Success is due to finances rather than managers or tactics

pavb2

I was reading a comment could have been on here or elsewhere which made the point that in the modern game success in the pl is more to do with expenditure on the squad rather than the influence of managers tactics etc.

We all get wrapped up in the detail of our own particular club managers, players, performances etc but ultimately the clubs expenditure is linked to league position.

If you look back over the last 20 or so years of the 1st division even Blackburn 94/95 spent heavily for those times to achieve the title.

I can't think of any team that have won the title with a significantly less expenditure than those around them. Also without analysing it are there any teams that have spent relatively more and been relegated.

This bears out with my team villa we spent a bit under Martin O Neil and achieved sixth place finishes. The last four or five seasons we've been shopping in the bargain basement and cutting costs which has been reflected in our recent league positions.

So much as we all love the beautiful game is it futile to think any team that doesn't come in the top four for expenditure has no chance of winning the league and that without this a decent manager will only raise league position by a few places.

thelad95

David Moyes had access to an unlimited transfer budget and that didn't go so well did it? Obviously with greater resources, you can buy better players but managers and tactics do dictate league position. Let's put Neil Warnock in charge of Real Madrid and watch the club slowly implode as Manchester United was in the process of doing had they not sacked Moyes.

zAbbo

pavb2 wrote: »

I was reading a comment could have been on here or elsewhere which made the point that in the modern game success in the pl is more to do with expenditure on the squad rather than the influence of managers tactics etc.

All based on this book, good read too - Pay As You Play: The True Price of Success in the Premier League Era

syklops

I am by no means a football expert, but Man U had practically the same team under Ferguson as they had under Moyes and look what happened to them.

Winning requires talent, both on the pitch and off it.

Speaking as a professional, I have worked with some awesome teams, but nothing confounds or disillusions a good team than an unsure, disorganised or clueless management team.

I'm pretty sure football is the same.

Will I Amnt

It's a bit of both. If Mark Hughes was somehow still at City, they would still be throwing money at every transfer window in search of a league title. If Mancini didn't have an open chequebook he wouldn't have won it either.

Ulysses Gaze

thelad95 wrote: »

David Moyes had access to an unlimited transfer budget and that didn't go so well did it? Obviously with greater resources, you can buy better players but managers and tactics do dictate league position. Let's put Neil Warnock in charge of Real Madrid and watch the club slowly implode as Manchester United was in the process of doing had they not sacked Moyes.

Also, look at Real Madrid after they let Del Bosque go. They had a team of Galacticos and yet it took them 4 years to win La Liga after he was let go.

Only when Capello came in, a World Class coach, did they manage it.

Gits_bone

Put Lewis Hamilton in a Force India and he won't win the world title.
Put Sergio Perez in a McClaren and Hamilton will win.

If you have the finances (best car) but a poor manager (poor driver) then you won't win.

If you have the best manager (best driver) but poor finances (bad car) you won't win either.

You need a good mix.

niallo27

thelad95 wrote: »

David Moyes had access to an unlimited transfer budget and that didn't go so well did it? Obviously with greater resources, you can buy better players but managers and tactics do dictate league position. Let's put Neil Warnock in charge of Real Madrid and watch the club slowly implode as Manchester United was in the process of doing had they not sacked Moyes.

He didnt even get a full season though. He was a disaster but i dont think many managers would have have been able to follow Ferguson. Even van gal has them miles off winning the league after spending hundreds of millions.

Bobby Baccala

Fulham had a fair amount of cash to splash, at least enough that any decent manager could have kept them in the premier league with it. Spent a fair amount too over the past few seasons on the likes of mitroglou, ruiz and this season mccormack. I know it's not massive money they've spent but for the amount they have spent it did them no good. The certainly outspent a few teams that are still in the bpl

I believe it's a combination of money and tactics/management.

niallo27

P4DDY2K11 wrote: »

Fulham had a fair amount of cash to splash, at least enough that any decent manager could have kept them in the premier league with it. Spent a fair amount too over the past few seasons on the likes of mitroglou, ruiz and this season mccormack. I know it's not massive money they've spent but for the amount they have spent it did them no good. The certainly outspent a few teams that are still in the bpl

I believe it's a combination of money and tactics/management.

