Some amount of empty seats in the televised game. Thought both sides were doing well this season so surprising. Hopefully Keane will get a run in second half.
He’s not on the bench Larry. Needs to leave.
Fook that but kind of glad as I backed Bolton through sheer boredom.
Bolton 2-0 up on the team who hammered the European champions mid week. Genuinely think the Premier League is much more competitive this season than in a good few years. Same teams will obviously finish up the top, like they do in most leagues, but far more surprise results this year it seems to me. Last man Standing competitions are a serious mine field…
Think the gap between fourth and some teams has closed though it still hasn’t closed at the very top. I’d be very surprised if Chelsea or Arsenal don’t win it or if a new team breaks into the top four. Also don’t think either Chelea or Arsenal would win La Liga. Nor do I think the quality is all that great generally. Watched the first half of that match and thought it was very poor. Also was Spurs victoy in midweek really a hammering? Inter all but through already after they hammered Spurs in first fiteen minutes in Milan
It’s stating the obvious to say it’s easy to predict winners of top leagues at this stage larry. I think the relative struggle of a team with the amount of money Man City have spent shows the competitiveness of the league. Actually is hard enough to predict most results from week to week with any degree of certainty which is all you can expect from a big league at this stage I reckon. Chelsea against the lower level teams seems to be the only given.
‘Quality’ is very subjective too and can only really be judged by results in Europe, which haven’t been bad.
Hammering with regard to Spurs might be a bit strong alright, beat them well though, give credit where it’s due.
I realise you really dislike the hype around the EPL but the money in it means it simply has to be a good league and arguing otherwise is a waste of time really.
Uniteds Team today
01 Van der Sar
03 Evra
05 Ferdinand
06 Brown
15 Vidic
22 O’Shea
04 Hargreaves :o 
13 Park Ji-Sung
24 Fletcher
14 Hernandez
26 Obertan
Oh yeah I don’t think I or anyone else has argued that it isn’t one of the better leagues in Europe. I understand you might find battle for champions league place or to avoid regulation in EPL excitiing but personally I don’t. That really is all that is up for grabs in most leagues these days and EPL is certainly no exception. In fact it is probably one of the more extreme cases of same teams dominating top places etc. The gap between fourth and tenth may have closed but if you think the league in general is really competitive in comparison to other top leagues I wouldn’t agree with you.
:rolleyes:
Spurs have never won at the Reebok before today, hardly think it counts as a shock or illustrates the strength of the league
:rolleyes:
Spurs beat the European champions handily and are going quite well in the Champions League yet then go out and lose to a team critics would consider as an example of the shit that populates the EPL.
United are also cruising in the Champions League yet are dropping points all round them in England. There was a time a few years ago when the top teams would drop very few points in a whole season. those days are gone.
45 minutes of pure shite from United who were shocking the whole half and then Park pops up for a goal to give them the lead at half time.
[quote=“gola, post: 500708”]
:rolleyes:
Spurs beat the European champions handily and are going quite well in the Champions League yet then go out and lose to a team critics would consider as an example of the shit that populates the EPL.
United are also cruising in the Champions League yet are dropping points all round them in England. There was a time a few years ago when the top teams would drop very few points in a whole season. those days are gone.[/quote]
That is untrue…the amount of points won by the Premier league winners has remained fairly steady over the past 10 years, normally somwhere between 85 and 91 points or there abouts…
Celtic beat Barcelona a couple of years back and lost the following week in SPL. Don’t think anyone was saying then that was a measure of how strong the SPL was to be honest gola. Teams can raise their game and of course play badly on given days depending on levels of motivation etc. Hardly conclusive evidence.
That Barcelona side were far better than the side Spurs played the other night and Celtic also dominated both home and away unlike Spurs.
I’ll take yer word for it and that’s a fair point but I suppose I was thinking more of the days when Arsenal and Chelsea used to lose none or one game a season. Definitely were a few years when top two would be much further clear of say fifth place or even third place than they were last year or will be this year.
Who will get in the top four is far from certain and the fact that Man City are far from guaranteed a place there despite being the richest club in the world with spending to match has to say the competiitveness of the league isn’t relatively that bad.
It’s far better than the situation in Spain which had an even bigger gap between top two and the rest than Scotland last year I think.
this is down to the likes of Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool regressing compared to the teams they were a few years ago as opposed to the standards rising across the board, granted the likes of Spurs and City are better than what they were 5 years ago but they are still also rans
You could go forward and back with examples all day but basically the question is do lads really think the EPL is less competitive than it was a few years ago?
I think it’s more competitive and there are more good teams than say five years ago and can’t really see how anyone can say different. You could say top teams have slightly regressed but there are still probably four or five teams in or around the top ten teams in Europe.
Even the likes of Liverpool who are struggling very badly in league will probably still go well in Europa League and Fulham got to final last year, there was a time when English teams fared very badly in UEFA Cup.
I just think this season will prove more competitive and will see more shock results than before. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong it has happened once or twice before.
But sure even look at last year where SPL winners got 87 points and EPL winners got 86 points. At end of day EPL is no different to other top leagues where competition at top of the table is sparse. In fact I’d say there are certainly leagues in Europe which are less predictable. There was many a cricket scoreline in EPL already this season if I’m not mistaken?
Think Chelsea will win it at a canter myself…Agree that there may well be a good few shock results, even looking at United and Liverpool’s starting 11 these days the aura of invincibility is very much gone from them and most teams will feel that they can put it up to them
Would agree with that and as you said earlier that is more down to them regressing rather than Wolves etc suddenly becoming European giants. Even Rangers could have easily beaten Manchester if ref had been stronger as much as it pains me to say it.