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Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:10 pm**

Being back in Spain has led to endless conversations with Spaniards about which is the strongest European league overall. My own personal feeling, like most people's, I imagine, is that the top 2 in Spain are streets ahead of all the English teams; the top four in England (including Spurs and Chelsea) are better than all the rest in Spain. Atleti and Málaga probably edge Arsenal and Liverpool, but from 8th/9th place downwards the English sides are much stronger than their Spanish counterparts. Anyway, all this is besides the point (sorry!).

The thing that's always pissed me off about this debate is that there's absolutely no way to resolve the strongest league debate, as only the top sides play each other in European competition. Personally, having watched a lot of Spanish footy, I reckon it's much more difficult for a top side to bag three points at West Brom or Sunderland than it is at Deportivo or Espanyol, but this opens up all sorts of other debates.

So I thought up a way to settle the debate about which league has the most strength in depth: a 'LEAGUE OF LEAGUES'.

Here's how it works:

* Each league picks a squad of 22 players. The top five teams in each league contribute 2 players each and the remaining 12 surviving teams (placed 6th-17th) contribute one player each.

* The eight top-ranked leagues in Europe (for the sake of this discussion, let's say England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, France, Russia, Holland) contribute one squad each.

* The eight squads are seeded and divided into two groups of four. They play a round-robin and the top two from each group proceed to the semi-finals.

* The competition takes place every second summer, when there is no international tournament.

* The winning league receives one extra CL and one extra EL place for the following two seasons.

SO, THE INTERESTING PART.

Going off current standings, who would be in your Premier League squad? How well do you think it would fare? Remember: Stretford, Ourselves, Chavski, Spurs and Arse contribute two players each. Every other team besides Wigan, Reading and OAP contributes one. And we're looking for quality and balance, not whether you rate the players as human beings.

Here's my squad:

GOALKEEPERS:

Cech (Chavs)
Begovic (Stoke)

DEFENDERS:

Rafael (Stret)
O'Brien (WHU)

Kompany (MC)
Williams (Swan)
Ridgewell (WBA)
Hangeland (Ful)

Cole (Chavs)
Monreal (Arse)

MIDFIELDERS:

Walcott (Arse)
Dembele (Tot)

Fellaini (Eve)
Yaya (MC)
Hoolahan (Nor)
Cabaye (New)

Bale (Tot)
Johnson (Sun)

FORWARDS:

Suarez (Liv)
Van Persie (Stret)
Benteke (Villa)
Lambert (Soton)

Preferred starting eleven:

Cech

Rafael
Kompany
Williams
Cole

Walcott
Yaya
Fellaini
Bale

Suarez
Van Persie

That looks like a strong side to me!

Have a go (if you can be arsed, which I doubt). It's harder than you'd think!

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:21 pm**

Mmm.... what's up? Lost the jigsaw puzzle?

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:37 pm**

MR IMAINEROAD wrote:Mmm.... what's up? Lost the jigsaw puzzle?

Savagely bored and unable to think something without typing it.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:42 pm**

Top 2 in Spain streets ahead of the English top 4? Cant agree. They dont come up against english defenses every week and would have to adapt their game if they were in the PL. Dont get me wrong.. theyre great teams and could win the prem but IMO more likely current.PL top 6 teams could beat them on a good day.

Btw - Athletico Madrid are a point behind Real.. so are the miles ahead of PL teams too or is Falcao a one man team?

Sorry I didnt read all your post.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:44 pm**

Top 2 in Spain streets ahead of the English top 4? Cant agree. They dont come up against english defenses every week and would have to adapt their game if they were in the PL. Dont get me wrong.. theyre great teams and could win the prem but IMO more likely current.PL top 6 teams could beat them on a good day.

Btw - Athletico Madrid are a point behind Real.. so are the miles ahead of PL teams too or is Falcao a one man team?

Sorry I didnt read all your post.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:03 pm**

Lee_R wrote:Top 2 in Spain streets ahead of the English top 4? Cant agree. They dont come up against english defenses every week and would have to adapt their game if they were in the PL. Dont get me wrong.. theyre great teams and could win the prem but IMO more likely current.PL top 6 teams could beat them on a good day.

Btw - Athletico Madrid are a point behind Real.. so are the miles ahead of PL teams too or is Falcao a one man team?

Sorry I didnt read all your post.

Real are a far better side than Atleti, much as I hate to say it. Atleti are VERY well organised under Simeone, though, and they're ruthless against the poorer sides. I went to watch them play Levante a few weeks ago and Levante didn't get a kick.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:30 pm**

Fun idea. Someone would sponsor that and kick some cash in that that each FA could allocate to their entire system and it could truly be something special. 5 games max. Nice.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:42 pm**

Ah, a bored game.

