Gap between Premier League and Championship

[vas borbokis]

To much time on my hands and wondering if the data actually supported the theory that the gap between Championship and Premier League is getting bigger.

If this was the case you would expect all 3 promoted teams to come tumbling back down on a regular basis, in fact that has only happened once in 97/98 Barnsley, Bolton and Palace.

So if this is not the case then you would expect the 4 bottom clubs to get less points every year or the gap between the top 4 and the bottom 4 to get bigger.

The black bar shows the points for the top 4 teams and the red bar shows the points for the bottom 4 teams every year since the EPL dropped to 20 teams.

View attachment 173781

Conclusion, the trend lines show a slight increase in points for the top 4 and a slight decrease for bottom 4 but its not significant and not linier, make of it what you will.

I'm not sure why you don't think it's significant and only slight.
25 year ago the bottom 4 got half as many points as the top 4.
Now it's approaching only getting a third as many points. That's a huge change and clearly shows the gulf between top and bottom 4 is widening alarmingly.
Can't be good for the game.

 

[adiosmiamigo]

Having watched another round of games on MOTD, it's increasingly obvious that teams who win games almost always have players who show a significant level of skill, composure and decision making, experience, determination and strength.

Skilful players - whether a defender makes a perfectly-timed tackle, or midfielder skips through challenges to create a chance for a forward, or a striker who takes not just easy chances, but difficult ones too. The teams down the bottom lack defenders with sufficient skill to compete against skilful midfielders and attackers. They lack midfielders who can successfully run at defences and forwards who can take chances when they come along.

Composure and decision making - how many times do we see defenders from bottom teams give up possession far too easily? It could be argued they don't have the skill to do what they're trying to do, whether it's trying to control the ball in the first place, trying to dribble out, or finding a team mate with a simple pass, but composure is also needed. So many players from teams who will struggle in the Prem cannot handle the pressure of being pressed, or sometimes even approached slowly! Composure doesn't necessarily mean creating a piece of magic under pressure to clear the decks when defending, it means having the calmness to asses the situation and act accordingly. That might be to take the ball away from the attacker, it might be a first time pass back to the keeper, it might be to put it into row Z, but the correct choice under pressure needs to be made, and all too often isn't. When attacking, picking out the right pass, taking the shot early...there's loads of examples of where composure is lacking in struggling teams.

Experience - established teams have established Prem players. Rarely do Champ and lower league players take to it instantly. It's faster, stronger and much more difficult to adapt for players not to used to the pace of the game and the level of players they will face.

Determination and strength - Struggling teams get 'bullied' off the ball. Sometimes possession is lost because of a lack of skill, a lack of composure, making the wrong decision, but often players are just knocked of the ball. It honestly seems like it's men against boys, dads v lads, such is the gap. Every week we see big, powerful, athletic, strong skilful players rob the game of it's competitiveness. They have a handicap system in horse racing to try and level things up, but no such thing exists in football, and boty does it show.

Where does this leave us?
In need of too many unaffordable replacements who have the skill, composure, decision making, experience, determination and strength, unless... unless Hecky or someone else can work miracles with our current squad.
I do believe that if we went down, and here's about the only positive having such a gap, that we will have no problem with this squad returning quickly, but to what?!

Returning quickly? Not with this squad,methinks.

 

[BladeByChoice]

I'm not sure why you don't think it's significant and only slight.
25 year ago the bottom 4 got half as many points as the top 4.
Now it's approaching only getting a third as many points. That's a huge change and clearly shows the gulf between top and bottom 4 is widening alarmingly.
Can't be good for the game.

Its taken me so long to get back to this thread, I had to re-read to remember what I was on about.

You are quite correct in your comment the trend is significant and alarming, in my defence, I’m used to looking at much smaller sample sizes of a few weeks or months, where the shallow trend line is nothing to worry about.

I never considered that the sample was 28 years so 2 shallow trend lines moving away from each other represents quite a big change.

Further to this, and I won’t bore you with 4 graphs, if you split the data into 4, 7 year samples, the biggest change has been in the last 7 years.

Covid?

 

[Rochdaleblade]

Decent article in the Grauniad. Comments make familiar reading to forum members. Last on MoTD, big club bias from referees, VAR ruining it for match going fans, Garth Crooks being a cockwomble.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...r-league-really-the-holy-grail-for-supporters