Chelsea and Spurs I'm not sure. Barca and Madrid are reaching a point where they really need to get it right in the transfer market as Ronaldo and Messi reach the end of their careers. Neither Barca or Real are the ominous forces they have been in recent years anymore.
Yes but neither of them really dominated us twice the way Sevilla did. Not even Bayern in 2014 dominated us in the same fashion.
Yes indeed, looking at EL two Spanish teams have already been knocked out which is unusual for them. Villarreal dumped by Lyon and Sociedad by Salzburg.
I think English teams have improved this season but the drop off below top 6 is very significant. Everton were flatout embarrassing in EL this season. I reckon top 6 teams will still slightly improve in the next two seasons to a point where we might eventually have 3 or even 4 English teams in CL quarterfinals but mid-table sides will not be competitive in EL for a while because the brand of football they play is not suited to match up with good technical teams.
I can see Arsenal v Atletico and City v Barca finals which would be the ultimate clash of the leagues.
Sevilla are more Everton standard, usually in the europa league.
Last few years they've lost Bacca, Rakitic, Krychowiak, Banega (for a season) and Kevin Gamiero. Yet their level is still regular european participation.
West Ham lose Payet and cry about it for half a season. We lose Milner and Young when we were top 6 regulars, replace them with Ireland and N'zogbia and wonder why we're fighting relegation every season.
Spanish teams better constructing balanced 11s on competitive budgets, can effectively replace key players in the system (see Atletico Madrid succesfully replacing all the main strikers they've sold in last 10 years) and that helps maintain consistancy.
Everton fans wish they were Sevilla standard. 5 Europa Leagues in 12 years.
The quarter finals was probably the best we could have hoped for. City are far better equipped than us to go all the way. Still, football's a funny old game, so we go forward with hope rather than expectation.
That is just flat out wrong.
I might remember those games wrong, just saw stats and they had 74% of the ball at OT.
Perhaps that's because my expectations for that tie were so low that I remember them better than they actually were.Those 30 seconds after Evra goal were glorious.
Sevilla away results in the league this season:
Atletico Madrid 2-0 Sevilla
Athletic Bilbao 1-0 Sevilla
Valencia 4-0 Sevilla
Barcelona 2-1 Sevilla
Real Madrid 5-0 Sevilla
Sociedad 3-1 Sevilla
Alaves 1-0 Sevilla
Eibar 5-1 Sevilla
8 away defeats in the league this season.
They've never been a team that's travelled particularly well. Pretty sure in one of the europa league winning Unai Emery seasons they only won once away in La Liga that season and of course they lost to Leicester last year.
For them not just to win at Old Trafford but dominant the game is pretty embarrasing I think. Way too much respect paid to them by Mourinho.
Atletico Madrid 2-0 Sevilla
Athletic Bilbao 1-0 Sevilla
Valencia 4-0 Sevilla
Barcelona 2-1 Sevilla
Real Madrid 5-0 Sevilla
Sociedad 3-1 Sevilla
Alaves 1-0 Sevilla
Eibar 5-1 Sevilla
8 away defeats in the league this season.
They've never been a team that's travelled particularly well. Pretty sure in one of the europa league winning Unai Emery seasons they only won once away in La Liga that season and of course they lost to Leicester last year.
For them not just to win at Old Trafford but dominant the game is pretty embarrasing I think. Way too much respect paid to them by Mourinho.