I'll try to get my head round it when I get the chance.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:24 pm**

Really can't be chuffed to pick a team, as my football knowledge of other leagues is not up to scratch.

But looking at it from a slightly different dimension - the "best" league is surely the most competitive? I'm going to use the completely scientific method of determining "competivity" by dividing the number of draws (which = equality) divided by number of games played, to give us the definitive ranking of "best" league (lower number is better):

Portugal = Every 3.34 games is a draw, and therefore "competitive".
France = 3.37
England = 3.52
Nederland = 3.62
Germany = 3.77
Italy = 4.25
Spain = 4.91
Russia = 5.42

So there you have it, the best league to watch in Europe is portugal, with england not far behind and russia and spain beng shit.

Actually, as i was doing that, i noticed that as far as most competitive leagues go, by a number of criteria, that isn't far off the mark. However, i decided to throw Scotland into the mix, and they would win by a mile with 3.04, despite celtic being ahead by 5 wins, so my meffodology may be flawed.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:28 pm**

DoomMerchant wrote:Fun idea. Someone would sponsor that and kick some cash in that that each FA could allocate to their entire system and it could truly be something special. 5 games max. Nice.

Thanks. I thought so.

It could work on a number of levels. There are some good, honest players who'd get a stab at some European action for once (guys like Chris Brunt and Shane Long); the prize would be a decent one which would allow the big clubs to give back to the small ones; it'd sort out some of the respect issues between different clubs' players who don't play for the same national team.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:29 pm**

Arjan Van Schotte wrote:Really can't be chuffed to pick a team, as my football knowledge of other leagues is not up to scratch.

But looking at it from a slightly different dimension - the "best" league is surely the most competitive? I'm going to use the completely scientific method of determining "competivity" by dividing the number of draws (which = equality) divided by number of games played, to give us the definitive ranking of "best" league (lower number is better):

Portugal = Every 3.34 games is a draw, and therefore "competitive".
France = 3.37
England = 3.52
Nederland = 3.62
Germany = 3.77
Italy = 4.25
Spain = 4.91
Russia = 5.42

So there you have it, the best league to watch in Europe is portugal, with england not far behind and russia and spain beng shit.

Actually, as i was doing that, i noticed that as far as most competitive leagues go, by a number of criteria, that isn't far off the mark. However, i decided to throw Scotland into the mix, and they would win by a mile with 3.04, despite celtic being ahead by 5 wins, so my meffodology may be flawed.

Have a go at picking a PL squad, see where you end up. It's like playing fantasy footy against yourself, swapping players in and out. I enjoyed it.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:03 pm**

Joe.

Johnson,Sagna,Distin,Baines.

Hazard,Yaya,Corzola,Mata,Bale.

Suarez.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:06 pm**

Rag_hater wrote:Joe.

Johnson,Sagna,Distin,Baines.

Hazard,Yaya,Corzola,Mata,Bale.

Suarez.

Sagna at centre-half? He's been shit enough at full-back.

Where's the rest of your squad (which was kind of the point)?

You've also picked two Everton players, which is against the rules. I kind of feel like you're deliberately disrespecting my shit, yo.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:26 pm**

Alioune DVToure wrote:
Rag_hater wrote:Joe.

Johnson,Sagna,Distin,Baines.

Hazard,Yaya,Corzola,Mata,Bale.

Suarez.

Sagna at centre-half? He's been shit enough at full-back.

Where's the rest of your squad (which was kind of the point)?

You've also picked two Everton players, which is against the rules. I kind of feel like your deliberately disrespecting my shit, yo.

Took me ages thinkin about that and not seen much of Arse lately but that Sagnas hair I like and he seems to have some good movement I think so the reason I picked him.

Subs:
De Gea,
Van pussy (washin my mouth out),
Michu,
Hangeland,
Ireland,
Taylor.
Defoe.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:15 pm**

Arjan Van Schotte wrote:Really can't be chuffed to pick a team, as my football knowledge of other leagues is not up to scratch.

But looking at it from a slightly different dimension - the "best" league is surely the most competitive? I'm going to use the completely scientific method of determining "competivity" by dividing the number of draws (which = equality) divided by number of games played, to give us the definitive ranking of "best" league (lower number is better):

Portugal = Every 3.34 games is a draw, and therefore "competitive".
France = 3.37
England = 3.52
Nederland = 3.62
Germany = 3.77
Italy = 4.25
Spain = 4.91
Russia = 5.42

So there you have it, the best league to watch in Europe is portugal, with england not far behind and russia and spain beng shit.

Actually, as i was doing that, i noticed that as far as most competitive leagues go, by a number of criteria, that isn't far off the mark. However, i decided to throw Scotland into the mix, and they would win by a mile with 3.04, despite celtic being ahead by 5 wins, so my meffodology may be flawed.

