Ive noticed quite a few times recently people saying this is the worst the championship has been and how its never been easier to take promotion than this season, does anyone agree with this? I think the Championship is stronger then ever, every week i look at the team we are playing and am surprised at the amount of qaulity players i see, if you look at the squads of the teams in the bottom half i would say there are a good few better then the squad we got promoted to the prem with last time. Its no coincidence more teams promoted are coping with top tier football easier than in the past.
Is the league stronger when it has a newcastle in it finishing on +100 points or is it stronger when 3/4 teams can still get autos and 8/9 teams for playoffs... Losers will bitterly say it's been weak and winners won't care.
I agree with you, it's bollocks. People seem to think that because it's an even league it must be ****. That's ridiculous logic.
You could argue that it has been weak in the sense that top 6 teams have dropped a lot of silly points and haven't dominated (bar cardiff maybe) throughout the season... but then you could say that it makes the bottom half of the league stronger than previous years. I mean ffs Boro in 10th are 6 points away from relegation This league has been very exciting.
This league is very hard, the fact that relegated PL teams get financial support makes it difficult to break into.
That's exactly the logic I'm criticising. All it proves is that the league is tight from top to bottom. It doesn't say anything about the relative strength of the teams compared to other leagues.
If it was that weak, then the 3 relegated team would have pissed it, the fact Blackburn and Wolves could well go down and that Bolton are only just in the playoffs, 20 points short of Cardiff speaks volumes for the strength of the championship.
It's a load of ****. The jealous fans always say the league has been weak as excuse for their teams' fall. How can a league get worse the tighter it gets? If anything, it makes it better. Leagues are weak when one or two teams break away and have a ridiculous gap between them (eg. Newcastle back in 08/09, Reading when they got 106pts): that is when the league gets poor.
I think it's as strong this season as ever before. The difference is you've got a number of teams that are really strong rather than just 1 or 2.
Its neither strong or weaker then it has been, you will always have to beat the 11 men put in front of you regardless of who, what or where they are in the league..
On RH Gwillam and the other rugby league fanatics say that all the teams taking points off each other in Super League is the sign of a strong league. No doubt they will say the same thing in the Championship is the sign of a weak one.
I think this is total nonsense, you only have to look at the 3 premium teams relegated, Wolves, Blackburn are relegation possibilities, and Bolton have not exactly set the division on fire. For me it is a strong division.
Its an amazing league and this season has probably been the most exciting ever. But that doesn't mean the quality isn't down. We've won 1 in 16 ish and we're only just outside the playoffs any other season and teams would have capitalised and we'd be looking over our shoulder. Teams at the bottom can't buy a win, which is why about 8 teams could still be relegated.
When you came here on Boxing Day you were our biggest threat of the season up till then. And then when you bought Wood and we'd lost Aluko, through injury, I thought we'd blown it. You were also above us for a brief period in January, but we responded well. And for that I praise Bruce. Not over yet obviously.
I agree, the quality is down, just look at how often we've had to play teams that approach the game like Burnley do every ****ing time they play us. Last time we were promoted I don't remember feeling like half the games I went to the opposition had turned up just to stop football being played for the entire 90 minutes. You had Burnley, and Palace when Dowie was the manager, the rest came to try and win but were just not as good as us. At least when we've done it we can turn round and point out that we've been missing half our attacking players, there's no way every team that does it against us just happens to have been missing their equivalents at the time they're due to play us.
That's because we sneaked up last time and teams didn't respect us the way they have this season,in fact we were the ones who went to stop other teams playing football. The overall quality is much better now,the money been spent is greater aswell, also the amount of foreign players in the prem always ment that at some point lower league teams would have better brit/irish players filling them.
