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English Premier League thread

Ronaldo is a nice guy of the field :SS So why isn't Messi hated Gerd, he asked for Marcelo to be booked and then smashed a volley into the crowd?



Stupid topic anyway, lets move on.
 
Well looking at the result tonight with a very very ordinary Man U team, and Arsenal serial bottlers, this league is turning farcical at the moment.

Watching them against Man City, it was spot the ex-Barca player, class above anything on the field.

This league is getting so piss poor that I haven't even tuned into MOTD for 3 weeks.


FD
 
yeah, I agree the season has dropped to a certain degree . Last season was better it`s more about teams dropping points then gaining it. Some could say teams around the big 4 got better ,but I think teams at the top have gone weaker.

Arsenal 3rd choice keeper is now the #1, Jack da kid becomes their most consistent player. Mutd/league top scorer berba (nuff said)they look shadows of themselves and will most likely win it. Chels on paper the best squad maybe 3rd in Europe goin missing during matches from back to front except Luz he`s the reason why they havent fallen.
 
Yeah I agree about the top teams being weaker, defo.

The only thing I see if if Man City start pouring multi millions for players it could be a SPL 2 for me with extra money.


FD
 
Well, funding wise it already is an SPL 2 - with City and Chelsea out spending everyone in the last 5 years by an order of magnitude.

I think the bottom teams have gotten better, and the top teams have gotten worse. I can't see how on Earth that is a bad thing? Can you imagine if Barca went away to the 12th team in la liga needing a win? They'd walk it.

Anyway, please please please don't let Chelsea win again. If United lose it, I'm happy enough for it to go to Arsenal, but for the love of God can you imagine Brave John Terry talking about team spirit, championship belief and so forth? Enough to make me want to pull my ear drums out with pliers.
 
It's a bad thing, because I think your league in a whole is getting weaker, Europe seems to be already proving that. For me Barca and Real are light years ahead of anything in England, if Schalke are as poor as the English press are portraying them to be then Man U will get owned in the final, no matter who they face.


FD
 
ryan,

I had the impression this new fa homegrown rule was to bring out younger players and kick out foreign players. Teams at the top can`t just add any players the criteria gives them little room. So, the competition battles wont be the same. Now, you have 2 less talent players going to rotate. Rather then battle it out.

Looking at Chels , Lpool got the better deal an English player and a foreign one. Mutd bought low-profile players being English and forcing him to excel is my point. They could of bought a ready -made backup and battle it out. Instead Smalling gets the nod to rotate n nurture him. Evans is consider hg so now 2 less talent players rotate a small battling very small. I haven`t thought of everything just small pts to back my claim. Like fd said RM n Barca seems light years away in terms of quality.
 
Was actually talking about the whole Torres / Carroll thing recently.

I think Carrol is a good striker, but £35m, give me a break. It was reported in some finance thing that they valued him at £1m last season. However to get rid of Torres (finished for me, been saying it for a year now) for £50m (LOL) and getting Carroll and Suarez is a superb piece of business in the end.


FD
 
THIS is ridiculous to even suggest! Nonsense.

People reading too much into things and always after controversy and drama to fill boring lives.

Redknapp just needs to concentrate on his own club and not be always talking about others.

----------------------------

You'd have to say after that draw Newcastle while not officially have EVEN less cause for concern now and look safe. Neighbours Sunderland are having a horrid time but I think they'll be safe ultimately too. They only need one performance out of remaining 6 matches and have far too much quality in squad now to not get it. Nerves will be there but one moment of brilliance alone from talented individuals with flair like Sessegnon who is now getting settled slowly can provide it alone.

Blackburn who I've bet on to go down because it gave me really good odds couple months back are still in grave danger though and well for my $$$ ,I hope they do go down.
 
Blackburn have no plan, no drive and no real figurehead - which I'm happy enough to blame on the owners. Whatever people think of Big Sam, that team would be comfortably in the top 10 with him at the helm. Big mistake getting rid imo.

