The relative strength of the Premier League

gibers said:
Allwe did when we got the ball is hoof the ball while they tried to play through. It was ridiculous.
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Shocking when you consider the wealth in the PL compared to La Liga. They just have a more superior way of playing ball thought from a young age. It's very telling when you consider the number of foreign players in the top 10 teams in the PL vs La Liga.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
What is quite a while? We finished behind PSV and Wolfsburg in CL group not that long ago.
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Fun fact: PSV took atletico madrid to penalties and wolfsburg almost eliminated real madrid. Those two teams went on to play the final...
 
All the extra money since the mid 00s has actually made the premier league worse. Teams are stuffed with mercenaries. The British / Irish core at the heart of the great premier league teams from the early 00s have gone and there is no one to replace them.

Both in quality of the top teams and as a spectacle it’s been downhill for about 10 years.

It seems there is a tipping point with regard to football TV money. Once you go past it you end up with teams full of mercenaries, youth development falls of a cliff due to lack of 1st team opportunities and those players who could go abroad stay and take the easy £££ instead.

La Liga has massively benefited from it’s relative poverty. Spanish clubs develop players, sell them to English clubs financing themselves and also freeing up team space for yet more youth players. The ones that don’t adapt to English football get bought back for peanuts. Ligue 1 clubs also do the same thing.
 
I am more interested in your national team next Summer tbf. In fact, the Premier League is just the smokescreen for global financial predators doing international business through the London hub, no England at all. I can see there are new dynamics with Brexit and similar s*it but England football today is Allardyce, Pardew, Warnock, Hodgson, a few active players like Rooney or Vardy and the former golden generation. More pride for fans from your national team hopefully winning the WC imho than from global, unattached corporations battling for the CL.
 
Still not good but two years ago you wouldn't have seen Chelsea arguably playing the better football against Barcelona or Spurs giving Juventus a run for their money. Both would have just been swatted aside.

United on the other hand, just looked like England whenever they play any team that has more than two semi professional players.
 
noodlehair said:
Still not good but two years ago you wouldn't have seen Chelsea arguably playing the better football against Barcelona or Spurs giving Juventus a run for their money. Both would have just been swatted aside.

United on the other hand, just looked like England whenever they play any team that has more than two semi professional players.
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I thought barca gave Chelsea the ball and killed them off efficiently as hell. I wouldn’t say that was a great Chelsea or English team European performance at all tbh. It was a good end to end game though. The angles, passing and movement and one touch play around the box from barca was class. They have full confidence on the ball and in each other. I know Messi is the GOAT but I still think they’d have won that game without him if they had to.
 
Ali Dia said:
I thought barca gave Chelsea the ball and killed them off efficiently as hell. I wouldn’t say that was a great Chelsea or English team European performance at all tbh. It was a good end to end game though. The angles, passing and movement and one touch play around the box from barca was class. They have full confidence on the ball and in each other. I know Messi is the GOAT but I still think they’d have won that game without him if they had to.
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Was part of their game plan to let Chelsea hit the wood work 4 times over two games and miss a hatful of decent chances?

I wouldn't say it was a great performance from Chelsea but it wasn't like we've seen in the recent past where the likes of Barcelona just completely school an English team over the entire 180 minutes. They looked vulnerable and Chelsea were able to play football. While Juventus had to rely on capitalising on two 15 minutes spells where Spurs took their eye off the ball...and even then rode their luck. Last year any half decent European team would have walked all over Spurs.

City this year if they get beat, it'll be by a better team than Monaco. Not sure I hold out much hope for Liverpool but last year at this point we were relying on Leicester City.

English teams are getting stronger again on this year's evidence...they just still have a bit of a way to go compared to what the English media/pundits decided to believe. Too much jumping the gun in that regard because Spurs got a couple of meaningless group game results against a severely off the boil Real.
 
FootballHQ said:
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.
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I don't think it's necessarily Seville he was giving respect to...more the fact it was a cup game at a particular stage in the competition. Pretty sure he would have played that way against anyone..its his MO
 
Sarni said:
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.
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Both sides have played 44 and 45 games respectively. before you say the EPL is more strenuous, we do extensive fitness training to cope with the demands. Man City are doing just fine as are Liverpool. Its a weak excuse. I am sure Sevilla find their league challenging as they have lost 11 times!
 
noodlehair said:
Was part of their game plan to let Chelsea hit the wood work 4 times over two games and miss a hatful of decent chances?