I spent a lot of headache and time to try to think if BiB's idea about draws as a measure of the evenness of a league and I basically found it was flawed, although not too far of the mark either. It was in this thread. All it resulted in was ridicule from John68. I cried:

http://www.mancityfans.net/mcfnet/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=42431&p=452965&hilit=+draws#p452965

"Well it took me some time to answer this, as I was thrown of the flight from glasgow just a couple of days later and forgot about until a couple of weeks ago. I've been mulling it over since and have actually tested your idea.

If i understand it correctly, as it says on the first page of this thread, your idea is that the more even a league is - evenness being measured in the amount of points lost through draws - the harder it is to get a high points tally. Or rather, when comparing the points tally of say City in different seasons, one has to account for the evennness of different seasons. For example, 91 points accrued during a an easy season could actually be less impressive than 75 points during a difficult season. While I agree with your general point, as I think anyone would, I think your idea of how to measure it is somewhat crude.

Well I tested some scenarios on a hypothetical league containing 10 teams to make it simple. For an easier illustration I've calculated the average points tally per team rather than points lost. I think it measures the same thing but the other way around.

Scenario 1: All matches are draws. Each teams get 18 points. Fair enough. The average tally is 18 points per team.

Scenario 2: Each team wins 6 games and draw 6 and then lose 6. Each team gets 24 points. The league is just as competitive as in scenario one but there are less points lost, or rather, the average point tally per team is much is a third higher, 24 points per team.

Scenario 3: All teams win their home games but lose their away games. Each team gets 27 points. The league is still as tight as in the above scenarios but the average tally is now 50 % higher than in scenario 1. See what I'm getting at? The amount of points accrued or lost is a crude instrument that does not account for these variations. It measures something, it even measures evenness to a certain extent, but is highly inaccurate without doing some sort of stratification of the league and counting points gained or lost between different layers of teams.

Scenario 4: This crudeness is illustrate perfectly by a league that's similar to the spanish league. One team wins all its matches while the other teams lose to their games against the first team and then draws the rest of their games. The winning team ends up with 54 points and the rest with 16 points each. The average point's tally is 19,8 which is slightly above the tally in scenario 1 but less than scenario 2 and 3. Sure, the league is still somewhat even in scenario 4 but it is not as even as in scenario 2 and 3, which the average points tally would suggest.

Scenario 5. The top five teams win all their games against the bottom five and draw against each other. The bottom five all draw against each other. The top five all end up with 38 points each while the bottom five end up with 8 each. Average points tally = 23. The league in this scenario is slightly more even than scenario 2 and more even than scenario 3 measured in average points yield but it is in fact less even. The league is divided in two portions. It is however more even than the league in scenario 4, at least when looking at the competition for first place. Yet, the points average suggests otherwise which in turn suggests the points tally, or as you would say; lost points, is somewhat flawed.

I don't have a solution. Sorry. I think a way to go would be, as mentioned above, to split a league into different layers and then measure the amount of points that travel between the layers through draws and wins. Perhaps I've calculated wrong and your idea still works. Perhaps this was just something you thought of in the spur of the moment and then never though about again. Whatever it was, you've managed to fuck with my brain and made me waste time when calculating this."

I'm gonna play this game later on ADTV, just you wait. Good idea by the way.

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:20 pm**

Arjan Van Schotte wrote:Really can't be chuffed to pick a team, as my football knowledge of other leagues is not up to scratch.

But looking at it from a slightly different dimension - the "best" league is surely the most competitive? I'm going to use the completely scientific method of determining "competivity" by dividing the number of draws (which = equality) divided by number of games played, to give us the definitive ranking of "best" league (lower number is better):

Portugal = Every 3.34 games is a draw, and therefore "competitive".
France = 3.37
England = 3.52
Nederland = 3.62
Germany = 3.77
Italy = 4.25
Spain = 4.91
Russia = 5.42

So there you have it, the best league to watch in Europe is portugal, with england not far behind and russia and spain beng shit.

Actually, as i was doing that, i noticed that as far as most competitive leagues go, by a number of criteria, that isn't far off the mark. However, i decided to throw Scotland into the mix, and they would win by a mile with 3.04, despite celtic being ahead by 5 wins, so my meffodology may be flawed.

Portuguese league a closed shop to porto benfica and sporting, Arjan...boavista one title win i think
Maybe belenenses once as well but so few sides winning a league in all those years does show a flaw in themethod sorrymate

Posted: **Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:25 pm**

Im going to do this but not on a Saturday night.