I'll be sad if Wigan go. I think they play good football and have a quality coach despite limited means. Would like to see them stay up. Same with Wolves actually.

If I could pick em, I'd expect Blackburn, Blackpool and (sadly) Wigan to down, with West Ham, Wolves etc all sneaking through.
 
fd1972uk said:
It's a bad thing, because I think your league in a whole is getting weaker, Europe seems to be already proving that. For me Barca and Real are light years ahead of anything in England, if Schalke are as poor as the English press are portraying them to be then Man U will get owned in the final, no matter who they face.


FD
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Not wanting to harp on about money, but surely that's to be expected? Real obviously have absolutely gone batsh*t crazy the past two years, and Barcelona haven't actually been quiet (Ibra, Villa, Alves etc). And they started from a much higher base.

It's fairly easy imo for Barca and Real, because despite them both running at a loss, they magically seem to never have to repay anything...oh you don't have enough cash to pay your players? Here, have a debt free loan from a friendly bank. Don't have any money to run your operations? No worries, we'll buy your training facilities and lease them back to you for free.

Obviously I agree that Real and Barca are streets ahead of any of the prem teams - but I prefer our league. A couple weeks ago in the prem there were 35 points between third and the bottom club. In la liga there were the 35 points between 2nd and 3rd.

To me that is the broken league, not the prem.
 
English clubs are the last to complain about the overspending of Real and Barcelona.
Compare the annual budget of a midtable English team to that of top teams from countries like Holland, Portugal, Belgium, Danmark, Switzerland...those clubs have all the right to complain...but not the English clubs and surely not the big clubs.

When Larsson was playing for Celtic, he earned more than the entire Anderlecht squad...And comapred to English clubs Celtic are paupers...
 
@ Gerd - A fair point, but FD wasn't comparing England to Germany/ Holland etc. He was saying that the dominance of the two Spanish giants shows the English league as being weaker.

I think it's more a result of said 2 giants just existing in a different world. Italian, German, French - you name it, all other leagues are worse compared to those two teams. They're probably the 2 best club teams that have ever existed at the same time, in terms of squad depth and quality.

Hence why their league is so dire, and over already.
 
I agree with you beachryan.
On the other hand, i saw Villareal thrash Twente, that was impressive too...
I'm pretty sure teams like Villareal and Sevilla could make things hard for big English clubs.
 
I never mentioned about Real and Barca having bags of money, it's a bit of a muchness really. What happens behind the scenes I can't say.

As Gerd says these other teams are actually pretty good, for me Valencia, Villareal and Seville could easily compete, probably even for the title in EPL though.


FD
 
It's a bit much to suggest a team like Valencia could compete for the title in the prem. They were very ordinary against a pretty crap United team twice earlier in the year. There's still a gulf in class between the teams in the quarter/semis of the CL each year and everyone else.

You could make the same argument for England imo - Tottenham or City would do just fine behind the top two in Spain.
 
I would say if you were looking at the strength of a league less it's top two teams, Spain would be pretty low down the big leagues. I would say the Bundesliga and Premier League are far stronger than La Liga in the context of strength minus the top two.

If you take Man Utd and Chelsea out of the premier league you still have the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs who have the ability to make the CL knockout stages (and in the case of the first two have actually done it on a regular basis).


I've posted this argument in the CL thread, but the performance of Spanish teams, apart from Barca and Real, is very ordinary in the CL. This year Valencia (3rd in La Liga) went out to Schalke (9th in Germany) in the first knockout round 4-1. Braga (Portuguese runners) eliminated Sevilla 5-3 in the play off - Sevilla didn't even get to the group stage, there were only 3 Spanish teams. The last time an English team fell out before the group stage was in 2005, when Everton were eliminated by Villareal - although there were still 4 English teams in the CL that season thanks to Liverpool getting a 5th place (thru winning it).