They did make it to a europa league final which was some achievement for a club like fulham.

enfant terrible

Wouldn't Wenger have spend much less than Man Utd and Liverpool on players and wages to win three titles?

Rayne Wooney

If success is winning league titles and champions leagues then you have to ask, can a great manager win these with average finances and can an average manager win these with great finances?

I'd split it 55% manager and 45% finances, (well spent finances that is before someone throws a Liverpool or Spurs at me) . I don't think Mourinho would have it this easy without spending almost 100 million on key players in 2014 but he is arguably the best manager active at the moment.

Paully D

I read in Soccernomics that it's more to do with wage bill than transfer spend.

The teams with the higher wage bill generally were the most successful. Of course there's exceptions, but for the most part a bigger wage bill = more success.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f340caae-47cd-11e1-b646-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3NR9CSizl

In Soccernomics, Szymanski showed that players largely earn what they are worth, judged by their contribution to their teams’ performance. He found that the size of each English club’s wage bill (taking data from 1978 to 2010) largely explained where the club finished in the league. The club that paid the highest wages typically came top; the club that paid least came last. The correlation between players’ wages and league position was about 90 per cent, if you took each club’s average over about 15 years.

The same article states that the studies within that book found that only a small amount of managers consistently improve their teams performance:

Still, there is an important caveat. Players’ wages don’t explain everything – merely almost everything at most clubs. That leaves room for a few good managers to make a difference. The question then is: which managers finish consistently higher with their teams than you would expect given their wage bills? Or, to borrow a phrase from Real Madrid’s manager José Mourinho, who are the special ones?
Szymanski has tried to answer that question. He analysed the financial accounts of four-fifths of English professional clubs from 1973 to 2010, and identified the managers who consistently overachieved. These men are the elite.

We should note right away that Szymanski’s model gives more credit to overachieving managers at the top of football than at the bottom. England’s 92 professional teams are spread over four divisions. A manager in League Two who has the 90th smallest budget in England but manages to finish 80th nationwide is overachieving. However, a manager with the third-highest budget in England who wins the Premier League is probably overachieving even more. At football’s summit, competition is fiercer, the amount of money typically required to jump places is higher, and so managers of giant clubs predominate at the top of Szymanski’s rankings.

The managers who make his elite list divide into two groups. One half are managers of giant clubs: icons such as Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and the number one on the list, the late Bob Paisley, who won six league titles and three European Cups with Liverpool from 1974 to 1983. These men are good, and football knows that they are good. They are correctly valued. Yet the other half of Szymanski’s elite are managers scarcely known to most fans: titans of the lower divisions like Paul Sturrock, Steve Parkin, Ronnie Moore and John Beck. They too have consistently finished higher with their teams than their players’ wage bills would predict. Yet the football industry and the media industry largely ignore them. These men are good but undervalued.

Some may question whether a manager of Manchester United or Arsenal can overachieve, given that their players’ wages are very high. After all, United have the highest revenues in English football, and Arsenal aren’t far behind. Surely clubs that rich ought to win league titles?
In fact, Szymanski’s list helps us understand just how much value Ferguson and Wenger add to their clubs. United and Arsenal are not in fact outsize spenders. For many years they barely outspent some of their frustrated rivals. Both clubs tend to live within their means. Manchester United habitually make operating profits, used to pay dividends, and now fork out large sums each year to repay the debts of their owners, the Glazer family. That doesn’t leave Ferguson fortunes to spend on players’ wages. He doesn’t seem to need it.

The Premier League has 20 clubs, so the average club spends 5 per cent of the division’s total wages. Manchester United are always above that 5-per cent line, but for years they weren’t very far above it. In 1995/1996, for instance, they spent just 5.8 per cent of the Premier League’s total wages but won the title. From 1991 to 2000, United’s average league position was 1.8 (ie somewhere between first and second spot) and yet in that decade the club spent only 6.8 per cent of the division’s wage bill. Ferguson was getting immense bang for his buck. In part, he owed this to the Beckham generation.

