The League Championship - Divisional Standings Without Precedent

[YankeeCanary 0]

There are sure a lot of strange things going on in the world and, this season at least, the League Championship is one of them. With two thirds of the teams only having five games remaining some of the possibilities appear to be without precedent:

• If the team holding third from bottom position currently facing relegation were to win their remaining games, and if the team holding the final playoff position were to lose their remaining games the two teams would be tied on points. Not going to happen of course but, at this late stage, it''s possible.

• Two teams currently in the playoff positions have only a favourable goal differential of 2. This has never happened, at least in the history of the 46 game era.

•  The teams occupying the 6 playoff spots traditionally finish with a combined points total over the season in the range of 500 points. Sometimes a few more, sometimes a few less but always close to that number. It appears the group this year will have a difficult time amassing more than 450 points.

• Over the past 20 years the teams who miss out on both promotion and relegation end up with an average gap between the top and bottom of the group of 22 points. This season that gap may well be as low as 10 points. 

We all know, of course, that it has seemed on any given day this season any team appears capable of beating any other team. Do you think it''s an aberration or are there factors at work, financial or otherwise, that are causing a greater equalisation in the teams that compete in this division?  

[blahblahblah 2]

[quote]We all know, of course, that it has seemed on any given day this season any team appears capable of beating any other team. Do you think it''s an aberration or are there factors at work, financial or otherwise, that are causing a greater equalisation in the teams that compete in this division?  [/quote]

I think there are a couple of factors at play here :

a) The huge prize for success, creating greater competition.

b) Massive Premiership squads.  Anyone who shows a bit of talent or ability in a televised championship game or two seems to get hoovered up by Premiership teams.  Kenwynne Jones, Dickson Etuhu, Robert Earnshaw, David Nugent, the boy Cotterill at Wigan, are examples of this, there are many more.  As a result, teams like Charlton and Sheff Utd have been forced to look to league 1 for strikers to mount a championship promotion challenge, because they can''t compete with Birmingham, Fulham, or even Derby for players.  So the parachute payments aren''t as much of an advantage as in previous years, because the talent just hasn''t been available to the parachute payment teams to mount a promotion challenge.

What are the options available to championship managers ?  Either they can use the loan system effectively to bring in young stars / Prem reserves, or they can look to build an organised unit of the players that the Premiership doesn''t want.  I suspect that the 2nd option is the one that is most likely to offer success in the longer term.

[Trent Canary 0]

Agree with BBB. Any decent players get snapped up instantly. Most teams are stacked with loan players, and presumably the quality of loanees is distributed pretty evenly across the league.

I think the key factors in this league are organization, teamwork, and a solid consistent lineup. Money helps, but if you cant bring in players that are any better than what others can get hold of, then there isnt much of an advantage.

[Boyo 0]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

We all know, of course, that it has seemed on any given day this season any team appears capable of beating any other team.   

[/quote]

Its like that every season, this league hasn''t just been tight this year it is tight every year.

[blahblahblah 2]

Having written the above, I then came across the loans thread, in there Fellas points to a lot of reasons why this league so tight.  I wish I''d read that first [:)]

[renegade tootsie 0]

Shhhhh... you cant say stuff like this on here, it makes sense and is a rational debate as to why even big clubs in the division like us are struggling along with half the league.  Better to shout ''TELL ME I AM WRONG'' and start multiple threads proclaiming it all the boards fault.

[quote user="blahblahblah"][quote]We all know, of course, that it has seemed on any given day this season any team appears capable of beating any other team. Do you think it''s an aberration or are there factors at work, financial or otherwise, that are causing a greater equalisation in the teams that compete in this division?  [/quote]

I think there are a couple of factors at play here :

a) The huge prize for success, creating greater competition.

b) Massive Premiership squads.  Anyone who shows a bit of talent or ability in a televised championship game or two seems to get hoovered up by Premiership teams.  Kenwynne Jones, Dickson Etuhu, Robert Earnshaw, David Nugent, the boy Cotterill at Wigan, are examples of this, there are many more.  As a result, teams like Charlton and Sheff Utd have been forced to look to league 1 for strikers to mount a championship promotion challenge, because they can''t compete with Birmingham, Fulham, or even Derby for players.  So the parachute payments aren''t as much of an advantage as in previous years, because the talent just hasn''t been available to the parachute payment teams to mount a promotion challenge.