Last year Sevilla were eliminated by CSKA Moscow in the first knockout round, to put it into context CSKA didn't finish in the top 3 in Russia last year (Zenit, Rubin and Spartak). Also last year Atletico didn't even get out of the group - they didn't even win a game, even against APOEL from Cyprus. The year before (2008-09) you had Atletico and Villareal making it through the group stage, but Atletico went out right away (to Porto) and Villareal only made it one round (vs Panathinikos) before going out to Arsenal. Neither Panathinikos nor Porto are massive Champions League teams.

In 2007-8 Valencia finished bottom of their group which had Chelsea, Schalke and Rosenburg, of Norway. Sevilla lost in their first knockout round to the Turkish team Fenerbache.

For a team that has (potentially) 4 teams in the CL this is a very poor performance, with the exceptions of Barca and Real. In terms of English teams the only time I can think of an English team not coming 1st or 2nd in the group in recent years is Liverpool last year (3rd behind Fiorentina and Bordeaux).

The Spanish league is weak outside of the top two. It's lost in the UK Media as no-one hears anything about the Spanish league except "Tiki-Taka", "Messi", "Mourinho", what they have for dinnner at "La Masia" etc etc that's paddled on Sky and in the broadsheets. But there are few decent young players emerging in Spain outside of the top two clubs. There are no more Oscar Serranos at Espanyol, no more Hector Fonts at Villareal (these were good young prospects at those clubs 5 years ago) talent is trapped at the two big clubs and when it emerges elsewhere it's nipped in the bud and siphoned off to the Nou Camp or Bernabeu (e.g. Canales), even mediocre non-Spanish players like Adriano end up at the big two. Occasionally you might hear about De Gea or even a player like Cazorla but usually it's only in terms of when they will be sold.
 
Yeah, I don't deny that Barca or Real would win the Prem, but there's no way Ronaldo and Messi would be scoring at the rate they do, or that the gap would be that large.
 
edmundo, using Champions league matches to draw comparisons between teams or leagues is one of the most deceptive and unappropriate excercises. cups are a completely different kind of competition from leagues and it's absolutely unappropriate to establish any sort of rankings or conclusions from their results.
let's make some practical examples. the current champions league winner, inter, beated barcelona in the semi last year.... yet it would be absolutely preposterous to use this result to prove the point that inter is a better team than barca. the only logic assesment we can make is that inter was better than barca in that specific double matchup... and that's it.
inter got embarassed by schalke just a few weeks ago... yet no one in his mind would ever say schalke is a better team than inter.
theese are only 2 examples, but i could mention dozens of cases like theese.
so the fact that schalke beated valencia or that sevilla lost to fenerbache, really doesn't prove anything at all.

there are so many variables in champions league matchups that it's impossible to use them to support any sort of argument. the most important of theese factors being form. the form of every club fluctuates during a season. inter beated bayern in CL a few months ago..... but if that match would have occurred, say, one month earlier, bayern would have kicked the crap out of inter. milan lost to tottenham about one month ago, but if the match would be played again right now, the result would be completely different. inter lost to shalcke a few weeks ago... but if that match would have been played in febbruary, then inter would have been demolished shalcke.... while in november (when inter was facing a terrible period) inter could have easily lost even to a bundesliga relegation contender team.

so no, champions league matches results can't be used to argue your point. the domestic leagues are the only competition u can base your judgement on.

in europe barca and real always get the spotlight obviously, and the gap between the top 2 and the rest of the league may bring u to deceptive conclusions... but the truth is la liga's midclass teams are not inferior to epl's midclass teams.... and if we were to compare the low-class teams of both leagues (the relegation contenders) la liga's teams are honestly stronger than their british counterparts.
of course that's just my opinion, and u might well disagree with it, as i don't have any empirical facts to back up my opinion........ but certainly champions league matches results are not an empirical evidence either.