I wouldn't say it was a great performance from Chelsea but it wasn't like we've seen in the recent past where the likes of Barcelona just completely school an English team over the entire 180 minutes. They looked vulnerable and Chelsea were able to play football. While Juventus had to rely on capitalising on two 15 minutes spells where Spurs took their eye off the ball...and even then rode their luck. Last year any half decent European team would have walked all over Spurs.

City this year if they get beat, it'll be by a better team than Monaco. Not sure I hold out much hope for Liverpool but last year at this point we were relying on Leicester City.

English teams are getting stronger again on this year's evidence...they just still have a bit of a way to go compared to what the English media/pundits decided to believe. Too much jumping the gun in that regard because Spurs got a couple of meaningless group game results against a severely off the boil Real.
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Fair enough point. city are the only club who look like they’ve the tools to give it a proper lash this year but Liverpool are well coached and could suprise a few people especially if the draw is kind to them. I know they can only play one way but they are devastating on their day I still can’t believe how bad we were the last night. Massively over rated players and manager at this club it seems. Just so so so much money for no real return
 
Stacks said:
Both sides have played 44 and 45 games respectively. before you say the EPL is more strenuous, we do extensive fitness training to cope with the demands. Man City are doing just fine as are Liverpool. Its a weak excuse. I am sure Sevilla find their league challenging as they have lost 11 times!
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I wasn't really serious. It used to be an excuse for the likes of Twigg to explain why English teams consistently went out to Spanish (and other) teams in Europe.
 
Trizy said:
Shocking when you consider the wealth in the PL compared to La Liga. They just have a more superior way of playing ball thought from a young age. It's very telling when you consider the number of foreign players in the top 10 teams in the PL vs La Liga.
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We had a manager who won La Liga in the past and guys like Mata, Herrera, Valencia, Bailly, De Gea who played in La Liga. And when N'Zonzi was in England he was not really playing for possession sides.
 
Mb194dc said:
All the extra money since the mid 00s has actually made the premier league worse. Teams are stuffed with mercenaries. The British / Irish core at the heart of the great premier league teams from the early 00s have gone and there is no one to replace them.

Both in quality of the top teams and as a spectacle it’s been downhill for about 10 years.

It seems there is a tipping point with regard to football TV money. Once you go past it you end up with teams full of mercenaries, youth development falls of a cliff due to lack of 1st team opportunities and those players who could go abroad stay and take the easy £££ instead.

La Liga has massively benefited from it’s relative poverty. Spanish clubs develop players, sell them to English clubs financing themselves and also freeing up team space for yet more youth players. The ones that don’t adapt to English football get bought back for peanuts. Ligue 1 clubs also do the same thing.
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Without reading the previous 70 + odd pages I'd wager this is one of the best posts in the whole thread.

My feelings aswell, it's alright clubs spending 200m + in a summer but there's only so many good players to go round and many of them play in Munich, Madrid, Barca, Turin and Paris and have no intention of leaving those clubs as they're pretty good themselves.

So English clubs either buy potential for huge amounts or bang average players for huge amounts and then overhype them e.g. Oxlade-Chamberlain for 40m or whatever it was. He is decent but you get my point.
 
Mb194dc said:
All the extra money since the mid 00s has actually made the premier league worse. Teams are stuffed with mercenaries.
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There has been an improvement on the mercenary side in the teams with the most money - just compare Citys expensive, yet spiritless team of 7-8 years ago to the current one. Still i agree about the money messing up the league. The top teams hire top players left and right, if it doesn't work, go shopping again half a year later. Even United does that... no way to build a team.
 
Jonathan Wilson has his say on the matter of 'competitiveness', in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-city-title-stroll-competition-premier-league

Manchester City title stroll should not distract from strength of competition

The title race was in effect over about four months before the final snows of winter. [..]
The ease of City’s success has brought out the sneerers – or perhaps, more accurately, the counter-sneerers. You see, they say, all that time you were saying La Liga or the Bundesliga were easy to win, you were wrong. This is just what happens when you have Pep Guardiola in your league. Perhaps there is some truth to that; perhaps fans who tend to watch the Premier League did not appreciate quite how good Guardiola is.