Beckham, the Neville brothers, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs were performing like mature stars, but given their youth they would have been relatively underpaid. Ferguson also benefits from his longevity. Having been at Old Trafford since 1986, by the 1990s he had chosen every player at the club himself. He wasn’t paying the unwanted signings of his predecessors to rot in the stands. That helped keep United’s wages down.
Ferguson continued to overachieve relative to his wage bill in the 2000s, even after Beckham’s generation had become big names earning top whack. Admittedly, his over-performance diminished. From 2001 to 2010 United’s average league position was again 1.8, but in this decade he spent nearly 9 per cent of the Premier League’s total on wages. No wonder, because life had become ever more competitive at the top, with Chelsea and Manchester City getting shots of oil money and Arsenal and Liverpool receiving ever more income from the Champions League.

The sums that Ferguson requires to dominate seem still to be rising. In 2010, the last year in Szymanski’s database, United’s share of the Premier League’s wage bill peaked at just over 10 per cent. Yet even that wasn’t outsize. Manchester City were spending about the same proportion, while Chelsea accounted for 14 per cent of the Premier League’s total outlay on wages from 2004 to 2010. That’s the largest share for any top-division club in the 37 years of Szymanski’s database. Other teams, too, had exceeded 10 per cent of the division’s total spending before. In short, Ferguson is a phenomenon.

Wenger is almost as awesome. In his first seven seasons at Arsenal, from 1996/1997, he averaged a league position of 1.6 while accounting for 7.5 per cent of the Premier League’s wages. That was a bigger share than Ferguson was spending then, but hardly plutocratic. Wenger’s performance has declined since. From 2005 through 2010, Arsenal had an average league position of 3.3 while spending 8.8 per cent of the Premier League’s wages. That’s only modest overachievement.

Yet during Wenger’s worst moments, especially after Arsenal’s 8-2 thrashing at Old Trafford last August, his critics were too harsh on him. Given that he was up against richer clubs, and against another great overachieving manager in Ferguson, it would have been astonishing had Arsenal continued to win titles. In particular, it was unfair to castigate Wenger for his regular defeats to Chelsea. The wage gap between the two clubs has been vast since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, and gave his manager Claudio Ranieri a mammoth 16 per cent of the Premier League’s wage spending for 2003/2004.

Clearly Ranieri ought to have won the title. However, his failure is forgivable. Even with the highest wage bill, it’s tricky to finish top, because you are competing against both bad luck and the fairly well-funded overachievers Wenger and Ferguson. Though Mourinho’s Chelsea outspent their rivals, he deserves credit for winning two straight titles. But Mourinho spent only three full seasons in England and therefore doesn’t figure in Szymanski’s rankings.

Manchester City’s wage bill probably overtook Chelsea’s last year (the accounts are not available yet). If Ferguson can keep his neighbours from a title this season, he will have confounded the odds again. Szymanski’s ranking of managers measures only spending on wages, not on transfers, but it’s worth noting that Wenger and Ferguson typically have relatively low net spending on transfers too. That makes their high rankings here even more impressive. By contrast, Rafael Benítez – also in Szymanski’s list – splashed out on transfers at Liverpool. So although Benítez economised on wages, he didn’t get his league positions cheaply.

Down in the bottom divisions, the likes of Sturrock, Parkin, Beck and Moore seem to be performing almost as impressively as Ferguson and Wenger. Sturrock et al also finish high in the league relative to their clubs’ wage bills. Yet their overachievement mostly goes unnoticed. Beck and Moore currently don’t even have clubs. Sturrock is sitting in his office an hour before Parkin visits with lowly Bradford. And Parkin isn’t even Bradford’s manager, only the assistant. (Cruelly, Sturrock’s adversary in tonight’s match is called Parkinson: Bradford’s manager Phil.) Titans of the lower divisions get ignored.

The market in managers is mostly inefficient: some stars go unrewarded, while mediocrities continue to muddle on and find good jobs. What are men like Sturrock doing right? And why don’t they get the credit?

