The Championship is 'a poor league'.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,551]

I see this statement banded about a lot, but I'm somewhat confused by it. At the top end, Ipswich, recently promoted from League One, are level on points with a team who were Premier League winners only a few years back, while there's a six point difference between the play-off places and mid table. 11 points separate 7th and 21st.

Overall, in terms of competition, it seems a great league, so on what grounds is it being described as 'poor'?

Edited December 18, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Kenny Foggo 1,116]

It's poor in there are only two consistent teams and I think they will massively struggle if they go up.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Kenny Foggo

[The Real Buh 3,438]

It waxes and wanes in terms of quality. It’s been very good in some seasons but then the quality will dip in a fallow season. This is one of those.

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

It's a good league when we're winning it, and it's a poor league when we're not. Basically. 😉

[Capt. Pants 4,237]

Competitive, yes. The quality and technical ability of some of the players is **** poor.

[Worthy Nigelton 1,049]

It's poor. Look at the Binners players - basically a load of well-coached journeyman who are winning nearly every week. That wouldn't have happened in seasons gone by. Morsy, Chaplin, Luongo, Woolfenden, Hirst, Burns, Burgess have never done well anywhere, yet here they are. The relegated sides are basically miles in front of everyone else too. 

[Branston Pickle 3,661]

7 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

It's a good league when we're winning it, and it's a poor league when we're not. Basically. 😉

I think most people on here use us winning to show how weak it is?   So it’s weak when we are either winning or losing.

[BigFish 1,988]

Last year was much worse.

This year the three relegated teams have pretty much kept it together and the Binners have momentum, although I agree they are not all that. The rest are pretty typical. This is what the Champs is this days, a collection of player not good enough for the EPL and a bunch of loans in development.

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,278]

24 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I see this statement banded about a lot, but I'm somewhat confused by it. At the top end, Ipswich, recently promoted from League One, are level on points with a team who were Premier League winners only a few years back, while there's a six point difference between the play-off places and mid table. 11 points separate 7th and 21st.

Overall, in terms of competition, it seems a great league, so on what grounds is it being described as 'poor'?

It's frankly a stupid assessment. 

When it's close, and everyone can beat everyone, most say it's poor. When in-fact its competitive. 

How can one of the best and most supported professional leagues in the world be poor, when it's so competitive? Competition drives standards up, does it not?

It's a fantastic league with loads of quality. 

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Creedence Clearwater Couto

[king canary 7,609]

8 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Last year was much worse.

This year the three relegated teams have pretty much kept it together and the Binners have momentum, although I agree they are not all that. The rest are pretty typical. This is what the Champs is this days, a collection of player not good enough for the EPL and a bunch of loans in development.

Yeah I think this is true. Nobody has come down and been a basket case and two of the three promoted teams are doing well (obviously Plymouth not tearing the league up but also not mired in a relegation battle). I'd also say West Brom seem to have got it together.

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

12 minutes ago, Branston Pickle said:

I think most people on here use us winning to show how weak it is?   So it’s weak when we are either winning or losing.

Not sure, the impression I get is that it's particularly weak when we don't do well so it doubles up as a stick to swing.

[The Real Buh 3,438]

It’s probably 1 championship in 5 or 6 that is super competitive. There’s been some amazing seasons in the past when there’s a lot of high quality teams in it. It’s a league of massive potential for sure.

[Fen Canary 828]

11 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Last year was much worse.

This year the three relegated teams have pretty much kept it together and the Binners have momentum, although I agree they are not all that. The rest are pretty typical. This is what the Champs is this days, a collection of player not good enough for the EPL and a bunch of loans in development.

Isn’t the second tier by definition full of players not quite good enough for the top division? Likewise the third tier is full of those who can’t quite cut it in the second division, but are too good for the fourth? And so on and so forth? 

[dylanisabaddog 4,931]

How many players in The Championship are good enough for the Premier League? The only two I've seen this season are Summervile at Leeds and Clarke at Sunderland. 

I don't want to sound petty, but I've seen Ipswich twice in a week and although they're doing very well they don't have a single PL standard player (neither do we with the possible exception of Rowe). 

The only one I saw last season was Alex Scott who is now at Bournemouth. 