The counter-counter-sneer, of course, is that although the Premier League has not had much of a title race (in terms of it being tight all the way to the end) since Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool made their doomed pursuit of Manchester City in 2013-14, it has been different sides running away with it since: José Mourinho’s Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester City and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea.

It is not Barcelona and Real Madrid wrestling for the title every year and it is not Bayern Munich winning with a crushing inevitability. It may be that City go on to win the title next season and perhaps beyond but if they do, their domination will not be for the same reasons. The wealth of Abu Dhabi distorts the picture but the latest Deloitte report into football finance shows that they are not even the Premier League club with the highest annual revenue: Manchester United’s is 28% higher than City’s and there are three other Premier League clubs in the world’s top 10, and 10 Premier League sides in total in the top 20 (two of them, slightly oddly, could yet be relegated this season: West Ham and Southampton).

Bayern’s revenues, by contrast, are 77% higher than the next highest Bundesliga club, Borussia Dortmund. Barça’s revenues are slightly lower than Real Madrid’s but still 138% higher than those of the third La Liga team, Atlético. That is not just domination but hegemony. This is not a case of a good manager and a good group of players coinciding so a team stay on top for a while; it is structural.

In that sense, the Premier League is by some way the most competitive major league. [..]

Bayern may have won seven of the last 10 Germany league titles but the flip side of having one dominant club is that a host of decent but not great teams can qualify for the Champions League (whether they have the resources to achieve much once they get there is another issue).

The Premier League can boast an array of title winners in part because there is a small clutch of dominant teams (a putative big six now as opposed to the big four of a decade ago). That means that for a smaller side to win the title they need not merely to have an extraordinary season but for half a dozen big clubs to fail. It can happen, as Leicester showed, but a mid-sized club are still more likely to win the league in Germany, where they need only one giant to falter.

Which is preferable is largely a matter of taste and, perhaps, your relationship to the league. A fan of one of those mid-sized clubs probably appreciates the chance to qualify for the Champions League, to have the fun Leicester did last season; a more neutral observer is likely to be far more engaged by a battle to win the title than to finish in the top four. Either way, it seems, there is an awkward stratification in the distribution of wealth. The television rights deal in England may be more equitable than elsewhere but there is still an unhealthy step between the elite and the rest.
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that's a bizarre article, it's basically trying to say the PL is competitive and strong because the revenues of clubs aren't as far apart as other leagues.
 
The premier league and other European leagues will have to do something eventually. Leagues "won" before the season start are so boring to watch, TV revenue will fall if people turn off. It already has for the premier league. Either a European super league or more American style salary cap system to make the leagues a real competition is inevitable.
 
Think the PL is on a par with La Liga now even though the games with Sevilla do not exactly support this view. They have more to do with Jose's tactical blunders than with the quality of both squads.
 
Yes, the Premier League had 4 different winners over the past 5 years. But if Bayern, Barcelona or Real Madrid were part of the league them it would've been 1 winner over that period. The reason those teams dominated their leagues was because they were the best teams in Europe.

Yes, the Premier League was very competitive over that period, but that's only because it was full of underperforming teams. A lot like the Bundesliga in the mid 00's when teams like Stuttgart and Wolfsburg won the title and the league was competitive, but ultimately because the quality was low.
 
hasanejaz88 said:
Yes, the Premier League had 4 different winners over the past 5 years. But if Bayern, Barcelona or Real Madrid were part of the league them it would've been 1 winner over that period. The reason those teams dominated their leagues was because they were the best teams in Europe.

Yes, the Premier League was very competitive over that period, but that's only because it was full of underperforming teams. A lot like the Bundesliga in the mid 00's when teams like Stuttgart and Wolfsburg won the title and the league was competitive, but ultimately because the quality was low.
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A team like Bayern wouldn't be able to hoard all the best domestic players if they were in the PL though, their model simply wouldn't work.