as for la liga not producing great players outside madrid and barca, that is absolutely wrong mate. betis, bilbao, sevilla, atletico have some of the most important academies in europe (on par with some french and italian top notch academies).... of course sometimes some very promising prospects are captured by top clubs, but that happens everywhere (also in england and in italy). some of the most important chelsea and man utd players come from other english clubs (ferdinand, lampard, rooney, just to mention a few).

besides it's not true that spanish midclass clubs never hold their great players. marcos senna has been one of the greatests metodistas of the last decade and he's spent most of his carreer in villareal (where he still plays); and what about cazorla or capdevila (both playing for spain national team)... they're still playing for villareal. in villareal u will find one of the best strikers in the entire league (rossi). marchena was spain starting cb until pique developed a few years ago... and he's always remained in villareal.
and that was just villareal. what about valencia. yeah, they sold villa, but mata and banega are both top club material.
and what about sevilla (rakitic, jesus navas, renato, perotti, capel) or atletico madrid (koke, aguero, forlan) or atletico bilbao (llorente and iraola).

no mate, la liga is much more than barca and real. the league is filled with many fantastic teams, with some great football players, playing some absolutely sweet football.

and finally, as for the gap between the top 2 and the rest of the league, that won't tell u how competitive a league is. that will only tell u how competitive the race title is. u wanna measure the competitiveness of the entire league? then u have to look at the differential of the whole league. take the last 4 seasons and measure the points gap between the first and the last team. that will tell u how competitive the league is. the result might surprise u

last season: epl 58 points; la liga 65 points
2 seasons ago: epl 61 pts; liga 54 pts
3 seasons ago: epl 76 pts; liga 59 pts
4 seasons ago: epl 61 pts; liga 48 pts
so, except last season, in the last 4 years la liga always had a shorter gap between the top and the bottom of the table. that's pretty significant :))
i'm not tryng to say la liga is a stronger league than epl here, mind u. what i'm trying to say is that la liga certainly is not inferior to the epl. and that spanish midclass teams are much better than u seem to believe. :))
 
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Well if you wont allow the Champions League to be used as a basis for comparison then the whole conversation is pointless, since there is no way of comparing teams between different leagues.

I disagree with you about the Champions League being irrelevent. Sure, you can say that a one-off match (like Barca - Inter) is not that useful as a comparsion. But if you look at the Spanish teams performances in the knockout stages in the Champions League over the last 5 years (I think 5 years worth of knockout football is valid, but you will probably disagree) the record is dismal. When was the last time a Spanish team (outside of Barca or Real) won a 2-leg match in the knockout of the Champions League?

This year: 0
(Valencia lost it's knockout match to Schalke, Sevilla didnt even make it to group)

Last year: 0
(Sevilla lost to CSKA, Atletico didnt make it out of group)

2008/9: 1
(Villareal beat Pana', Atletico lost to Porto)

2007/8: 0
(Sevilla lost to Fener', Valencia not out of group)

2006/7: 1
(Valencia beat Inter, Osasuna did not make group stage)

In this time, if you take English clubs excluding Man Utd and Chelsea, you can see:

This year: 1
(Spurs beat Milan, Arsenal lost to Barca)

Last year: 1
(Arsenal beat Porto, Liverpool not out of group)

2008/9: 3
(Arsenal beat Roma and Villareal, Liverpool beat Real Md)

2007/8: 3
(Arsenal beat Milan, Liverpool beat Inter and then Arsenal)

2006/7: 3
(Liverpool beat Barca, PSV and Chelsea, Arsenal lost to PSV)


That's 11 wins for [non-top 2] English teams versus 2 for [non-top 2] Spanish teams. I can't see that as anything other than one league being stronger than the other.