It's a very interesting article and that book is well worth reading IMO.

Gits_bone

Rayne Wooney wrote: »

If success is winning league titles and champions leagues then you have to ask, can a great manager win these with average finances and can an average manager win these with great finances?

I'd split it 55% manager and 45% finances, (well spent finances that is before someone throws a Liverpool or Spurs at me) . I don't think Mourinho would have it this easy without spending almost 100 million on key players in 2014 but he is arguably the best manager active at the moment.

Guardiola has to be ahead of Mourinho.

Rayne Wooney

enfant terrible wrote: »

Wouldn't Wenger have spend much less than Man Utd and Liverpool on players and wages to win three titles?

Between 97 and 04 United spent ~90 million more than Arsenal

Arsenal won 3 league titles but United won 4

Rayne Wooney

Gits_bone wrote: »

Guardiola has to be ahead of Mourinho.

A topic for a different thread but I'd probably have Mourinho if I had to choose and I know many who'd agree

enfant terrible

Rayne Wooney wrote: »

A topic for a different thread but I'd probably have Mourinho if I had to choose and I know many who'd agree

Interesting I'd go with Guardiola.

Didn't Guardiola win much more during their time in Spain, domestically and in Europe?

Gits_bone

enfant terrible wrote: »

Interesting I'd go with Guardiola.

Didn't Guardiola win much more during their time in Spain, domestically and in Europe?

His rate of failure is something else as well.

Rayne Wooney

enfant terrible wrote: »

Interesting I'd go with Guardiola.

Didn't Guardiola win much more during their time in Spain, domestically and in Europe?

You could look at it as Mourinho was unlucky that Guardiola had arguably the best club 11 of all time at his disposal during his time there, if we are looking at it purely for the performance of the managers.

Winning league titles for Bayern isnt really a massive test on oneself is it? He needs to be winning champions league for Bayern in my view

Gits_bone

Rayne Wooney wrote: »

You could look at it as Mourinho was unlucky that Guardiola had arguably the best club 11 of all time at his disposal during his time there, if we are looking at it purely for the performance of the managers.

Winning league titles for Bayern is really a massive test on oneself is it? He needs to be winning champions league for Bayern in my view

You could put forward that Pep did more than just inherit the best team, he bred them into his style.

He's also breaking records left right and centre with Munich.

enfant terrible

Rayne Wooney wrote: »

You could look at it as Mourinho was unlucky that Guardiola had arguably the best club 11 of all time at his disposal during his time there, if we are looking at it purely for the performance of the managers.

Winning league titles for Bayern isnt really a massive test on oneself is it? He needs to be winning champions league for Bayern in my view

Still think Guardiola performed much better, what is their records in Spain anyway while they were rivals.

Two leagues and a Champions league for Guardiola and one league for Mourinho.

niallo27

A stat that is not mentioned either is that Jose took 16 points out of 18 in the top 4 mini league last year and still only manages to finish third. Chelsea ****ed away the league last year.

pmasterson95

QPR and there fantasic team consisting of Julio Cesar, Bosingwa etc. were surely a massive spend and resulted in relegation...

blueser

Being a City fan, I fully understand that money makes a significant difference. Believe me, I do. However, you need a manager in place who recognises who he needs to bring in to implement the style of football he wants his side to play. Any fool with an open cheque book can bring in any number of players (Liverpool and Spurs this last couple of seasons, and that example of QPR below), but if they don't work, what good was that money? We've had our share of flops this last three or four years; Rodwell, Sinclair, Baloteli, Maicon, Savic, Nastasic, not convinced by Mangala; I could go on. It is true though, money buys you a better class of flop! The bottom line is though, you need a good manager.

aodea

Money of course plays a huge factor but it is by no means the sole factor.

Atletico Madrid won the Spanish title with a far smaller budget in every way than Real and Barca.

Dortmund won the bundesliga with a smaller budget than Munich.

This season Southampton have a smaller budget than, spurs. Liverpool i would also imagine Everton and maybe some other clubs in and around that and have out performed them.

