What's wrong with the Premier League top teams?

lastmanback said:
Last 30 years only been won 4 times by English team. Nothing strange about this season if you think about It. This theory of bottom teams in prem better than bottom of other leagues where's the stats to prove this myth.
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It's not just about winning or even the fact that no English team are in the quarter finals. It's also about the performance. Had Chelsea lost on away goals without a red card, had City lose narrowly, had Arsenal lost to Bayern, had Liverpool had a group of death then things might have been different. It's the manner of the defeats. Liverpool were annihilated by Madrid at Anfield and outplayed by Ludogorets/Basel. Arsenal second to a weak Dortmund and then Chelsea outplayed by 10 PSG. Also it's not just this year, but a constant for the last 3/4 years.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31842700" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31842700</a>
In 2012 our results were carried by Chelsea fluking their way to a win and in 2011 United got to a final, but a fortunate draw.

As for winning the CL, in the last 30 years German clubs have only won it 3 times and Portuguese teams 2, Dutch 2 and then once for French, Serbian and Romanian teams. It's the Spanish and the Italians that have dominated with 8 each, but the Italians have fallen off since 2010.
 
How does drawing with another team make one team worse? In any other competition football wise, in a draw the points are split evenly. We drew with monaco, chelsea drew with psg. Thats even, a point each. The away rule is an outside factor that has resulted in psg and monaco going through and not related to one team being better then the other. Nobody in there right mind, if they were being serious and put bias aside, would say monaco are a better team then arsenal for example.

We drew 3-3 with ac milan 2 seasons ago but went out, drew 2-2 with bayern think last season but went out. All of these games after 2 legs ended even, same goals scored. Thats 3 times now in recent seasons we've gone out of the competition after DRAWING a game over 2 legs. How can that possibly make sense? And surely it skews the picture over english teams not progressing.

Look, this isn't an argument about the away goal rule either, but you can't use a rule like that to make one team better then another. Winning a football game, in the way football games are won in nearly every other competition in the world for example every league, most other cup competitions, world cups etc (i.e. via scoring more goals then the other team, or by amassing more points then the other team) is what should make one team better then the other.

overall, i don't think the top premier league teams are any worse then at least 5 of the teams still left in the champions, in fact they are probably better or at least level. Yes the other 3 are definitely a few miles ahead at the moment.
 
Maybe we need to enforce a less physical style of game by using a european pool of referees, like uefa use for their competitions. They at least wont be on 1st name terms with rooney.
 
nevblue said:
Maybe we need to enforce a less physical style of game by using a european pool of referees, like uefa use for their competitions. They at least wont be on 1st name terms with rooney.
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I agree, I think refereeing is a factor.

You make a tackle in the Premiership - no foul.

You make that same tackle in the Champion's League - foul and a yellow card.

The refereeing in the Premiership and Champion's League is miles apart and it's got to be tough for the players to adjust.
 
afc16 said:
How does drawing with another team make one team worse? In any other competition football wise, in a draw the points are split evenly. We drew with monaco, chelsea drew with psg. Thats even, a point each. The away rule is an outside factor that has resulted in psg and monaco going through and not related to one team being better then the other. Nobody in there right mind, if they were being serious and put bias aside, would say monaco are a better team then arsenal for example.

We drew 3-3 with ac milan 2 seasons ago but went out, drew 2-2 with bayern think last season but went out. All of these games after 2 legs ended even, same goals scored. Thats 3 times now in recent seasons we've gone out of the competition after DRAWING a game over 2 legs. How can that possibly make sense? And surely it skews the picture over english teams not progressing.

Look, this isn't an argument about the away goal rule either, but you can't use a rule like that to make one team better then another. Winning a football game, in the way football games are won in nearly every other competition in the world for example every league, most other cup competitions, world cups etc (i.e. via scoring more goals then the other team, or by amassing more points then the other team) is what should make one team better then the other.

overall, i don't think the top premier league teams are any worse then at least 5 of the teams still left in the champions, in fact they are probably better or at least level. Yes the other 3 are definitely a few miles ahead at the moment.
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The rules are set out beforehand, you know the result you need yet fail to get it, that's what makes one side worse than the other. One side gets the result they know they need, the other side fails to. It's a cop out to claim that a draw means you're level, because it's ignoring the rules of the competition. You know the rules, yet fail to match the other team according to them. It's not the mysterious "outside factor" you claim it is, it's clearly stated in the rules.
 