Your point is too simplistic I feel as the conditions in the league don't allow fr the kind of team building that Real, Barca and Bayern have been able to do in their domestic leagues.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
A team like Bayern wouldn't be able to hoard all the best domestic players if they were in the PL though, their model simply wouldn't work.

Your point is too simplistic I feel as the conditions in the league don't allow fr the kind of team building that Real, Barca and Bayern have been able to do in their domestic leagues.
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As I said in another thread. The only 'hoarding' Bayern did for their treble winning team was Neuer, but you can allow one or two because every team does. The rest of that team was down to youth players and some very shrewd signings. That treble winning team would've been enough to wlak through any league.

United also signed Van Persie from Arsenal, like Gotze to Bayern, though I admit Lewandowski and Hummels going to free wouldve been likely but the Bayern team by then was already fantastic on its own.
 
hasanejaz88 said:
Yes, the Premier League had 4 different winners over the past 5 years. But if Bayern, Barcelona or Real Madrid were part of the league them it would've been 1 winner over that period. The reason those teams dominated their leagues was because they were the best teams in Europe.

Yes, the Premier League was very competitive over that period, but that's only because it was full of underperforming teams. A lot like the Bundesliga in the mid 00's when teams like Stuttgart and Wolfsburg won the title and the league was competitive, but ultimately because the quality was low.
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I appreciate the point but Chelsea won the league with the 2nd highest points total in the PL last season. Man City are on course to beat it this season.

It is too simplistic also to just transfer teams over like that. Bayern and Juve wouldn't be able to operate in the same way obviously if they were in the English league, just as Liverpool or Spurs wouldn't have as much money if they suddenly appeared in Serie A.
 
hasanejaz88 said:
As I said in another thread. The only 'hoarding' Bayern did for their treble winning team was Neuer, but you can allow one or two because every team does. The rest of that team was down to youth players and some very shrewd signings. That treble winning team would've been enough to wlak through any league.

United also signed Van Persie from Arsenal, like Gotze to Bayern, though I admit Lewandowski and Hummels going to free wouldve been likely but the Bayern team by then was already fantastic on its own.
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Looks at Pep's City team. Top of the league and flying yet they have missed out on two major transfer targets to Liverpool and United in the last transfer window. Sanchez was their number one priority. When was the last Bayern missed out on a major target to domestic opposition?
 
africanspur said:
I appreciate the point but Chelsea won the league with the 2nd highest points total in the PL last season. Man City are on course to beat it this season.

It is too simplistic also to just transfer teams over like that. Bayern and Juve wouldn't be able to operate in the same way obviously if they were in the English league, just as Liverpool or Spurs wouldn't have as much money if they suddenly appeared in Serie A.
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I acknowledge that point but I think it can only be used for Bayern from Guardiola's second season when they got Lewandowski (and then Hummels) from Dortmund. Before that Bayern and Dortmund were neck to neck but obviously beyond that they have a very tight grip over domestic transfers.

Classical Mechanic said:
Looks at Pep's City team. Top of the league and flying yet they have missed out on two major transfer targets to Liverpool and United in the last transfer window. Sanchez was their number one priority. When was the last Bayern missed out on a major target to domestic opposition?
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Reus to Dortmund. Again I know that was back in 2012 but that retains the point I'm making that saying Bayern wouldn't have built the team they have in the Premier League discounts their management from the late 00's till 2014. But even the Bayern team from 2012-14, without Hummels and Lewandowski, would've easily won the league with the players they had.
 
africanspur said:
I appreciate the point but Chelsea won the league with the 2nd highest points total in the PL last season. Man City are on course to beat it this season.

It is too simplistic also to just transfer teams over like that. Bayern and Juve wouldn't be able to operate in the same way obviously if they were in the English league, just as Liverpool or Spurs wouldn't have as much money if they suddenly appeared in Serie A.
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I don't think that it's a great argument for competitiveness, that paints the opposite picture.
 
JPRouve said:
I don't think that it's a great argument for competitiveness, that paints the opposite picture.
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I think it shows that the success of a team in football is largely psychological i.e. once a team gets on a run that breeds confidence and drains the confidence of other sides. Look at Chelsea this season, they are miles away from the title. Look at the fortunes of all the titles winners in the past 5 years, none have come close to defending their title which also indicates the competitiveness of the league whilst underlining my original point.
 
