I've seen a lot of people who seem to think that the Championship is the strongest 2nd tier league in Europe, possibly stemming from the Kamel Ghilas argument. But looking around, honestly, if we were playing in a league made up of teams playing in their respective tiers this season, I'm not sure we'd do very well at all. I'd like to think we are competitive, but I honestly can't see it. So, I've taken what I think are the strongest teams from the other top 2nd tiers (France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece and Portugal) and what I'd like you to do is form a league, 2 up, 4 playoff places and 3 relegation spots and decide where you think City would finish. As an example, here's mine. 1. Deportivo 2. Sampdoria ----------------------- 3. Lens 4. Valladolid 5. Monaco 6. Eintracht Frankfurt ----------------------- 7. Celta Vigo 8. Torino 9. Le Mans 10. 1860 Munich 11. St. Pauli 12. Numanica 13. Brescia 14. Karlsruhe 15. Larissa 16. Nantes 17. Panthrakikos 18. Dynamo Dresden 19. Bari 20. Hull City 21. Iraklis ---------------- 22. Ascoli 23. Naval 24. Leixoes
Oi, you're ruining my takeover Hmmph, hard to say having never seen half of these teams play. I'd like to think we could get 15th.
We would struggle with all those teams but if you take 1 countries 2nd tier, then you've probably got 4-5 teams that are NPC quality! It would be like putting Liverpool or Newcastle in a league with all the best teams in Europe, but put them in 1 countries top league & they'd be fine.
I will be fair, but i think it that at least half of them if not more are living on reputation alone. The second tier of each country is completely different and i am he only one who has no idea who Pathrikikos are? So why on earth did you put them above us?
Panthrakikos have only spent two seasons in the top tier in Greece, ten years ago they were in the 6th tier of Greek football, they've never won anything and their ground holds about six thousand. I doubt anyone on here has ever seen them play, along with many of the other names on that table and they definitely don't sound better than us.
I didn't meant to say he should have seen them play. I mean it in the sense how can you judge that based on not seeing basically any of them play for about five years?
To be honest I think some of the other top leagues are ****. Even Spain which is probably the best foreign league, the 3rd place team is 32 points behind Barca in second. That is an asbsolutely ridiculous gap, and its nothing new, it's like that every year. In the PL we have teams who can compete with Barca and Real (maybe not quite as good, but comparable) and yet the rest of the league are within touching distance of them. We can have a different team doing well in the CL every year, Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Tottenham and even Liverpool have reached the later stages or even won in recent years. In other countries only one or two teams could manage that. I don't know much about the France or Portuguese leagues but they never have teams doing anything in Europe and people still talk about them being big clubs, for example Marseille (I think it's them) everyone makes out are one of the biggest clubs in Europe, except they haven't been good for as long as I can remember.
Perhaps it's not the best time to diss La Liga's medium-big clubs, two days after the Europa League final...
I know it's not great, but their top league is up there with the strongest so it made sense to include the second tier, I was going to include the Dutch Jupiler league but they aren't too great either. As for the other teams, I'm a big fan of continental football so I've seen many of the other teams, however the Greek ones I picked partly because I didn't want City to finish bottom. The point I was trying to make with all this is that a lot of 2nd tier leagues have very strong teams and weak ones, just like we have. We range from West Ham and (now) Blackburn, to (before they were relegated) Doncaster (our equivalent of Panthrakikos) and Peterborough. Spain have Deportivo and Celta, but also teams like Girona and Huesca. To say players can cut it in the French league but not in the Championship is absurd. If Kamel Ghilas can score 13 goals in Ligue 2, with the right team behind him he could probably get 10 in the Championship (although not with us, I wouldn't have him over Fryatt in a million years). If anything, we should be looking at the top scorers in second tiers and trying to lure them over here, it's what a lot of continental teams do.
32 points between 2nd and 3rd though. They might as well break away and form another league cos that's just a stupid gap.