CityFan94 said:
nevblue said:
Maybe we need to enforce a less physical style of game by using a european pool of referees, like uefa use for their competitions. They at least wont be on 1st name terms with rooney.
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I agree, I think refereeing is a factor.

You make a tackle in the Premiership - no foul.

You make that same tackle in the Champion's League - foul and a yellow card.

The refereeing in the Premiership and Champion's League is miles apart and it's got to be tough for the players to adjust.
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We had nothing to complain about this season imho - in fact, Nasri should have been sent off in 2 games and got away with it both times.
 
Imo Chelsea would have given Barca a more difficult match, because Mourinho usually gets the upper hand tactically. That can make up for a difference in quality to a certain extent. For the other three English teams in the CL this season, the problem has been the manager, for one reason or another.

Start with Rodgers. So he finally put together a Liverpool team last season that had the potential to win a title, and was scoring goals for fun. Then what does he do? Sells Suarez to Barcelona and buys a bunch of dross in his place. As a result, Liverpool were shit in Europe and are struggling to make the top 4. So not only did he significantly weaken his own team, but he strengthened Barcelona as well.

Wenger it's just the usual story, his teams play good football but like clockwork they finish 2nd in the group and go out in the round of 16. If he wants to have a team capable of challenging for titles then he needs to buy the right players, especially quality defensive players.

Pellegrini yet again screwed up the tactics against Barca in the first leg, which obviously you need to win to have a chance if you are playing the 2nd leg away (where a 1-0 loss isn't that bad). Also I would say like Rodgers the signings he has made have not been of the required quality. City's transfer policy in general seems pretty baffling to me tbh, though maybe I'm not seeing the full picture. But selling Tevez to Juve for peanuts where he is now a key player, buying Negredo then loaning him back to Spain, buying Bony and not playing him much (is Bony even better than Negredo or Dzeko?), paying (imo) way too much for Mangala when you know the potential for getting screwed when buying players from Portugal (Javi Garcia for example).

So what I'm seeing is three managers who are strongly stuck in their ways and two of whom who have been conducting shocking transfer business. Get managers who can tactically adapt and who buy the best players rather than mediocre ones and English teams will start doing better in Europe.

Edit: Just as an addendum to my point: look at the record of Wenger, Rodgers, and Pellegrini against Mourinho. Wenger and Rodgers have never won a match against him, and Pellegrini hasn't won a premier league match against Mourinho since they both came in 2013. That should tell you all you need to know.
 
GHoddle said:
Imo Chelsea would have given Barca a more difficult match, because Mourinho usually gets the upper hand tactically. That can make up for a difference in quality to a certain extent. For the other three English teams in the CL this season, the problem has been the manager, for one reason or another.

Start with Rodgers. So he finally put together a Liverpool team last season that had the potential to win a title, and was scoring goals for fun. Then what does he do? Sells Suarez to Barcelona and buys a bunch of dross in his place. As a result, Liverpool were shit in Europe and are struggling to make the top 4. So not only did he significantly weaken his own team, but he strengthened Barcelona as well.

Wenger it's just the usual story, his teams play good football but like clockwork they finish 2nd in the group and go out in the round of 16. If he wants to have a team capable of challenging for titles then he needs to buy the right players, especially quality defensive players.

Pellegrini yet again screwed up the tactics against Barca in the first leg, which obviously you need to win to have a chance if you are playing the 2nd leg away (where a 1-0 loss isn't that bad). Also I would say like Rodgers the signings he has made have not been of the required quality. City's transfer policy in general seems pretty baffling to me tbh, though maybe I'm not seeing the full picture. But selling Tevez to Juve for peanuts where he is now a key player, buying Negredo then loaning him back to Spain, buying Bony and not playing him much (is Bony even better than Negredo or Dzeko?), paying (imo) way too much for Mangala when you know the potential for getting screwed when buying players from Portugal (Javi Garcia for example).

So what I'm seeing is three managers who are strongly stuck in their ways and two of whom who have been conducting shocking transfer business. Get managers who can tactically adapt and who buy the best players rather than mediocre ones and English teams will start doing better in Europe.