JPRouve said:
I don't think that it's a great argument for competitiveness, that paints the opposite picture.
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The league hasn't been competitive within individual seasons at the top for sure but I don't think you can say that there is a complete lack of quality if a team is racking up huge numbers of points. That is impressive regardless of whether the league is poor or not.

My point was though that these teams dominated the league (Chelsea twice recently, Leicester etc) and then dropped off a cliff next season and were replaced by a completely different team. It is competitive from season to season, even if the recent trend (across Europe tbh) has been one team just running away with things.
 
The "array" of PL winners is 6 different teams(Manchester United(13), Chelsea(5), Leicester(1), Blackburn(1), Man City(2) and Arsenal(3)). During the same period of time the Bundesliga has 6 winners(Werder(2), Stuttgart(1), Wolfsburg(1), Dortmund(5), Bayern Munich(15), Kaiserslautern(1)), La Liga has 5 winners(Real Madrid(8), Barcelona(12), Deportivo(1), Valencia(2) and Atletico(2)). The Serie A has 5 different winners(Juventus(11), Milan(6), Internazionale(5), Roma(1) and Lazio(1)).

All leagues have one team that won more than 6 titles during a decade.
 
Bayern’s revenues, by contrast, are 77% higher than the next highest Bundesliga club, Borussia Dortmund. Barça’s revenues are slightly lower than Real Madrid’s but still 138% higher than those of the third La Liga team, Atlético. That is not just domination but hegemony. This is not a case of a good manager and a good group of players coinciding so a team stay on top for a while; it is structural.

In that sense, the Premier League is by some way the most competitive major league. [..]
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He's not talking about the strength of the teams, he's merely stating that in terms of revenues, the PL is more competitive than La Liga and the Bundesliga. Which is obviously true.

You could argue that "competitive" is a slightly misleading term, however. There are significant gaps between tiers in the English game as well (which he acknowledges, in fairness). The most striking difference is that the mid to lower tier clubs in England are insanely rich compared to their counterparts elsewhere. Ultimately, though, the structural factor he's talking about is probably just as prevalent in England. Leicester was an absolute anomaly and the result of the so-called top clubs simply being underwhelming (not least in terms of money spent).

And another thing is that you can legitimately question to what extent said mid to lower tier clubs are, well, any good compared to their counterparts in other leagues (who operate on a fraction of the English clubs' budgets). My theory has been that in the end the huge financial gap will lead to a corresponding gap in quality - but it hasn't happened yet.
 
I'm talking about recently, not historically. Man Utd are the clear dominant team and the behemoth of the premier league era of British football. From the past 5 seasons, we have 4 winners. Which I think is pretty good going. And 4 different clubs in 2nd in that time.
 
Chesterlestreet said:
And another thing is that you can legitimately question to what extent said mid to lower tier clubs are, well, any good compared to their counterparts in other leagues (who operate on a fraction of the English clubs' budgets). My theory has been that in the end the huge financial gap will lead to a corresponding gap in quality - but it hasn't happened yet.
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The PL lower tier clubs just pay more, much more, for lower tier players than their counterparts in other leagues. There is no massive flocking of elite or world class players to the PL a la Serie A in the 80-90s: there is no Zico at Watford, no Junior at Stoke, no Futre at Huddersfield. The pool of talent in the PL is much inferior to La Liga and comparable to Serie A, only it costs much more because of the much more money circulating in the PL system. Eg: Van Dijk at £75m is an aberration if Bonucci went for €40m.
 
Bepi said:
The PL lower tier clubs just pay more, much more, for lower tier players than their counterparts in other leagues. There is no massive flocking of elite or world class players to the PL a la Serie A in the 80-90s: there is no Zico at Watford, no Junior at Stoke, no Futre at Huddersfield. The pool of talent in the PL is much inferior to La Liga and comparable to Serie A, only it costs much more because of the much more money circulating in the PL system. Eg: Van Dijk at £75m is an aberration if Bonucci went for €40m.
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Agreed completely. Some of it is their own fault and some of it is that I imagine that Spanish and Italian players wouldn't necessarily flock to a midtable club in England which is equivalent to their current club in their own country. It is a bubble.

