Guardian - the Championship is, basically, s**t!

[Deleted]

I saw this at lunch time and j'know; I was looking forward to reading it tonight ...

... should have known.

Reading have showed the way in this regard: promotion in 2006 followed three seasons of patient, incremental improvement by a team playing the kind of football likely to prosper at the higher level. Although, as ever with any grand plan, it helps if you've got a little money to spend, as Reading and West Brom both do.

You know an article's rubbish when the example quoted is complete nonsense. Reading retain the ball well my blimmin' 'arris. Nor do they try to. You can keep the thing all day against Reading, providing you stay out of their last third of the pitch with it.

As he finally admits, you can only play football with a team of footballers and they cost cash. Lots of it.

And:

Burnley, managed by Owen Coyle, impressed Arsène Wenger in the last round of the Cup, but remain decidedly mid-table

Which proves the point - trying to play football with carthorses gets you knocked out 2-0 while Arsenal don't need to bother breaking sweat.

And I agree, the comments to the article are far better than the article (but then that's Web2.0 for you)

Still ... If you don't write anything, you don't get paid ...



ah

[nathan]

liverpoolstokie1 said:

I know what he's saying but I completely disagree with his point about our style not being suited to the Prem, whereas WBA's is.

I've had this argument many times before but I think we'd stand a better chance of staying up than the likes of West Brom, Ipswich, etc.

Obviously whoever goes up will have to strengthen massively but I think our tough spine, strength, power and speed of attacks would serve us well.

It's all well and good fannying around with the ball in midfield ala West Brom but it's pretty worthless if you can't defend when you inevitably lose the ball.

The pundits don't like to admit it but more and more successful Prem teams are starting to play the way we do. Teams outside the top six or eight have little chance of success playing passing football as they just can't compete with the United's, Arsenal's, etc.

Pompey are the perfect example of how a smaller team can succeed in the Prem and I think we already play in a very similar way to them. No doubt the pundits would get off on West Brom's beautiful football but I wouldn't mind betting they'd be the ones on the end of 6-0 drubbings.

Homzy, I personally would not like to pass comment.

Our style is also considered similar to that of Watford - whose predictable nature of play saw them dreadfully found out.

Equally, Pompey act as a decent example of what can be achieved adopting a direct approach.

Ultimately, it comes down to the quality of exponents you have in your side, I suppose.

[Homzy]

Totally agree Nath, Stoke or any other team promoted this season would have to strengthen massively to succeed in the Prem, regardless of what style of football they play. Watford, and Derby this season simply didn't sign enough Prem-quality players.

What I was trying to get at, and what I will be putting in an article for TEAMtalk tomorrow, is that sides without the financial resources of the top six or so in the Prem can not hope to gain too many results in that league by outplaying the opposition.

Instead, teams such as Bolton and Pompey (and Stoke if we go up) need to ensure they are fitter, stronger and quicker than the opposition. That is the only way to win games in the Prem and if West Brom think their tippy-tappy shite will get them into Europe they're seriously misguided! ;D

[StoKeith]

There's a fairly pertinent comment in there by "realdelia":

I saw Stoke City against West Brom just before Christmas. Stoke scored three goals: the first was the product of high speed stabbing pass along the ground to Sidibe, who flicked it with brilliant precision and perfect timing into the body of Ricardo Fuller who had sprinted past him: Fuller, running at top speed controlled a fast rising ball with his chest and slotted a perfectly placed shot with the outside of his boot past the West Brom goalkeeper. Stoke's second came from a whipped free kick awarded as a result of an agricultural foul by a West Brom defender: the ball skimmed off an attacker's head to Fuller who controlled it in an instant and drove a fulminationg volley across the goalkeeper. Stoke's third came as a result of Fuller hard by the touchline picking up a well-judged long pass from defence and running sixty yards with the ball, beating one defender then slotting a controlled shot through another defender's legs, just past the goalkeeper's hand and inches inside the far post: dazzling skill and athleticism. Almost to a man the journalists who described the game, and to his shame Tony Mowbray too, reported it in terms of craft outmuscled by route 1 primitives, a laughable parody of the facts, but just what everybody is primed to expect.

I wonder if Ronay has seen Stoke at all this season? I'd be willing to bet he's not been to the Britannia Stadium.

[Deleted]

liverpoolstokie1 said:

... teams such as Bolton and Pompey (and Stoke if we go up) need to ensure they are fitter, stronger and quicker than the opposition. That is the only way to win games in the Prem and if West Brom think their tippy-tappy shite will get them into Europe their seriously misguided! ;D

Bang on LS.


To be fair to the writer (though I don't know why) he seems to have set out to talk about a different thing than the Championship i.e. Why England don't do well ... But then seems to have thought ...

... Hang on, which clubs are going to bring through all these well trained English kiddies? ... the prem clubs won't do it ... I know, the championship ... Doh!

(Cos let's face it, Arsenal's academy isn't stuffed full of English-kiddies)

ah

[Olgrligm]

I'd be a bit reluctant to call Fuller's third a 'well-judged long pass from defence', but other than that the reply is spot on.

