Anybody see this Guardian article today? http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/27/championship-premier-league-gap-closing?INTCMP=SRCH[/URL] Lots of statistics over the last 10 years. in the newspaper but not on-line. The evidence seems thin that the promoted Championship teams are getting closer to the established Premiership teams though Norwich etc are doing alright this season. What made the article pleasantly nostalgic was that City have by far the best record of promoted clubs at this stage of the season over the past 10 years. 20pts as compared to Norwich 12. Next best to City were Wigan with 16pts. The author also repeats the old myth that it all went wrong at half time at Man City. The turning point was home to Sunderland, when PB lost his nerve, IMO. Inresteresting article though. Its good to read that City "distorted the figures" by getting too many points and were 3rd. Happy days. Lets hope we can spoil the simplistic journalism again soon. UTT
People go on about how exciting the Championship is, but in this league there are countless anti-football teams like Watford who will just play to get a point and spoil the game in doing so. In the PL, both teams go for a win home or away so it's nearly impossible to predict where results are going to go. This league is indeed predictable too, but the PL is a million times better quality. I think teams that get promoted can still do well up there because they learn to adapt and the gap is closing in that sense, but the while you're in this league you have to put up with games like last week far too often. The PL is the place to be.
I see the blogger of this article is having a go at a city fan for, rightly, pulling him up when blaming citys demise on the man city team talk. Not having that
Don't agree that both teams go for a win in the premier league, quite a few teams would be happy for a draw at Man U , Chelsea Liverpool etc . I think the championship is a great league and I'm enjoying this season more then our last season in the premier league . Then again maybe it's just me that thinks that.
There are now some superb rebuttals of the Man City myth in reply to the Stuart James Guardian article/blog. Great stuff from OLM, Peter Saxton etc. Well worth reading. Its also interesting that the blog has received loads of other comments too. Maybe because it deals with the Championship and not just the interminable minutiae about Liverpool and the other"big" clubs, that we usually get in the Guardian.
Browny is still insisting he made mistakes at Hull by not spending enough money. On goals on sunday recently. http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/15119/6308439/Brown-s-not-bitter
The Championship isn't catching up to the PL. Last season I was shocked at how poor the division was compared to the promotion season. We basically played until Xmas with no strikers (first goal by an actual striker being Simpson's double the week before Xmas) and were still in with a shout of the playoffs come the end of the season. If you'd taken Miller and Phillips away from West Brom in 07/08 even they wouldn't have been up that high and they were miles ahead of where we were last season. When you look at L1 sides coming up and doing well as well it seems more a case of both the Championship and Premierleague standards falling towards L1 levels, with the PL falling faster making it seem like the Championship is catching the PL.
There's no chance the PL is getting worse. That league is crazy good at the moment. At the moment there's 20 good sides and 3 of them have to go down. Look at Bolton! They're a good side with a good manager but someone has to go down, proves how good that league is.
If that Leaue is so good now, of the teams in the PL now that were in it in 07/08 how many of them have a current side that would beat the side they had then? Man City, Spurs, and I'm struggling now to think of anyone who's improved. Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have all definitely fallen back and yet they're still above the quality of the rest of the properly financed league (Liverpool being a bit split personality on it).
Yes i did. HULL CITY THE STAND OUT STAT of all the newly promoted clubs. I think that there is very little between the bottom 10 PL clubs and top 10 championship clubs. Look at Norwich City. Hull took 4 points off them last season and there squad has not got that much better in the PL. Yet they sit in 8th place at the moment. But they did what we should have done. They signed proven championship players with ability and promising players from league one. Bradley Johnson - Steve Morison - Anthony Pilkington the 3 stabnd out buys who are doing very well in the PL. So even with the squad City have now NP would just need maybe 8 players of that quality to suppliment what we have already. Something that the last regime failed to do. imo.
sad statto man here! did you now that since the inception of the Premier League: more than 50% of promoted teams survive their first season? less than 25% of relegated teams go back up at the first attempt? no idea what that proves, but I have thought for some time that the the difference between the top teams in the championship and the bottom of the premier league is smaller than between the top and bottom of the premier.