Coaching is massive Klopp, Simeone done remarkable jobs. Youth system is key to not rely solely on purchasing players such as Southampton.

Take the championship clubs who went down last year should have the biggest budgets but are not preforming in a way that they should.

Spending 25million on players will not gtd success and nor will having Mourinho at hull guarantee success. The mix is somewhere in the middle no doubt with 100s of contributing factors.

HalloweenJack

It's a bit of both.

You need money to get in the best players but you need a top manager to get the best out of the players.

Just look at the managerial instability at Chelsea after Mourinho's first spell. In five and a half years, there were seven full-time managers.

All the money in the world but Scolari (who I personally rate quite highly as a coach) and AVB both struggled to bring success. Grant, Hiddink and Benitez all did reasonably well but they were short-term options and I don't think Grant would have been able to continue his good run, he's not a good manager. Di Matteo did brilliantly to win the CL but he's also responsible for our worst league finish in a decade. Followed by what he showed in the first half of the next season, I think it's fair to say he wasn't cut out for it.

Ancelotti was the only manager who actually was able to manage the team to a decent level, I think if he'd been allowed to stay, he would have done very well, just look at what he's doing now at arguably even more of a basket-case club.

That doesn't even cover Claudio Ranieri's first year when he was throwing money around like it was noone's business.

On the other side of the coin, put someone like Sam Allardyce or Steve Bruce in charge of Bayern or Madrid and watch it crumble.

Morzadec

Money is definitely the strongest factor and will usually win out.

But it's not an insurmountable factor. We'd all stop watching if it was. It just gives a fairly hefty advantage that will usually tend to win out.

What Atleti achieved last year shows that the odds can be upset. Dortmund achieved a spell of success in Germany too with a paltry budget. To a lesser extent (in terms of them not exactly having meagre resources and also not actually achieving the feat) Liverpool came very very close to upsetting the apple cart last year.

Then you have teams like Porto and Liverpool (can we include Inter in this?) who have won the Champions League in recent(ish) years (though maybe just before the era of massive, massive spending) with relatively cheaply assembled squads.

But I do think money tips the balance hugely in your favour - just look at the league this year, 2 horse race between the monied teams, and it's likely to continue that way in the foreseeable future.

But there's always that sliver of hope, that year where you get a combination of astute signings, and/or maybe young players coming through, and a system and manager that works, that you could challenge.

One thing I would say is that I'm not sure sustained success is possible without money. Sure you might have that one year of glory, but can you beat money over a prolonged stretch? I'm not sure if there's any evidence for this.

You look at Dortmund's and Liverpool's collapse this year... Atleti are still flying high but will they consistently challenge for La Liga for all of the next 5 seasons? I hugely doubt it because they don't have the financial clout to hold onto/attract the best players, and there's only so many times you can manage to defeat the overwhelming odds of financial disparity that are against you.

So I would pretty much go along with the fact that sustained success at the very least is close to impossible if you are at a considerable financial disadvantage.

But there's always the chance the odd season you can achieve something.

PhlegmyMoses

Money keeps you near the top. A great manager wins you trophies consistently. Madrid's original Galacticos are the example here. If finances predicate trophy winners, then they massively underachieved.

Blatter

It's an interesting question and one I've often thought about.

There are examples to back up the theory that the manager is very important and and examples that show a high cost team doing very well with a manager that isn't that great.

Moyes at United being the obvious one that shows an average manager dramatically lowering the performances/results of a big club. But then I think back to Avram Grant at Chelsea during the 08/09 season, I'm pretty sure between the time he took over (late September) and the end of the season, Chelsea had the best record of any team in the PL and they were a whisker away from winning the CL.