Edit: Just as an addendum to my point: look at the record of Wenger, Rodgers, and Pellegrini against Mourinho. Wenger and Rodgers have never won a match against him, and Pellegrini hasn't won a premier league match against Mourinho since they both came in 2013. That should tell you all you need to know.
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You’re right about Pellegrini’s tactics in the first leg but wrong about the transfers. Tevez left because he’d lost a yard of pace and was earning a fortune so it suited City to get off the books. For a player in the last year of his contract he didn’t go for peanuts and playing for Juve’ in Serie A enables him to perform at a level he probably couldn’t manage consistently in England. Negrado went because his missus was heading back to Spain and Valencia have committed to pay a very decent fee at the end of the season. All things being equal he’d still be at City. Is Bony better than Dzeko? Almost certainly if he can manage more than 6 goals a season, run around a bit and not let the ball bounce of his shins 25 times game.

City beat Chelsea in the cup last season so Pellers has beaten Mourinho – the fact that it was a cup game doesn’t mean that it didn’t count. Even with 10 men we were the better side at home this season and all the games have been quite tight. Not sure you can read much into the relative merits of two managers on the basis of 5 games where only one has ended with more than one goal between the sides.
 
BayernMan said:
Tactically poor from what I've seen...
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Tactically poor, can't defend and not enough top/ world class quality in the top teams to match that of Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and Paris.

Then you have the little things like post world cup dip, no winter break etc... that add on top of those other deficiencies.
 
It's fairly simple.

Barcelona and Real Madrid take what are already two of the best teams in the world, and buy one of the best strikers in the world and one of the best wingers in the world respectively. Bayern Munich take a treble-winning team and decide that they need to add the best striker and best young midfielder in Europe to the squad. We win the title and celebrate by buying Scott Sinclair or Fernando. Chelsea and the rags have bought some good players, but the difference is that they only do it when they have to. You don't often see the English champions going out immediately after winning and buying the best available player in the world. These teams build squads to win the CL, whereas the English clubs just build squads to win the league and hope that will be good enough in Europe.

If we won the title before Sergio arrived, do you think we would've bought him? I'm not sure we would have.
 
Quality of coaching/management perhaps. Tactics are a crucial part of the game, the Euro teams seem to get them right more than we do. We have too many players who are one-dimensional, either by ability or playing to the manager's orders.
Probably though, it will be a combination of things, all i know is what i see on the pitch, and that is an EPL team coming up short against a more skilful, more disciplined team from the continent
 
Lack or winter break is interesting because I am sure if we would have a 2 week period between middle of December and end of December most of the top teams even the lesser ones might would start to go on world tour hoping for 1-2-3m pounds per friendly games.
USA, Australia, East-Asia. So travelling quite far for these games maybe with a few Middle-East tours as well.

I bet no English top teams would stay in England just make sure get their fitness right for the end of the break.

Like actually even Real/Bayern does these kind of games in their winter break.

Of course its not as hard mentally or phyisically to play some friendlies than important league games 4 times in space of 8-9 days when we reach Boxing Day.

Still the hunger for extra income trough those games would win over making the players relax a bit.

What I would really blame tho is tactics/mentality/gameplan. Actually all English top teams are adapting very badly when they need too. Us especially.
Chelsea could adapt to playing Barca/Real but they would have to play complete anti-football parking the bus and hoping to hit with a few counters. Its also not their usual PL approach. But even they cannot play their way. Not even against PSG who I dont rate as high as Bayern, Real etc.

We couldnt do that, Arsenal neither. So we just go out and get murdered by these teams as its clear as hell our own style wont be paying off vs the elite teams. What we can do comfortably in PL with our style, 60% possession, short passing etc, that gets us nowhere vs better European teams. We even struggle with that against the Napoli/CSKA/Ajax etc level. Squads that have maybe 1-2 player that could come to City and improve the squad.

With Pellegrini for us to adapt to opponents really not an option. He hardly watches opponents, he wants us to play our style no matter what. But then he cant get the needed workrate from our players to make sure this style is working at least on its own.So its a bit of a mess.
 
Damanino said:
Lack or winter break is interesting because I am sure if we would have a 2 week period between middle of December and end of December most of the top teams even the lesser ones might would start to go on world tour hoping for 1-2-3m pounds per friendly games.
USA, Australia, East-Asia. So travelling quite far for these games maybe with a few Middle-East tours as well.

