Its all that matters till we start losing games we should lose valley . Good thing Laudrup inherited Michu , Chico , Pablo and Vorm dai .Good thing he inherited Routledge too , for us and Routledge's sake because Routs was going nowhere in a hurry . Good managers make great players at times , dont they .
Oops! ?. I 'd throw in Poz , but a lot would say it's not a plus and Davies , like Routs , Laudrup got a lot from him ..
But Toshack's 6th place finish was in the Old First Division,and not in the Premier League.which many regard as the best in the world.
I don't remember anyone ever saying that at the time,Taff. The "best in the world" label has been consistently used to con the paying public,TV and live, into thinking they were/are getting a superior product in the shape of the Premier League. So,on that basis,comparison's of the two Leagues are difficult to justify. Actually,I preferred the old First Division.
I went through some stats once and it was much easier to hit the top teams back in the day compared to " The Premier League " . Was interesting at the time but cant remember all I learned now...lol
The old First Division,as I remember it,was a more competitive League. More of a level playing field. It wasn't awash with money,or foreign owners,as is the case with the P.L. I'll get called a racist by the Uziman now,for using the word foreign.
More different teams made it to the top 4 teams in the old first division than the Premier over equal time was one I remember , wish I could remeber more , it was quite a dramatic difference in a lot of ways , The Premier is ruled by money now and is harder to get near the top , especially this season where 11 teams were in the running for relegation fairly late. The most amazing stat to me was Everton had more top flight titles than Manchester United the season before the start of the Premier League .By 3 years into the Premier League , Manchester Unites brought in 13% of all the money that 92 teams raised .
Who'd have thought that both the Manchester clubs along with Chelsea would be relegated from the 1st Division as it was then ,would that happen now ?.No because they have the money and thats the difference now days ,the disparity between them that have and them that have not is huge but that now can be said between the PL and the remainder of the leagues .
They did - and don't forget English clubs dominated the European Cup between 1977 and 1984, winning it 7 times out of 8. At the end of the day, you can only play and compete against what is in front of you. Tosh took us to 6th - quite an achievement - and Leagues are more difficult to win than cups. This isn't a "dig" at ML, far from it - winning the League Cup was fantastic!
Correct me if I'm wrong,Taff,but the European Cup in those days was a different proposition to The Champions League as we know it today. Can you see the likes of Nottingham Forest winning back to back Champions League titles? Toshack was great for Swansea City,and I am still a fan of his,and 6th in Division One was indeed "quite an achievement".
Vetch, yes, of course it was a different competition - only the Champions of each country could compete! As I said earlier, you can only play and compete against what is in front of you!
My opinion.... The likes of Nottingham Forest, Ipswich and Toshack's Swansea etc. could not have achieved what they did then today. The money involved has transformed the English game completely. When Toshack's Swansea finished 6th they weren't playing against sides which contained the best talents from Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Africa etc. Therefore I rank our Premier League finishes higher (...but then I was just a nipper back then and accept my view is biased). e.g. When Toshack's Swansea went down the club went into free fall which culminated in our near extinction. The achievements of Rodgers and Laudrup has meant that should we go down we will go down stronger than we've ever been with the improvements of the infrastructure and the money in the bank. Therefore 9th place in the Prem and our first major trophy ranks as our best season yet IMO.
But Toshack also got us relegated second season. Then we slid out of the 2nd and 3rd divisions. what toshack did getting us to the 1st division was fantastic. But he also nearly bankrupt our club and when we left we ended up in a worse place than when he took over. If we are picking who is the best surely we also have to look at their failures as well.
