The Premiership should look over its shoulder before calling itself the best.
by Peregrine Roscorla aka dogfacedboy
Grand Slam Sunday, Super Sunday, glitzy Sky graphics, and back-page Sun splashes - who could doubt the Premiership is the best league in the world? Me.
Most of the heretics who argue against the Premiership as the best league in the world point to Serie A and La Liga, but if you care to look there is another contender much closer to home.
Just imagine a league where seven teams could still win the title in mid-February, 11 teams are in danger of relegation and all bar one of the 24 teams are within 10 points of the top six or the bottom three.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Championship.
In the Best League in the World(TM) only five teams are realistically competing for the top four spots and relegation looks almost certain to be three clubs from four.
This leaves 11 teams competing for nothing more than the Uefa Cup, which is before you take into account that before the season began 16 of the teams in the league did not dare to dream about winning it.
The gap between the top and bottom teams in the Premiership is 48 points, in the Championship it is 33. And with 15 games to play and 45 points up for grabs Leeds, rock bottom of the Championship, could still qualify for the play offs or even win the league.
As for predictability, the top four in Premiership have lost 18 games between them - with the only home defeat coming when Arsenal won at Old Trafford.
The Championship tells a completely different story, with the top four losing 30 games and no side undefeated at home.
There are also more goals in the Championship, 2.55 per game compared with 2.42 in the Premiership. If you transfer the Championship average to the Premiership there would have been an extra 37 goals already this season, rising to 49 if the scoring rates stay the same.
Just imagine, 49 extra goals over the season could have changed the whole shape of the league if they were all late winners or equalisers and as the Championship is the more competitive league it seems that a good number of them would have been.
You may argue that the Premiership has better players, which it does, and more people go and watch it, which they do, but if you look at the facts and you prefer some old fashioned competitive football where every point counts and no one is overly surprised if the team in 24th place beats the team in first then this year's Championship makes the self-proclaimed "Best league in the world" look about as exciting as a Dott-McManus snooker match.
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3 comments:
Well argued. The Championship is definitely more interesting for a neutral and there are a lot of promising young managers. I pay more attention to the likes of West Brom and Sunderland than I do Fulham or Wigan.
The biggest issue for the Premiership - a good point well made.
You really pick a hard nut to crack, but make a very good job of it.
I will never willingly watch a Championship game unless my beloved Manchester United are relegated (it's happened before), but your welter of stats almost had me convinced - and,
I must admit, I always make a note of how Keano's Hollywood heroes are faring.
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