I bet no English top teams would stay in England just make sure get their fitness right for the end of the break.

Like actually even Real/Bayern does these kind of games in their winter break.

Of course its not as hard mentally or phyisically to play some friendlies than important league games 4 times in space of 8-9 days when we reach Boxing Day.

Still the hunger for extra income trough those games would win over making the players relax a bit.

What I would really blame tho is tactics/mentality/gameplan. Actually all English top teams are adapting very badly when they need too. Us especially.
Chelsea could adapt to playing Barca/Real but they would have to play complete anti-football parking the bus and hoping to hit with a few counters. Its also not their usual PL approach. But even they cannot play their way. Not even against PSG who I dont rate as high as Bayern, Real etc.

We couldnt do that, Arsenal neither. So we just go out and get murdered by these teams as its clear as hell our own style wont be paying off vs the elite teams. What we can do comfortably in PL with our style, 60% possession, short passing etc, that gets us nowhere vs better European teams. We even struggle with that against the Napoli/CSKA/Ajax etc level. Squads that have maybe 1-2 player that could come to City and improve the squad.

With Pellegrini for us to adapt to opponents really not an option. He hardly watches opponents, he wants us to play our style no matter what. But then he cant get the needed workrate from our players to make sure this style is working at least on its own.So its a bit of a mess.
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Spot on !
 
I'm With Stupid said:
It's fairly simple.

Barcelona and Real Madrid take what are already two of the best teams in the world, and buy one of the best strikers in the world and one of the best wingers in the world respectively. Bayern Munich take a treble-winning team and decide that they need to add the best striker and best young midfielder in Europe to the squad. We win the title and celebrate by buying Scott Sinclair or Fernando. Chelsea and the rags have bought some good players, but the difference is that they only do it when they have to. You don't often see the English champions going out immediately after winning and buying the best available player in the world. These teams build squads to win the CL, whereas the English clubs just build squads to win the league and hope that will be good enough in Europe.

If we won the title before Sergio arrived, do you think we would've bought him? I'm not sure we would have.
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I agree but think the reason we have not gone on is due to FFP. We will see over the next five seasons if we are serious at winning the Champions league.
 
NQCitizen said:
We're obsessed with the idea signings are all we need to improve. At the expense of tactics, discipline and intelligence. Just money.
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I agree with this and it's becoming a very typical English mentality in that basically the only way to succeed is to buy your way out of trouble, just like the Italians in the 80's and 90's except eventually everyone else caught up financially with them in the 2000's.

The reason the likes of Dortmund, Bayern, Atletico, Juventus and co have been so successful is because they have delegated coaching and clever scouting as their main principles of developing success.
 
NQCitizen said:
We're obsessed with the idea signings are all we need to improve. At the expense of tactics, discipline and intelligence. Just money.
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But we've got staff that have experience doing well in the Champions League in other countries. Our manager got Villarreal to the semis. Mourinho has won it twice. Their tactics were fine when they were managing an Italian, Spanish or Portuguese team, so why would they suddenly be tactically inept when managing an English team (full of foreigners)? The reality is that there hasn't been a really convincing English team, where you would genuinely pick them as one of the top 3 favourites before the tournament, since the rags team with Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez. Before that, it was probably Mourinho's first Chelsea, who never won it, and then the Arsenal invincible, who also never won it. We're not doing as well in the Champions League because there are no incredible English teams at the moment. It's that simple. Obviously it's possible to overachieve with a merely decent team, but it's also possible to have seasons, like this one, where all of the English teams do about as well as could be expected.
 
For me the common theme is that the style the EPL does not lend itself to good Euro football at the moment.

Teams have problems switching from knowing they will get the ball back within 30-40 seconds in the EPL whereas it is a lot longer when the business end of the CL comes around. Within that time the top Euro teams have built pressure and if they have not scored, then there is a little panic from the English teams to get the ball back and decision making goes awry. I am talking about possession for the sake of it but the possession with meaning that RM, BN and Barca have.

Those and even Atleti and PSG plu others you can see what they are trying to achieve, you cannot really see that in EPL clubs because match after match in the PL the ball flies backwards and forwards and everything seems off the cuff. They know the ball will comeback then go again.

The winter break is a bit of red herring, FCB have played more matches than City in 2015, yet looked 10 times more cohesive over the two matches.
 
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