[Cupid Stunt]

This playing football the way it should be is bollocks. If we passed it around we'd get fucked over because unless you have quality players in every area on the pitch, you can't pass through a team like ManUre can.

We have to compete with teams who have much bigger fortunes than ourselves (West Brazilwich Albion, Charlton, Watford etc) but yet we are matching them on the pitch and getting results out of them. Surely this is what you want from football?

Why would you want a league where the same rich laoded teams win t everything every year? I know the football isn't fantastic, but you have to give respect to managers like Pulis, what they're doing at clubs is building up stability, which is what you need to survive in the Premiership, why pass our way up to the premier league and sack our manager because our players aren't playing like Brazil in the premiership and find ourselves coming back down.

I couldn't give a fuck if we play like Brazil, it's not the death of football. Teams like ManUre are the death of football.

Rant over.

[StoKeith]

domsmithstokie said:

I couldn't give a fuck if we play like Brazil, it's not the death of football. Teams like ManUre are the death of football.

Spot on Dom!

[thepremierbanksy]

Many good comments on that article. most important for me is the one about prem clubs now being able to buy players that MIGHT be good enough for the prem, rather than ones that are good enough now, leaving the lower leagues without their best players. There these players then hardly get a look in at prem level and their development is stunted in the reserves.

Likewise, pure footballing entertainment in the prem is not that easy to come by outside of arsenal and manyoo, and we can't all support them. Supporting your club that you love is virtually always exciting in some sense, even if it's just getting worked up into fury it still counts as a state of excitement.

[ted1965]

The problem with many football writers isn’t so much that they are wrong in their observations it’s the actual standard of what they espouse, for instance yes there are many teams outside the Premiership who certainly play unattractive sterile football and yes they may struggle to survive playing the same way should they be fortunate enough to reach the top. Though personally I think it’s the fear of this supposed super league, the best league in the world that actually intimidates sides before a ball is kicked.

The first comments after any side go up, well I think they will struggle to stay in the top flight, of course they will because any club that has managed to survive more than a season is going to be on a budget they can’t hope to compete with unless they have a sugar daddy on board. As Derby and many others before them have found, getting up before you’re actually ready is in some ways a disaster.

Though as has been said, outside of a few sides, how good is the Premiership. Could anyone argue that Fulham, Wigan, Derby, Bolton, Birmingham, or the likes of Sunderland are very far above the better Championships sides. The Premiership is not only a league divided it’s also a league with four distinct groups, there are three who can win the league United, Arsenal and Chelsea, after that there’s another clutch of clubs fighting for a European place. Though lets be honest even Liverpool with all the money they have thrown at it are no closer to being title contenders than they were 5 years ago.

When I first went to see Stoke, 1970 yes sides sometimes ran away with the league like Leeds did but in general there were at least half a dozen sides who had a realistic chance to compete for the title as was proved by the fact so many different sides won it in that decade. There was a real feeling that most teams were evenly matched and if you had a good manager you could attract the very best players. We had in Gordon Banks the best there was at the time, there is no way we could attract the finest goalkeeper in the world today even if we were in the Premiership. They simply wouldn’t consider such a club, we aren’t one of the elite.

I personally think it’s a crying shame that the league title has been reduced to a two or three horse race each year and that simply depending on your financial status or media rating will for the main decide where you stand in the pecking order. That’s not football for me, that is simply a closed shop and as the rich get richer the rest will fall further and further behind. It’s now considered a minor miracle if a promoted side finish outside the bottom 5 in the Premiership if that doesn’t change then football will become totally sterile at the top level and the real excitement if not quality football will indeed be in the leagues below and maybe that’s how it should be as lets face facts 50 % of supporters in the Premiership couldn’t even tell you who was playing on a Saturday and what’s more they don’t give a damn because it’s all about being seen at the game and not about truly having a passion for your club.

[OldStokie]

I think he's 100% spot on. Unfortunately, his argument falls flat on it's face because, as others have said in this thread, he doesn't go into the reasons why. In search of the Holy Grail of getting to The Prem, managers will use any means at their disposal to do so, and if that means leaving behind the basic principles of the 'Beautiful Game', instead of using foils, they'll enter the arena wielding a mace. It works too, but once they get there, they find the finest exponents of the fine arts are more than a match for the blunt instrument they wield.

OS.

[The Toxic Avenger]

Like who OS? Who are the "finest exponents of the fine arts?" There's Arsenal, Man Yoo, Spurs at a push, and then who?

[thepremierbanksy]

OS, this is correct, however his leading example of good championship football, WBA, were promoted playing just this sort of "mace wielding football" last time around. Only since getting relegated and having 2 seasons rebuilding the side avec parachute payments have they turned from WestBattleaxeAlbion to WestBrazilAlbion*. Which is probably about as long-term as a club like ours can be expected to think in light of our non-profitability, lets just get up however for now, and see what happens football-wise when we have a much greater turnover.

Glad to see a few people on Guardian sticking up for us, and more generally the superiority of Championship football over Prem as a total supporter experience rather than just the actual football which I have been telling all my TV supporter mates for years (granted the article was gunned at the quality of English players and tactics rather than just slating the division).

*Forgive me for these WBAisms, I'm just feeling a bit silly today