IMO, if you have a high cost squad you'll do very well as long as there's some decent structure (from a previous regime) in place and very importantly, there must be harmony in the dressing room. Thinking back, Grant probably didn't try to force any sort of unwanted changes and let Terry, Cole, Lampard, Makelele, Drogba get on with the way they wanted to do things and with which they had gotten success with. Scolari (not a great manager imo) tried to change things and his reign was disastrous. Similar to Moyes at United, a lot of players clearly weren't happy and not all pulling in the one direction which can devastate a club's performance.

gosplan

blueser wrote: »

Being a City fan, I fully understand that money makes a significant difference. Believe me, I do. However, you need a manager in place who recognises who he needs to bring in to implement the style of football he wants his side to play. Any fool with an open cheque book can bring in any number of players (Liverpool and Spurs this last couple of seasons, and that example of QPR below), but if they don't work, what good was that money? We've had our share of flops this last three or four years; Rodwell, Sinclair, Baloteli, Maicon, Savic, Nastasic, not convinced by Mangala; I could go on. It is true though, money buys you a better class of flop! The bottom line is though, you need a good manager.

The difference is that richer clubs don't have to field their flops.

They just bench them or loan them out and go back to the market.

Also the reason Liverpool and Spurs had money to spend is that they couldn't keep their best players.

I reckon get the right players at the right time and any manager can deliver a trophy. Mancini won the PL, Di Matteo won the CL, Grant lost a final on penalties.

What separates the excellent managers is identifying and keeping the right players as most importantly handling transition and refreshing the team.

But IMO, any of the PL managers could deliver a trophy in the right conditions.

Overall money is the biggest factor without a doubt but there are exceptions due to certain managers/situations etc.

HalloweenJack

Blatter wrote: »

Moyes at United being the obvious one that shows an average manager dramatically lowering the performances/results of a big club. But then I think back to Avram Grant at Chelsea during the 08/09 season, I'm pretty sure between the time he took over (late September) and the end of the season, Chelsea had the best record of any team in the PL and they were a whisker away from winning the CL.

I remember vividly a game with Wigan at the Bridge towards the end of that season. 1-0 up, had been all over them but Wigan were still going for it. IIRC he made some really bizarre subs and basically tried to shut the game down... at home... to Wigan!! Of course, Heskey equalised right at the end and that was a blow to our title hopes.

That was the match when I lost all faith in him, just saw him as an absolute chancer.

Dempsey

This is basically the case. People can name the outliers cases but football at the highest level is moneyball and the likes of FFP will do little to stop it and most likely help maintain the status quo in football for longer periods of time

PhlegmyMoses

Dempsey wrote: »

This is basically the case. People can name the outliers cases but football at the highest level is moneyball and the likes of FFP will do little to stop it and most likely help maintain the status quo in football for longer periods of time

Moneyball is a different concept entirely and may work if they can figure out a way to successfully apply it to football.

Dempsey

PhlegmyMoses wrote: »

Moneyball is a different concept entirely and may work if they can figure out a way to successfully apply it to football.

I wasnt referring to the sabermetric model, i was referring to the idea that who spends the most, invariably wins. Which was the case in baseball for decades

wandatowell

Gits_bone wrote: »

You need a good mix.

Seems about right to me.

phenom

I highly doubt that the expenditure of a football club every season can relate to their finishing position in the league and domestic trophies they win .

okay the top clubs have the money to spent on the top players but this still doesn't mean that those players are going to adapt to style of play of that team , it's seen season in season out

CSF

phenom wrote: »

I highly doubt that the expenditure of a football club every season can relate to their finishing position in the league and domestic trophies they win .

okay the top clubs have the money to spent on the top players but this still doesn't mean that those players are going to adapt to style of play of that team , it's seen season in season out

You're looking things in too individualistic a manner.

The Premier League (or most other top tier leagues in the world) won't run exactly as in order by wagebill, and there'll be exceptions that run way away from where they should, but it won't be too far off it.

Gits_bone

niallo27 wrote: »

A stat that is not mentioned either is that Jose took 16 points out of 18 in the top 4 mini league last year and still only manages to finish third. Chelsea ****ed away the league last year.

There is no mini league. 38 games is the league.

TheDoc

niallo27 wrote: »

A stat that is not mentioned either is that Jose took 16 points out of 18 in the top 4 mini league last year and still only manages to finish third. Chelsea ****ed away the league last year.

"You don't win the league by beating your title rivals, you win the league by not loosing to relegation candidates"

CSF

Gits_bone wrote: »

There is no mini league. 38 games is the league.

