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Post by eric on Jun 27, 2018 15:01:09 GMT
This came up in shout awhile back and I thought of another way we could talk about it.
In the English Premier League, there have been four champions in the past ten years. (Chelsea, Leicester, Man City, Man U.)
In the Spanish La Liga, there have been three. (Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid.)
Three is pretty much four, yet the EPL is commonly held to be more internally competitive.
Is this holding warranted?
I say yes because there's more to competition than wins and losses. There's also margin of victory.
In the same past ten years, there have been three EPL teams that never won but did finish within 7 points of the leader. (Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham.)
In La Liga, there were zero. (∅)
The closest a team ever got to a leader in La Liga was a whopping 17(!!!) points, done exactly once by Sevilla and exactly once by Valencia.
For reference, Everton have finished closer to and Southampton have barely finished further from the EPL champion at -14 and -18 respectively.
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Recent history paints an even stronger picture.
-All three close calls in the EPL came in the past five years,
-as well as the Cinderella Leicester story,
-and each of the past five years saw a unique combination of teams in the top three.
-Meanwhile every single La Liga season has seen some order of Atletico / Barcelona / Real Madrid in the top three,
-and the average fourth place team was 10 points off third place (vs. 3 points in EPL).
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I think I'll continue this analysis for the other big football leagues, but for now I think it's clear that the Premier League is objectively more internally competitive than La Liga.
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Post by Druce on Jun 27, 2018 16:24:09 GMT
Question Eric, how many times have liga teams won europa league and champions league compared to EPL teams? Just because the top 3 in Spain and head and shoulders above the rest of the league doesn't mean the rest of the league sucks. Internal competition isn't measured strictly by standing compared to the winner, it can also be measured by distance from relegation as well as wins and losses vs. common opponents.
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Post by eric on Jun 27, 2018 17:32:50 GMT
Question Eric, how many times have liga teams won europa league and champions league compared to EPL teams? Just because the top 3 in Spain and head and shoulders above the rest of the league doesn't mean the rest of the league sucks. Internal competition isn't measured strictly by standing compared to the winner, it can also be measured by distance from relegation as well as wins and losses vs. common opponents. Internal competition means how competitive teams within the league are with each other. It doesn't have anything to do with how good the teams at the top, bottom, or middle are on an absolute scale - if every team in a league was great or every team in a league was terrible they'd both be extremely internally competitive. For the same reason record v. common opponents doesn't help us: if Espanyol beat Dortmund once and Dortmund beat Barcelona once, this isn't as meaningful to the question of "is Espanyol competitive with Barcelona" as Espanyol routinely finishing 40 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. I'm not sure what you mean by distance from relegation. If we look at the distance between lowest safe and highest relegated, over the ten year period La Liga tallies 24 total points and EPL 28 - it's one win a year in either case. If we look at the distance between highest relegated and champion we average 57 points back for La Liga and 54 points back for EPL - still pretty much the same. Given that neither of these measures show much difference and the OP measure shows dramatic difference, I stand by the OP's conclusion. |
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Post by Druce on Jun 27, 2018 17:48:59 GMT
Question Eric, how many times have liga teams won europa league and champions league compared to EPL teams? Just because the top 3 in Spain and head and shoulders above the rest of the league doesn't mean the rest of the league sucks. Internal competition isn't measured strictly by standing compared to the winner, it can also be measured by distance from relegation as well as wins and losses vs. common opponents. Internal competition means how competitive teams within the league are with each other. It doesn't have anything to do with how good the teams at the top, bottom, or middle are on an absolute scale - if every team in a league was great or every team in a league was terrible they'd both be extremely internally competitive. For the same reason record v. common opponents doesn't help us: if Espanyol beat Dortmund once and Dortmund beat Barcelona once, this isn't as meaningful to the question of "is Espanyol competitive with Barcelona" as Espanyol routinely finishing 40 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. I'm not sure what you mean by distance from relegation. If we look at the distance between lowest safe and highest relegated, over the ten year period La Liga tallies 24 total points and EPL 28 - it's one win a year in either case. If we look at the distance between highest relegated and champion we average 57 points back for La Liga and 54 points back for EPL - still pretty much the same. Given that neither of these measures show much difference and the OP measure shows dramatic difference, I stand by the OP's conclusion. My point was that 4-20 in Spain is just as competitive as 4-20 in England, and 4-20 in Spain as a whole is more quality than 4-20 in England. |
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Post by eric on Jun 27, 2018 18:24:22 GMT
Internal competition means how competitive teams within the league are with each other. It doesn't have anything to do with how good the teams at the top, bottom, or middle are on an absolute scale - if every team in a league was great or every team in a league was terrible they'd both be extremely internally competitive. For the same reason record v. common opponents doesn't help us: if Espanyol beat Dortmund once and Dortmund beat Barcelona once, this isn't as meaningful to the question of "is Espanyol competitive with Barcelona" as Espanyol routinely finishing 40 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. I'm not sure what you mean by distance from relegation. If we look at the distance between lowest safe and highest relegated, over the ten year period La Liga tallies 24 total points and EPL 28 - it's one win a year in either case. If we look at the distance between highest relegated and champion we average 57 points back for La Liga and 54 points back for EPL - still pretty much the same. Given that neither of these measures show much difference and the OP measure shows dramatic difference, I stand by the OP's conclusion. My point was that 4-20 in Spain is just as competitive as 4-20 in England, and 4-20 in Spain as a whole is more quality than 4-20 in England. You're correct that the distribution within a given year is similar, and if we were only looking at one year, absolutely there'd be no reason to think EPL was more internally competitive than La Liga. It's looking at ten years that demonstrates the pattern, when there's twice as many distinct teams that come close to titles and when teams outside the top three are routinely much closer to cracking in. Comparing the internal competitiveness of 4-20 and 4-20 is an elision because in one league it's perennially the same teams in the 4-20 that ALSO are measurably further from the 1-3. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2018 10:43:59 GMT
please change title to say "soccer"
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Post by Mike on Jun 28, 2018 19:25:54 GMT
please change title to say "soccer" I demand some respect, just put Futbol on it. |
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