Your points about the Spanish youth players are alightly disingenuous, or maybe you missed my point. Cazorla is a valid example, and I mentioned him. Capdevila is 33, he's an Espanyol youth product of late 1990s, which is was when the Spanish league was far more competitive (e.g. Depor, Valencia winning it). Rakitic is Swiss/Croatian, grew up playing football in Switzerland and then Germany and has only been playing in Spain for 4 months so using him as an example of a great young player growing up in Spanish acadamies is bizzare. Likewise Augero (Argentine), Forlan (Uruguay), Perotti & Banega (Argentine), likewise Renato (spent 150 games in Brazil before moving) and Marcos Senna was 24 and had won the World Club Cup with Corinthians before he moved to Villareal. Rossi as well played youth football at Man Utd and Parma and then played for Man Utd and Newcastle's first team before signing for Villareal, so he is hardly a product of their academy. It would be like saying Shaktar have young Brazilians (Adriano, Douglas Costa, Willian etc) and using that to say how wonderful the Ukrainian youth system must be.

That leaves players like Navas, Capel, Mata, Koke, Llorente and Iraloa. Are these players really world class. Maybe there is a case for the first two, but the others are pretty unproven. It's not a convincing arguement for the strength of Spanish youth football (outside of the top 2 teams).
 
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edmundo said:
Well if you wont allow the Champions League to be used as a basis for comparison then the whole conversation is pointless, since there is no way of comparing teams between different leagues.
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it's not that "i don't allow it"... who am i to disallow u to pick one argument or another to back up your points :P i'm just telling u that i consider champions league results extremely unreliable and unappropriate for that purpose (and i also explained u the reason why i wouldn't read too much into chammpions league matches results), but that's just my opinion :))
but u're right, i do believe there's no objective way to compare teams which play in different leagues indeed (precisely because i consider champions league match results an absolutely unreliable source)... wich is why i wrote u might very well disagree with me as i have no empirical evidence to support my point ;))
besides is it really that important to compare leagues or teams? a football team is a dynamic, fluid entity, whose form strongly effects its performances. 6 months ago palermo would have dismantled most of the top teams in europe.... while now we would have a hard time against any sort of opposition. yet the squad is the same, and so is the coaching staff. the strenght of a team is effected by its form as much as it is by the quality of its players.... but while the quality of the players is a constant, form is a variable. so u can't say wich team is better between getafe and birmingham (for instance)..... u can only say wich team is doing better right now, but that's a completely different thing.
Your points about the Spanish youth players are alightly disingenuous, or maybe you missed my point. Cazorla is a valid example, and I mentioned him. Capdevila is 33, he's an Espanyol youth product of late 1990s, which is was when the Spanish league was far more competitive (e.g. Depor, Valencia winning it). Rakitic is Swiss/Croatian, grew up playing football in Switzerland and then Germany and has only been playing in Spain for 4 months so using him as an example of a great young player growing up in Spanish acadamies is bizzare. Likewise Augero (Argentine), Forlan (Uruguay), Perotti & Banega (Argentine), likewise Renato (spent 150 games in Brazil before moving) and Marcos Senna was 24 and had won the World Club Cup with Corinthians before he moved to Villareal. Rossi as well played youth football at Man Utd and Parma and then played for Man Utd and Newcastle's first team before signing for Villareal, so he is hardly a product of their academy. It would be like saying Shaktar have young Brazilians (Adriano, Douglas Costa, Willian etc) and using that to say how wonderful the Ukrainian youth system must be.
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i think u misread my post mate. i didn't use those players to prove the quality of spanish academies. read it again. i wrote that some spanish clubs have some great academies. and then, moving to a different subject, i replied to your "midclass clubs can't hold their good players" point, by using the likes of capdevila, senna, rossi, forlan, mata and the others as example.
i'm obviously aware that senna, rakitic and rossi don't come from spanish academies. if i had to prove the quality of midclass spanish clubs academies, i'd mention llorente, javi martinez, navas, mata, villa, ramos... not senna and rossi :))

anyway mate, like i said, i'm not trying to force my opinion on u in any way. u're allowed to use every sort of argument to support your point. i just said i don't think champions league is a valid argument to prove anything.... but like i said, that's just how i see it :))

