Virgil van Dijk

Yeah undoubtedly a piece of all of them has died. But you still have United's history of the Busby babes/Class of '92, Liverpool's dominance of the 80s, Arsenal under Herbert Chapman, Spurs under Bill Nicholson, things like that make up proper clubs' history, not £35m oil funded acquisitions of the latest player to have a good season in Spain.

 

Chelsea have had there periods before the oil money. When I was younger it was the Vialli team which were fantastic to watch with Zola and co.

 

I'm not mentioning any players, just stating my opinion that this season in my opinion it's been absolutely fantastic to watch. I've found it to be more entertaining than the Champions' League. For sure there are a lot of over paid, under-achieving players and yes the likes of the Spanish league produces better players, but for me, the Premiership this season is far more interesting to watch. It's not a question of who has the best players at there peak it's about the entertainment value. Players play with a different attitude, the atmosphere at games and just the general hype added to some high scoring games, the odd scandal, makes it hard to beat.

Whether you want to play that down or not, it's been absolutely different class this season. An opinion i can't really share with this year's Champions' League. I'd actually rather watch a relegation battle between the lower teams in the English Premier League, than watch Barca or Munich instill a fear of anyone putting in a good challenge, for the fear that every challenge is a yellow card.

The competitive nature of the Premiership, the quality or the lack of quality can make for high scoring games. So it's not true that you just lump all the best players, all at there peak into one league and it necessarily makes it more entertaining to watch. You want players to make mistakes, that's what makes it exciting.

 

Yeah, and Di Matteo. They won the old Cup Winners' Cup in that period (which is as much as any team in Scotland has won apart from ourselves). They also won it previously in 1971, beating Real Madrid in the final. They've since won the big cup and the Europa League. They also won the English top flight in 1954/55 and FA Cup back when that was a prestigious trophy (three times before Abramovic's millions). No history. :smiley-laughing002:

FWIW I hate Chelsea.

 

It's an unusual season, though. Even I've started to take an interest in their 4-way title fight. It's not normally that good.

 

It's that good because the quality has fallen.

 

Hold on, where did I say that Championship players were more sought after than ours?

I said "the Championship provides just as much, if not more money in many instances, and it also provides a platform for a move to a bigger English club if they perform well.".

I did say that the Championship is more highly regarded down south than the SPFL, and that the top goalscorer in that league is held in higher regard than the top scorer in our league.

It was you who brought up the transfer dealings for some reason. That has nothing to do with what I said.

 

Spot on. Look at the Man Utd team that won it easy last year, it was one of the worst in Fergie's time.

 

I have that impression from talking to people who watched their league last season and from English results in Europe.

Why is the quality falling? Strange.

 

More highly regarded, more sought after, is there a massive amount of difference really. If they were so highly thought of, then why have the two players I mentioned not made the jump yet, and our top scorer did? Glenn Murray was the Championship top goalscorer last year, do you think he was more highly thought of than Gary Hooper was?

I see you cherry picked one part to respond to also. Not the first time in this debate I might add.

 

There is actually. Just because the Championship is more highly regarded than the SPFL in England doesn't mean that Premiership clubs will be clamouring to sign players from the division, does it?

Let me ask you this. Do you think the Championship is not more highly regarded in England than the SPFL?

Again, no one said that the Championship or its players are "so highly though of", did they? I simply said that the english put more stock into their own second flight than they do our top flight.

Do you disagree with that?

I didn't cherry pick anything, I simply left out the parts that we've been discussing for * ages. We've went over the same nonsense constantly.

To sum up, because this is growing incredibly tedious, I said "the Championship provides just as much, if not more money in many instances, and it also provides a platform for a move to a bigger English club if they perform well."

I also said that the Championship is more highly regarded down south than the SPFL, and that the top goalscorer in that league is held in higher regard than the top scorer in our league.

I stand by that, and I know you'll look for little instances where the top scorer of the SPFL has went to a Premiership club and suchlike, but for the most part the English snigger and laugh at our league. They think the SPFL is *, and they consider the Championship to be of a higher quality.

That's just how it is.

 

My thinking behind why the quality is failing is because they wont sell to anyone in there league. For example if rooney went, man utd would never sell to someone in there league. Eventually leading to less quality in the league. Ronaldo, bale etc all gone. Who's next, saurez?

 

It's impossible to overstate just how little respect the English have for our top flight. Unless you live down here, you can't possibly imagine it. The average English foitball fan will quite openly refer to the SPFL as a pub league. If pressed (s)he might concede that the SPFL might just possibly be as good a standard as their league 2. I have had so many arguments because I think the SPFL is roughly the same standard as the English League 1, a view that few in England would accept. The average English fan even thinks that we are about the same standard as a midtable Championship side! They never actually watch Scottish football, though. The average English fan has never watched a Scottsh domestic game apart from our games against deadco, even here they were never nearly as fascinated as we liked to think and would only watch that if there were no other big games on (and by big games I mean that they would consider some Championship games bigger!). To judge by comments in the media, English players and managers aren't free of these prejudices either! It's hardly surprising if we lose out on English players to lower EPL or even Championship teams all the time.

The question is, are these extreme English attitudes shared in mainland Europe? The answer seems to vary from country to country and sadly I guess this view might be widespread in the Netherlands (didn't Vinnie BBQ change his name from Johan Derksen or something because this guy was very disparaging about us?).

 

That's been the case as far back as I remember, though.

 

Spot on.

 

It was you that brought up the point about the top scorer in the Championship being more highly regarded than the top scorer in Scotland. I just think if this was the case, then the likes of McCormack and Deeney would surely be playing at the same level as Gary Hooper. They aren't though.

As I said a good few pages ago, we will just have to agree to disagree on this matter. It's starting to get a bit boring going over the same stuff.

 

My opinion is who the * cares what the average 'Premiership' fan thinks?

 

You've got four teams shooting it out for the league, but the bottom half of the table are all involved in a relegation battle which is just as interesting.

Then you've got a very interesting Championship with 2 teams running away with the top two spots and six teams battling it out for the play-offs.

Bearing in mind as TV rights go, it's a more popular league than serie A, it's a league with potential to grow. Whereas other second leagues don't really have that.

So i'd say the Championship is a lot bigger than the second leagues in say Spain, Italy, France or Germany.

That's how i'd judge the championship, not against other top leagues, but against top leagues' second divisions.

I don't know about the quality getting worse in the Premier league, i'd say * of a lot of money gets wasted and there is a gulf but even with that gulf, any team can beat any team. That's what makes it interesting.

 

Best post in this thread for a long time.

 

I know what you mean, but because a lot of our English players were "average EPL fans" in this regard, as will be many of the players in the Championship/League 1 that we are competing for against other English sides. Also, I suspect this attitude also exists in some other countries.