What are the options available to championship managers ?  Either they can use the loan system effectively to bring in young stars / Prem reserves, or they can look to build an organised unit of the players that the Premiership doesn''t want.  I suspect that the 2nd option is the one that is most likely to offer success in the longer term.

[/quote]

[blahblahblah 2]

[quote user="JC"]

Shhhhh... you cant say stuff like this on here, it makes sense and is a rational debate as to why even big clubs in the division like us are struggling along with half the league.  Better to shout ''TELL ME I AM WRONG'' and start multiple threads proclaiming it all the boards fault.

[/quote]

You would have thought, that after 3,134 posts I''d be getting the hang of things in here, eh JC.  I guess I must be a slow learner...[:)]

[First Jedi 0]

"The teams occupying the 6 playoff spots traditionally finish with a combined points total over the season in the range of 500 points. Sometimes a few more, sometimes a few less but always close to that number. It appears the group this year will have a difficult time amassing more than 450 points. "

Thats because they haven''t finished! You need to compare like for like i.e. this point of the season vs. this point of the season OR end of season vs. end of season. Otherwise you are creating a false impression.

[Trent Canary 0]

I think thats been taken into account. The top 6 currently amass around 400 points.

[YankeeCanary 0]

Okay, so let''s take hypothesis one step further. Imagine that we slightly adjust the results of the top 6 teams by removing a combined number of 30 points from them without changing their current league position. This entails only removing a maximum of 2 wins ( 6 points ) from the top four teams, less from the next two. Then take those 30 points and allocate three additional points to each of ten teams from Southampton up ( we will leave Scunthorpe and Colchester unchanged ). That''s just one additional win for each of those ten lower placed teams. Now the table tightens up considerably without any change in the current position for all teams in the division. Far fetched you think.....but not by much is it? One more win for each of the ten lower placed teams, that''s all. If this scenario were real it would mean the difference between the team winning the title and the team being relegated in 22nd place would be a mere 5 wins on the season. With all teams scrambling for loanees in the future ( as outlined on another thread by fellas ) you can begin to see how marginal success and failure could become in this division.

P.S. Obviously, I realise the goals tally would have changed but that would be carrying silliness a little too far.. Also, for obvious reasons, I could not bring myself to reverse the position of Wolves and Ipswich on goal differential.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts	GD
1	Bristol City	41	17	13	11	49	47	64	2
2	Stoke City	41	16	15	10	63	51	63	12
3	Hull City	41	17	11	13	59	41	62	18
4	West Brom	40	17	10	13	78	51	61	27
5	Watford	40	16	16	8	58	47	60	11
6	Wolves	40	16	12	12	47	45	60	2
7	Ipswich Town	40	16	12	12	58	49	60	9
8	Plymouth Argyle	41	16	11	14	53	44	59	9
9	Crystal Palace	41	14	17	10	46	39	59	7
10	Burnley	41	15	13	13	55	55	58	0
11	Charlton Athletic	41	15	12	14	56	51	57	5
12	Cardiff City	40	14	14	12	47	44	56	3
13	Sheffield United	40	14	14	12	43	44	56	-1
14	QPR	41	14	14	13	56	58	56	-2
15	Preston NE	41	16	8	17	43	45	56	-2
16	Blackpool	41	12	17	12	54	53	53	1
17	NORWICH CITY	41	14	10	17	41	51	52	-10
18	Coventry City	41	14	10	17	43	54	52	-11
19	Leicester City	41	12	14	15	39	38	50	1
20	Sheffield Wednesday	40	13	10	17	42	47	49	-5
21	Barnsley	40	12	13	15	43	57	49	-14
22	Southampton	41	12	13	16	49	67	49	-18
23	Scunthorpe	41	9	11	21	38	61	38	-23
24	Colchester United	41	6	15	20	55	76	33	-21

[YankeeCanary 0]

Obviously, the Watford numbers should have been changed to something like 15 W, 15 T and 10 L.