The proof of the pudding is that the Farke team of a couple of years ago would stroll this division. It really is poor, albeit very competitive. 

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,278]

 

19 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Last year was much worse.

This year the three relegated teams have pretty much kept it together and the Binners have momentum, although I agree they are not all that. The rest are pretty typical. This is what the Champs is this days, a collection of player not good enough for the EPL and a bunch of loans in development.

Essentially, your measuring the quality of the  Championship against the EPL. 

Leagues are a filtering down of talent and quality, by definition. 

It's not logical to say the Championship is poor because it's not as good as the EPL. 

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,278]

Just now, dylanisabaddog said:

How many players in The Championship are good enough for the Premier League? The only two I've seen this season are Summervile at Leeds and Clarke at Sunderland. 

I don't want to sound petty, but I've seen Ipswich twice in a week and although they're doing very well they don't have a single PL standard player (neither do we with the possible exception of Rowe). 

The only one I saw last season was Alex Scott who is now at Bournemouth. 

The proof of the pudding is that the Farke team of a couple of years ago would stroll this division. It really is poor, albeit very competitive. 

Judging the Championship against the EPL is not a fair measure. 

On that basis, every other league in the world is poor. 

[duke63 542]

The Championship is generally more entertaining than the EPL and surely that is what football should be about.

 

[S_81 798]

I think the league is probably best summed up at present by the fact that Luton and Shef U made it to the premier league this year. Solid, hard working, well coached, but underwhelming in many respects and neither would have gone up in other seasons. 

[mannings bandy legs 389]

22 minutes ago, dylanisabaddog said:

How many players in The Championship are good enough for the Premier League? The only two I've seen this season are Summervile at Leeds and Clarke at Sunderland. 

I don't want to sound petty, but I've seen Ipswich twice in a week and although they're doing very well they don't have a single PL standard player (neither do we with the possible exception of Rowe). 

The only one I saw last season was Alex Scott who is now at Bournemouth. 

The proof of the pudding is that the Farke team of a couple of years ago would stroll this division. It really is poor, albeit very competitive. 

I'd seriously add Sara to that. With better players around him he would excel in the EPL.

[Canarywary 106]

I would say that the standard of the Prem seems to keep getting better and better, faster than the Champ, and therefore the difference in quality between it and the Champ is also getting slightly bigger season on season, which sort of makes the Champ look a bit worse, even if it is still the more competitive league. Sometimes when I watch MOTD in the evening after watching Norwich, I do think 'Christ, this is different level'.

[BigFish 1,988]

35 minutes ago, Fen Canary said:

Isn’t the second tier by definition full of players not quite good enough for the top division? Likewise the third tier is full of those who can’t quite cut it in the second division, but are too good for the fourth? And so on and so forth? 

 

25 minutes ago, Creedence Clearwater Couto said:

 

Essentially, your measuring the quality of the  Championship against the EPL. 

Leagues are a filtering down of talent and quality, by definition. 

It's not logical to say the Championship is poor because it's not as good as the EPL. 

I made the case that it was poor because it wasn't as good as the EPL, in fact the case was it is better than last year.

But the idea that it is a natural filtering down of quality is also wrong. Football has changed, the gap between the EPL and the Champs has never been so wide, and it is widening. Before the EPPP got into full swing and combined with Bosman relatively good players often had extended periods outside the top tier and there were hidden gems to be discovered. That is very rare now, it is almost like they are playing different games. The grass roots and elite game have diverged and are pretty much unrelated.

[BlueHope76 70]

1 hour ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I see this statement banded about a lot, but I'm somewhat confused by it. At the top end, Ipswich, recently promoted from League One, are level on points with a team who were Premier League winners only a few years back, while there's a six point difference between the play-off places and mid table. 11 points separate 7th and 21st.

Overall, in terms of competition, it seems a great league, so on what grounds is it being described as 'poor'?

It's basically deemed poor on this board because Ipswich are doing well and Norwich not so well ( sorry but that's the truth ). The reality is that Leeds, Leicester and Southampton are stronger than the three that went up and Ipswich & Plymouth ( maybe not Sheff Weds ) are better than the teams that went down. It is a stronger league than last season without a doubt.  