edit:
besides buddy, u that list of results really doesn't mean anything. u can't compare clubs like chelsea or arsenal to clubs like sevilla, villareal or atletico. chelsea and arsenal are top teams, while the spanish teams u mentioned are midclass teams. u should compare sevilla, atletico and villareal to their real british counterparts (like tottenham, everton and aston villa).
yeah, sure, epl has more top clubs than la liga. no doubt about that. but that doesn't mean epl is "stronger" as u say. a league is formed by 20 clubs. if u look at the midclass teams la liga is absolutely on the same level of epl... end when u look at the low-class teams, then la liga gets even better than epl. but once again, that's still just my personal opinion and u might well disagree with it.
one thing is for sure though, comparing the results in champions league of top clubs like chelsea and arsenal, to the results of clubs like villareal, sevilla and atletico is absolutely and objectively unappropriate.
one of the biggest mistakes fans usually make is to base their opinion of an entire league on those few clubs (4, 5) who play in champions league. the epl has 20 clubs, and so does la liga :))

let me make another example to prove u how deceptive can be your logic. palermo played against milan 7 times over the last 4 years (tonite we're playing the for the 7th time). palermo won 4 of the last 6 matches (in milano and in palermo), and we're also winning tonite (finger crossed). that would make it 5 wins for palermo and only 2 wins for milan in the last 7 matches.
using your logic we should say that palermo is stronger, or at least on par with milan..... and yet, how many times in theese last 4 years palermo finished the serie a season ahead of milan? never. not even once. we've always finished below milan in the table. u see what i'm talking about now? let me repeat it, 5 wins in the last 7 matches for palermo.
 
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lo zio said:
but u're right, i do believe there's no objective way to compare teams which play in different leagues indeed (precisely because i consider champions league match results an absolutely unreliable source)... wich is why i wrote u might very well disagree with me as i have no empirical evidence to support my point
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Then how on earth can you say, as you do later, that bottom Spanish teams are stronger than bottom English teams? In my opinion (and one would assume in the opinion of UEFA since they use the CL as the main basis for league co-efficient rating) CL results over an extended time frame (eg 5 years) is valid.

I'm not saying the Champions League is a perfect measure, but to get into it teams need to qualify and to get into the knockout rounds they need to come top or 2nd in a group over 6 games. To progress in the knockout rounds you will generally have to beat a decent standard of team. Of course over 1 year you might get a freak result or an unfancied team going far (Fenerbache did a few years ago), but over 5+ years you should be able to see trends.


lo zio said:
besides buddy, u that list of results really doesn't mean anything. u can't compare clubs like chelsea or arsenal to clubs like sevilla, villareal or atletico. chelsea and arsenal are top teams, while the spanish teams u mentioned are midclass teams. u should compare sevilla, atletico and villareal to their real british counterparts (like tottenham, everton and aston villa).
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Actually if you read my post I compared Liverpool and Arsenal, not Chelsea. If you read the sentence, In this time, if you take English clubs excluding Man Utd and Chelsea....

Chelsea are taken out of the picture (like Man Utd) as they are a top 2 team, having won the league several times in the last 6 years. There is a logic in picking Liverpool and Arsenal as comparisons with Valencia and Villareal/Sevilla. Liverpool like Villareal and Sevilla havent been English Champions in over 20 years, Arsenal like Valencia havent won the Premier League for nearly a decade. I dont think Everton or Villa are valid comparisons. Everton have only made the top 4 and CL once, in 2005 when they went out before the group stage, would it not be more valid to compare them to Osasuna who also only made the CL once, like Udinese a few years ago in Italy. The same with Spurs, at the moment they've only made the CL (ie finished in top 4) once, maybe if they consistently make the CL (or even say make it every other year) you could compare them to Sevilla or Villareal. Aston Villa have never made the CL (in the modern post 1990s era, tho they actually won it in the 1980s) so I'm not sure why you've brought them up for comparison.


