Premier League Qualty - What is it?

[Kanadyan Kanary 121]

I regularly read on this Board (and it’s been mentioned during

Canary Call) that certain players are not Premier League quality but what does

that actually mean? It’s like a generalisation that people use which is

impossible to counter because it''s not backed by fact – it just seems to be a

perception.  Perhaps someone can explain to me how they define ‘Premier

League quality’ and exactly which of our current crop of players has it?

Here’s my attempt for discussion purposes:

Assuming it’s based on objective criteria I guess you could

define Premier League Quality based on statistics (e.g. Who Scored).  Since there are twenty teams in the Premier

League and eleven players on the field we might  assume that the standard for the Premier League

is based on the top 220 players (*) in the statistics table. 

There are 527 players listed and those above

the 220 mark have an average score of 6.77 which means that the following Norwich

City players are Premier League Quality, based on the current season:Snodgrass JohnsonRuddyWhittakerBassong 

(*) This could be reduced to the top 200 players

because

goalkeeper stats are not easily comparative to outfield players but this

could be deemed as subjective manipulation of the stats and in any

case, would not affect our stats because the same 5 players would still

be in the top 200.

[Houston Canary 0]

I''ll take a stab at this, and expect to be corrected.

 

To me, you are Prem quality if another Prem team would play you, or try to acquire you. There are plenty of players on plenty of Prem teams who would not see the light of Prem light day if their team was relegated. Likewise, there are plenty of lower division players who would start for Prem teams if they were sold up.

 

Your basing Prem quality on goals scored is not right. Some very good defenders score very few goals, but that is not their job. Grant Holt has not scored much this season, but even as a striker, his contribution has been exceptional.  Our style of play does not create a lot of goals like it did last season. We seem to play the old Muhammed Ali "rope-a-dope" where we let the other team control the ball way too much but rarely score, and then hit them fast on jailbreaks or set plays.

 

And that''s what I think. (Gump-ish end to my commentary)

 

.

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

True Premier League quality is a player who other teams would try and poach off us on relegation.

Clearly this is not a 100% accurate definition as age can have an impact.

Also a player could be described as "good enough for the premiership", and not be any great shakes but do a decent job.

A championship player, would be one who struggles to impress at this level.

[blahblahblah 2]

For me, this is someone who is fit / skillful enough to play games at the faster tempo required in the EPL.

I''d guess that players put an extra 2 km into a Prem match over a championship one. Their distribution of the ball needs to be better too, unless they are a disruptor kind of player.

[Kanadyan Kanary 121]

Houston Canary wrote the following post at 21/04/2013 7:48 AM:

 Your basing Prem quality on goals scored is not right.

Houston - sorry I may have confused you here. I was not basing my analysis on goals scored. I took the statistics from the "who scored" website. http://www.whoscored.com/Teams/168 Anyways I like your idea of basing quality on other Prem League Teams wanting to acquire the player (also agreed by Foghorn) but again that is subjective until other teams express an interest or the player has been sold/acquired.   So based on this definition which of our current players are PL quality?