It is a relevant stat nonetheless.

Gits_bone

CSF wrote: »

It is a relevant stat nonetheless.

It's not relevant at all.

And why is the "mini league" the top 4? Top 4 is only used to differentiate champions league teams.

Chelsea were going for the title so the top 4 doesn't really matter. Why wouldn't Everton be included? Or Man Utd?

Ulysses Gaze

PhlegmyMoses wrote: »

Moneyball is a different concept entirely and may work if they can figure out a way to successfully apply it to football.

They won't.

Football has too many "other" variables that will make it impossible for moneyball to work in football.

It could be a player's relationship with a manager, another player(s) at the club, whether he gels with other players at a club on the pitch, a club itself, a clubs expectations (or lack thereof and associated pressure of moving to a club with more pressure for a high transfer fee) and a myriad of other factors that will make it impossible to truly ascertain whether he will be a success at a club based on statistics.

CSF

Gits_bone wrote: »

It's not relevant at all.

And why is the "mini league" the top 4? Top 4 is only used to differentiate champions league teams.

Chelsea were going for the title so the top 4 doesn't really matter. Why wouldn't Everton be included? Or Man Utd?

It's a relevant stat because those games are usually the ones that decide where the title goes.

The point was that it's surprising that Chelsea did so well there but never really looked like winning the title.

niallo27

TheDoc wrote: »

"You don't win the league by beating your title rivals, you win the league by not loosing to relegation candidates"

Not true 11 out of the last 13 champions had a better record than anyone else in the top 4 league.

Gits_bone

CSF wrote: »

It's a relevant stat because those games are usually the ones that decide where the title goes.

The point was that it's surprising that Chelsea did so well there but never really looked like winning the title.

City last year got 10 points from "mini league".
Utd in 2012/13 got 10 points from "mini league".
City in 2011/12 got 12 points from mini league".
Utd in 2010/11 got 10 points from "mini league".

All modest points totals to be honest.

CSF

Gits_bone wrote: »

City last year got 10 points from "mini league".
Utd in 2012/13 got 10 points from "mini league".
City in 2011/12 got 12 points from mini league".
Utd in 2010/11 got 10 points from "mini league".

All modest points totals to be honest.

Wouldn't say that. There are only 18 points available. Anything over 9 suggests you've got the better of things really. I think any team in the top 4 would be absolutely delighted with a tally of 12. 3 home wins, 3 away draws is usually the lofty aim for these games and every result above that is a bonus.

Gits_bone

CSF wrote: »

Wouldn't say that. There are only 18 points available. Anything over 9 suggests you've got the better of things really. I think any team in the top 4 would be absolutely delighted with a tally of 12. 3 home wins, 3 away draws is usually the lofty aim for these games and every result above that is a bonus.

I think if you looked at the champions results against promoted teams you'd see 15/18 at least.

CSF

Gits_bone wrote: »

I think if you looked at the champions results against promoted teams you'd see 15/18 at least.

Yeah of course you would but of course you're going to see a much higher points tally in games against weaker teams. Plenty of teams who won't win the league also rack up 15-18 points against weaker teams. Those are the matches you're expected to win, even if you're just in a battle for 4th.

COYVB

Usually, wages dictate finishing position with a swing of just a couple of places

Gits_bone

CSF wrote: »

Yeah of course you would but of course you're going to see a much higher points tally in games against weaker teams. Plenty of teams who won't win the league also rack up 15-18 points against weaker teams. Those are the matches you're expected to win, even if you're just in a battle for 4th.

But why does the mini league stop at 4th? Everton were in 5th last season and only a few points off 4th. City got 6 points from everton last season where Chelsea only got 3. Had Chelsea got 6 from Everton they might have won the league, never know..

CSF

Gits_bone wrote: »

But why does the mini league stop at 4th? Everton were in 5th last season and only a few points off 4th. City got 6 points from everton last season where Chelsea only got 3. Had Chelsea got 6 from Everton they might have won the league, never know..

Any such numbers are arbitrary, but you have to set one somewhere.