Posted: **Sun Mar 24, 2013 6:26 am**

Cocacolajojo wrote:
I spent a lot of headache and time to try to think if BiB's idea about draws as a measure of the evenness of a league and I basically found it was flawed, although not too far of the mark either. It was in this thread. All it resulted in was ridicule from John68. I cried:

[url="http://www.mancityfans.net/mcfnet/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=42431&p=452965&hilit=+draws#p452965"]http://www.mancityfans.net/mcfnet/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=42431&p=452965&hilit=+draws#p452965[/url]

"Well it took me some time to answer this, as I was thrown of the flight from glasgow just a couple of days later and forgot about until a couple of weeks ago. I've been mulling it over since and have actually tested your idea.

If i understand it correctly, as it says on the first page of this thread, your idea is that the more even a league is - evenness being measured in the amount of points lost through draws - the harder it is to get a high points tally. Or rather, when comparing the points tally of say City in different seasons, one has to account for the evennness of different seasons. For example, 91 points accrued during a an easy season could actually be less impressive than 75 points during a difficult season. While I agree with your general point, as I think anyone would, I think your idea of how to measure it is somewhat crude.

Well I tested some scenarios on a hypothetical league containing 10 teams to make it simple. For an easier illustration I've calculated the average points tally per team rather than points lost. I think it measures the same thing but the other way around.

Scenario 1: All matches are draws. Each teams get 18 points. Fair enough. The average tally is 18 points per team.

Scenario 2: Each team wins 6 games and draw 6 and then lose 6. Each team gets 24 points. The league is just as competitive as in scenario one but there are less points lost, or rather, the average point tally per team is much is a third higher, 24 points per team.

Scenario 3: All teams win their home games but lose their away games. Each team gets 27 points. The league is still as tight as in the above scenarios but the average tally is now 50 % higher than in scenario 1. See what I'm getting at? The amount of points accrued or lost is a crude instrument that does not account for these variations. It measures something, it even measures evenness to a certain extent, but is highly inaccurate without doing some sort of stratification of the league and counting points gained or lost between different layers of teams.

Scenario 4: This crudeness is illustrate perfectly by a league that's similar to the spanish league. One team wins all its matches while the other teams lose to their games against the first team and then draws the rest of their games. The winning team ends up with 54 points and the rest with 16 points each. The average point's tally is 19,8 which is slightly above the tally in scenario 1 but less than scenario 2 and 3. Sure, the league is still somewhat even in scenario 4 but it is not as even as in scenario 2 and 3, which the average points tally would suggest.

Scenario 5. The top five teams win all their games against the bottom five and draw against each other. The bottom five all draw against each other. The top five all end up with 38 points each while the bottom five end up with 8 each. Average points tally = 23. The league in this scenario is slightly more even than scenario 2 and more even than scenario 3 measured in average points yield but it is in fact less even. The league is divided in two portions. It is however more even than the league in scenario 4, at least when looking at the competition for first place. Yet, the points average suggests otherwise which in turn suggests the points tally, or as you would say; lost points, is somewhat flawed.

I don't have a solution. Sorry. I think a way to go would be, as mentioned above, to split a league into different layers and then measure the amount of points that travel between the layers through draws and wins. Perhaps I've calculated wrong and your idea still works. Perhaps this was just something you thought of in the spur of the moment and then never though about again. Whatever it was, you've managed to fuck with my brain and made me waste time when calculating this."

I'm gonna play this game later on ADTV, just you wait. Good idea by the way.

Nobody could ever say you didn't put any thought into this post. Your brain is beautifully cluttered to come up with all that. Fascinating.
Well done Sir. And ignore John. He is such a grump.

Posted: **Sun Mar 24, 2013 7:25 am**

Good on yer Piccs mate....That comment made me laugh...I will happily plead guilty to being a grump but the irony of being accused of it by the bloke who has spent most of his posts:
Whingeing continuously about Petrov.
Demanding Mancini is sacked.
Complaining about games that happened over 2 years ago.
Tells us that despite seeing City win their 1st 2 trophies in over 30 years, his City experience is shit.
Announces that even winning the FA Cup this season won't cheer him up.
....Now that is funny!!!!!

Cokie,
I apologise for my ridicule but you have to admit, it was a quality bit of piss take.....:-)
(are grumps allowed to use smiles?)

Posted: **Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:34 am**

john68 wrote:Good on yer Piccs mate....That comment made me laugh...I will happily plead guilty to being a grump but the irony of being accused of it by the bloke who has spent most of his posts:
Whingeing continuously about Petrov.
Demanding Mancini is sacked.
Complaining about games that happened over 2 years ago.
Tells us that despite seeing City win their 1st 2 trophies in over 30 years, his City experience is shit.
Announces that even winning the FA Cup this season won't cheer him up.
....Now that is funny!!!!!

Cokie,
I apologise for my ridicule but you have to admit, it was a quality bit of piss take.....:-)
(are grumps allowed to use smiles?)

Biff. Smack. Kapowwww.
Holy double fares Batman. The Grumper fights back!

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