Post by Excellent Bulletproof Vest on Aug 21, 2017 23:39:59 GMT
Aug 21, 2017 23:05:07 GMT @painbow said:
The Premier League is a weak league where, as you say, even a shit team like Leicester can win it and players like John Stones, Gary Cahill, Kyle Walker and Luke Shaw are considered elite defenders. It's a Home Bargains league with Harrods prices.
Maybe he could have gone to Real Madrid and maybe he'd have been the main man there, but people have been saying for years that La Liga is a league full of bad teams. Personally I think it is the strongest league in the world top to bottom, but there is no denying there are some weak defences in the lower half of the table and he'd have ripped them to bits much as he has here.
Nobody in Germany could afford him and, as with France, that is often considered a one team league. Same applies to Italy.
Wherever he went, or if he stayed where he was, he'd be playing against shit teams in the league most weeks. He went to a team where it'd be focused on getting the best out of him and making sure he could maximise his potential. He is too good to be a support act.
Additionally, England, Germany and Italy (to a lesser extent) are still more competitive and prestigious than France.
As for the quality of those defenders: Stone is too young to judge, Cahill has won titles and the champions league, Kyle Walker was wanted by Guardiola who apparently knows a thing or two and Shaw is a classic sicknote. That's not much of an argument (other than perhaps the overblown fees).
Because Messi is better than him and was going to be the main man for the foreseeable. He wanted to see what he could do as the main man, not wait 3 years and do it then. There's no shame in that.
Right, he's too young to judge and he's already considered an elite defender worth paying £50m for. How do you think Cahill would deal with Neymar? Shaw's injuries are just an excuse, he was shit in his first season, he was shit in his third season. He's just a lazy shit defender who top clubs in England fight over. This is not some great league.
Aug 21, 2017 23:15:44 GMT @nxnwrocks said:
Absolute garbage I'm afraid, Liverpool very nearly won it in 2014, Leicester won it in 2016, with Spurs - not among the top 4 favourites - being in the title race the longest. I'm not sure Chelsea were in the top 4 favourites last season either. It's not 99% for the top 4, not even close.
They have more of a shot than they would have in Spain, Germany, Italy or France.
Aug 21, 2017 23:15:49 GMT @manlystanley said:
And didn't 6th place Man United win the Europa Cup? So it's not that bad then...
The reigning, defending Champions of England manage to scrape past Sevilla, a team who'd finished midtable the previous season, on away goals and then go on to lose to Spain's third place team while having a gripe about the referee and it's one of the Premier League's greatest achievements in recent memory, an example shown to laud the Premier League's brilliance. Says it all really. Our sides have the odd decent run and that's it, teams from top leagues are in the quarters and semis most years.
United won the Europa League, yes, but we got a hell of a scare from Celta Vigo, who were Spain's 6th ranked side based on the previous season and finished 13th in the then current season. Almost every team we played was from a much weaker league. Again, generally English performance in this competition is terrible because midtable English sides are completely overrated. Look at how other English sides did in that competition. West Ham got beaten by a Romanian team, Spurs got punted out by Genk, Southampton lost out in the group stages to an Israeli team and a Czech team/
This isn't some anti-English or anti-Premier League trip I'm on, the Premier League in 2006-09 was the best league in the world by a good distance. The problem is that "best league in the world" became so entrenched in the marketing that they have to keep promoting it relentlessly even when it was clearly no longer true in any sense. The league has fallen into the shitter but nobody's willing to admit it, because virtually everyone who talks about football publicly has a massive self interest in promoting it and pretending it's the best.
In reality the Premier League is probably the 3rd-5th best league in Europe, this gets exposed badly nearly every year in Europe but people pretend it's not true. The only thing it's the best in the world at now is marketing. We're certainly not in a position to be looking down on leagues like France, where teams actually aim to be the best in the world instead of making their money.