I was making the same point about wages in another thread. Alderweirald is apparently set to turn down our offer of 110-120k/ week (ie without bonuses etc), partly as he feels he deserves more. I'm sure part of it may be trophies as well. Fair enough if he does but the reality is that this would make him one of the highest paid defenders in the world and if we're excluding the PL, behind truly elite defenders who have won it all like Pique and Ramos. If we're including the PL however....then there would still be quite a few arguably worse defenders earning more.

This is the problem that clubs in the league have.
 
africanspur said:
I'm talking about recently, not historically. Man Utd are the clear dominant team and the behemoth of the premier league era of British football. From the past 5 seasons, we have 4 winners. Which I think is pretty good going. And 4 different clubs in 2nd in that time.
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But the last 5 seasons have nothing to do with the money distribution. United won in 2013 because of SAF and started to lose because of a lack of SAF, Chelsea and City's wealth have nothing to do with the PL and Leicester didn't win the league because they were able to financially compete with the three aforementioned teams, leicester did what several teams in other leagues did before.
Let's be honest it's a bad article and bad narrative because anyone can see that it's based on nothing, the PL money distribution is as old as the PL, that's why it's interesting to look at it from the beginning and there is no difference with other leagues.
 
JPRouve said:
But the last 5 seasons have nothing to do with the money distribution. United won in 2013 because of SAF and started to lose because of a lack of SAF, Chelsea and City's wealth have nothing to do with the PL and Leicester didn't win the league because they were able to financially compete with the three aforementioned teams, leicester did what several teams in other leagues did before.
Let's be honest it's a bad article and bad narrative because anyone can see that it's based on nothing, the PL money distribution is as old as the PL, that's why it's interesting to look at it from the beginning and there is no difference with other leagues.
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Oh sorry, I wasn't commenting on the article at all, in fact I haven't even read the article. I'm talking generally about the competition in the PL.

Not trying to make an over-arching point about money, comparison with other leagues or the article etc etc
 
Bepi said:
The PL lower tier clubs just pay more, much more, for lower tier players than their counterparts in other leagues. There is no massive flocking of elite or world class players to the PL a la Serie A in the 80-90s: there is no Zico at Watford, no Junior at Stoke, no Futre at Huddersfield. The pool of talent in the PL is much inferior to La Liga and comparable to Serie A, only it costs much more because of the much more money circulating in the PL system. Eg: Van Dijk at £75m is an aberration if Bonucci went for €40m.
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Yes, I think this is accurate enough. And there's a possibility the PL's wealth will remain a bubble phenomenon, in which case I'll have to scrap my theory altogether.

Wilson makes an interesting point in this regard, by the way: Two of the richest football clubs in the world (top 20) could conceivably be playing second tier league football next season. A big blow for the theory, if you will.
 
Chesterlestreet said:
Yes, I think this is accurate enough. And there's a possibility the PL's wealth will remain a bubble phenomenon, in which case I'll have to scrap my theory altogether.

Wilson makes an interesting point in this regard, by the way: Two of the richest football clubs in the world (top 20) could conceivably be playing second tier league football next season. A big blow for the theory, if you will.
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Which ones?
 
Bepi said:
The PL lower tier clubs just pay more, much more, for lower tier players than their counterparts in other leagues. There is no massive flocking of elite or world class players to the PL a la Serie A in the 80-90s: there is no Zico at Watford, no Junior at Stoke, no Futre at Huddersfield. The pool of talent in the PL is much inferior to La Liga and comparable to Serie A, only it costs much more because of the much more money circulating in the PL system. Eg: Van Dijk at £75m is an aberration if Bonucci went for €40m.
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Not sure about that. You look at Valencia and Sevilla, currently 4th and 5th, and you don't think that they have as good players as Liverpool and Chelsea (4th and 5th in the PL). It's not even close. Fecking Girona are 6th there. They are not comparable to Arsenal. Wouldn't say that Atleti have better players than Spurs either. And City would fancy their chances vs Barca/Madrid, if they reached the CL semis. Admittedly, they do not have a Messi or a Ronaldo but their first XI are pretty good too.
 
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