lo zio said:
palermo played against milan 7 times over the last 4 years (tonite we're playing the for the 7th time). palermo won 4 of the last 6 matches (in milano and in palermo), and we're also winning tonite (finger crossed). that would make it 5 wins for palermo and only 2 wins for milan in the last 7 matches.
using your logic we should say that palermo is stronger, or at least on par with milan.....
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No, because you are only looking at TWO teams and 7 matches. My comparison looks at at least 6 (Arsenal, Liverpool, Valencia, Atletico, Villareal, Sevilla) and as it's knockout looks at at least 6 group stage games for each of those teams (since they have to win / draw most of these to get out of the group) so it's a bigger picture than just team a vs team b.
 
beachryan said:
Yeah, I don't deny that Barca or Real would win the Prem, but there's no way Ronaldo and Messi would be scoring at the rate they do, or that the gap would be that large.
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Yeah you got a good point...........................oh no wait you don't, maybe it's because Ronaldo has Ozil instead of Michael Carrick setting him up or maybe Marcelo instead of John O'Shea, or maybe because Messi has Xavi setting him up instead of Obi Wan Mikel and Alves instead of Jose Bosingwa (hahaha, god knows how this guy made it in football, must have a shit hot looking bird).


FD
 
I think your talking crap mate, The team Ronaldo won the Champions League with is atleast just as good as his current side. I'd argue it was better.

I also wouldn't say Barcelona and Real are "miles" ahead of us, yes they would be favourites on the night but we could beat either of them.
 
fd1972uk said:
Yeah you got a good point...........................oh no wait you don't, maybe it's because Ronaldo has Ozil instead of Michael Carrick setting him up or maybe Marcelo instead of John O'Shea, or maybe because Messi has Xavi setting him up instead of Obi Wan Mikel and Alves instead of Jose Bosingwa (hahaha, god knows how this guy made it in football, must have a shit hot looking bird).


FD
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I have no idea what you're trying to say?
 
Okay finally I had time to catch up with what's been said between Lo zio and Edmundo and gonna put my 2 cents here now as I'm very familiar with both leagues and have watched them weekly and followed closely for years.

I have to side with Lo zio on this. I just don't agree with much of what you're saying on this topic, Edmundo.

I don't think CL performance is irrelevant, but I like Ben, certainly have my qualms about using it as a decisive and definitive method for the reasons already mentioned. A league is like a marathon and has 38 games. CL is a cup competition with only a few games spread out through months which has many other factors come into it.

Nonetheless, I think it can be a useful way of measuring the VERY TOP teams of leagues against each other in a less than perfect way. So the point you're making about English teams as a whole and as a group having done better than their CL Spanish counterparts over the last decade is a very valid one and can't be disputed. But that's it. You're jumping into way bigger conclusions about the league as a WHOLE and seemed to have ignored Ben's most important point (and first thing I thought of when reading your posts) which is that a league is made of 20 teams. Not 3 or Not 4 (in Spain and England's case) which is what you're doing.

So even if CL was a good way to measure which isn't in my opinion but better than nothing, it's still only comparing 3 or 4 teams rather than 20, that's 20% or less of a league! How can that logically be used to describe or make conclusions about the league as a whole? It can not. Simple.


Couple other points:

1 - I have to very much disagree with you on the Spanish academies producing good players not only now but in recent years. Every single La Liga team has some good talented youngsters on its squad right now, maybe you're just not that familiar with some. Sevilla, Atletico, Bilbao and even likes of Osasuna are creating good young players to just name a few and they've already given us some great footballers in recent years.

I can make lists but I'm not gonna get into that as it'd make the post even longer. And yes I'd definitely say Mata and Navas to just name two are world-class and Capel isn't far behind, he'll get better too. Then there's many good but not great players around the league, many many of them. Not household names but very useful and especially technically skillful players.