 

 

[BigFish 1,988]

6 minutes ago, BlueHope76 said:

The reality is that Leeds, Leicester and Southampton are stronger than the three that went up and Ipswich & Plymouth ( maybe not Sheff Weds ) are better than the teams that went down. It is a stronger league than last season without a doubt. 

This bit is very true.

[Commonsense 624]

1 hour ago, Worthy Nigelton said:

It's poor. Look at the Binners players - basically a load of well-coached journeyman who are winning nearly every week. That wouldn't have happened in seasons gone by. Morsy, Chaplin, Luongo, Woolfenden, Hirst, Burns, Burgess have never done well anywhere, yet here they are. The relegated sides are basically miles in front of everyone else too. 

Wasn’t that us in the Lambert promotion year. Seemed to work well then, even when we got up!

[Commonsense 624]

37 minutes ago, S_81 said:

I think the league is probably best summed up at present by the fact that Luton and Shef U made it to the premier league this year. Solid, hard working, well coached, but underwhelming in many respects and neither would have gone up in other seasons. 

And probably wouldn’t this season. All that says is last seasons wasn’t very good. I think this season’s is better.

[Gordon Bennett 784]

1 hour ago, Worthy Nigelton said:

It's poor. Look at the Binners players - basically a load of well-coached journeyman who are winning nearly every week. That wouldn't have happened in seasons gone by. Morsy, Chaplin, Luongo, Woolfenden, Hirst, Burns, Burgess have never done well anywhere, yet here they are. The relegated sides are basically miles in front of everyone else too. 

Playing devil's advocate, is that not what we were under Lambert in 2010/11? 

[S_81 798]

33 minutes ago, Commonsense said:

And probably wouldn’t this season. All that says is last seasons wasn’t very good. I think this season’s is better.

Will be very interesting to see if Leeds and Southampton can find consistency second half of the season. The rest of the league is a much of a muchness again really. West Brom continue to kick on under Corboran. Otherwise it’s largely the same crowd in and around that play off pack. And not convincingly, with even the likes of Hull currently taking advantage of how average it all is. 

[shefcanary 2,409]

If you go back to the 80's pre-Sky money, the "2nd Division" used to be full of overseas players filling a lot of the sides, basically because they were cheaper than the "1st Division" players who were being cast off as that league went for European glory. This, more than anything else I think, improved the quality of the 2nd Division in those days, so that when clubs were promoted they managed to stick around a bit more as they had players who could produce something different from the established 1st Division clubs.

However those 1st division clubs soon cottoned on and by the time Sky money started to flood in all the EPL clubs were looking overseas for most of their incoming players. The Championship then had to start looking around for scraps once again. I cannot see how the Championship regains that level of competitive advantage it had pre-Sky, it is inevitable that clubs in the that league now have to work so much harder in getting together a squad that can play attractive football and still run the legs off the opposition, then translate that into a competitive EPL side.

Unless of course they achieve a step change in funding a la Brighton, Bournemouth etc.

Yep, money again!

[hogesar 9,676]

It's stronger than last season, certainly. 

Ultimately, it's not that the league is poor but that so many teams are of relative similar quality so the "anyone can beat anyone" tag feels so apt.

It's why we shouldn't have the entitlement of "Well, I'm not going to support my team still because we should have beat QPR better" or "It's only Sheff Wednesday, why would I get excited about beating them?"

The answer is because it's football and both teams have shown they can take points of others this season and Leicester for example only drew with Wednesday.

Because there's not a huge gap in quality beyond maybe 3 teams in this league, it gives us a shot for the play-offs, despite having some clear deficiencies in our squad.

[BroadstairsR 2,173]

It is a league of fine margins.

If Kenny's hooked shot had have been a foot lower in that last minute on Sunday, we would have bagged all three points.

I think that there is a lot of decent football been seen thus far in the Chumps this season.

The fact that "confidence" rather than "quality" so often seems cited as a viable point of forecast in so many games suggests this.

Leicester are really the only team who seem to have the quality in abundance to delete the "confidence" factor, and the last Leeds result stands out in support of this view.

Currently, the Binners wallow in it, and they have a young manager capable of getting the best from an abundance of run-of-the-mill players. I expect/hope a dip is in store. Leeds has the backing to strengthen in the window, and no doubt Farke's influence will grow as their season progresses.