2 - If you're gonna use CL as a comparison between leagues, why not also use the UEFA Cup/Europa league then? That would allow us to compare another 4 teams from top half of the league or so from these different nations and their performances not only against each other but rest of Europe. And if you do, you'll see that Spanish teams have fared better than most others including the English.

Sevilla have won it twice over the last decade themselves and one time it was against Espanyol in the final. All Spanish final. The other tema, they completely crushed and outclassed Middlesborough as expected. Last year you had Atletico beat Fulham and finally 7 years ago or so I remember Valencia vs. OM (Drogba in his final season) where Valencia lifted the cup.

That's 4 Spanish winners over last decade! and other teams not winning but going far or doing well Why not compare this to EPL let's say? And of course Villarreal are doing the business this year.

3 - At the end of the day, Europa/UEFA or CL will have its shortcomings when comparing teams. It's much better to see for yourself and watch these different teams and when I do weekly, I see many good players scattered throughout the league in different teams. This includes some talented youngsters as well.

I see guys on Atletico and Sevilla's benches that would WALK into Liverpool's 1st team. I see teams like Sporting Gijon with their very limited resources give it their all and make life SUPER hard for the gigantic Madrid and Barca and ultimatley nicking points off both.

It's a great league and right now unfortunately it's being disregarded and disprespected by some not because the rest of league isn't good, it very much is, I'd argue same as Ben that the midtable clubs and bottom clubs might even be better than other leagues (but who really knows, like you said, we can't compare those validly can we?) but righht now, its top 2 teams, Barca and Real are SO good that they make rest of league look like pancakes.

But the CURRENT Barca and Real are for me not only THE two best current clubs in the world (as your beloved CL proves it too, which unfortuantely if they hadn't faced each other in semi-final, would've made a pretty awesome Champions League final) but two of the best in history of the game, certainly the Barcelona one is and I believe Mourinho is also building something very special in Madrid and this is only his 1st season.

The fact that Madrid and Barca are the two best clubs in the WORLD and not just Spain and so great is making rest of league look weak, when it's NOT.
 
I agree with PLF and lo zio on this.

Look at the Spanish players who played for Liverpool, they were the spine of the team, yet none of them was a top player when he came to Liverpool (wel except from Torres that is, and one might even argue with that).

I also agree with FD (although i would have said it a litle more diplomtic Frank, but i guess that is tit for tat for the way some English evo-webbers treat Scottish football), if this Barcelona or this Real would play in the premier league, the other teams are playing for third place...
Man Utd may well beat one of both teams in ONE match (the CL final), but to win a Cup there is always an element of luck...when playing 38 matches, the best team always comes on top...if you see how many stupid points Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal squander, well then there is no doubt...both Real and Barcelona would be miles ahead of these English clubs.

The fact that Barcelona winns 5-1 against Villareal is not an illustration of the weakness of Villareal, but of the strength of Barcelona. In fact if a team like Villareal would play together with Barca and Real in the premiership, they might well end up third (especially if you take this' season as a bench mark).

There is one point where i might disagree with PLF: i'm hesitant considering Euro League as a bench mark. I'm tempted to do the same, but lo zio always says that Italian clubs couldn't care less about that Euro Cup...so that could also be the case for English clubs (which i doubt, because it seems against the English mentality).

I have the feeling that most English people are overrating their own league, or underrating leagues like la Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1.
 
Only Italian clubs are like that though Gerd and sometimes French to lesser extent. That's why the Europa League is a fine argument for this case in comparing Spanish vs. English.

Oh by the way, Marchena played most of his career in Valencia Ben, he only just moved to neighbours Villarreal this season which was a weird move actually. A small little error I noticed in your original post.
 
PLF said:
Oh by the way, Marchena played most of his career in Valencia Ben, he only just moved to neighbours Villarreal this season which was a weird move actually. A small little error I noticed in your original post.
Click to expand...
that was a freudian slip. i wrote vilareal, but i actually meant to put him among valencia's historic players :P
and yeah the lack of interest towards europa league is mostly an italian thing indeed. :))
 
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