Is The Gap Between The Championship And The Premier League Closing?

[DaveF]

Was just looking at the Premier League table and it's nice to see all the promoted teams doing pretty well. Do you think this year so far is just a one off or do you think the gap in quality is closing?

[Clarky89]

Bit of both.

I think the Championship is getting stronger, and the Premier League is getting weaker.

[Barrs Court Red]

Bit of both.

I think the Championship is getting stronger, and the Premier League is getting weaker.

Yeah I think we've certainly seen an improving amount of quality in the 2nd tier of latr, while the Prem seems to have lost a certain amount of je ne sais quoi.

[cityboy]

I don't think so. The gulf in class between the Premier League & Championship is massive. I don't expect to see Blackpool out of the relegation scrap for too long (although I'm pleased they're doing well) and Newcastle & West Brom were Premier League teams in all but name last year. Newcastle absolutely walked the Championship last year after their relegation. Even the so called 'lesser' Premier League teams contain frightening quality - if anyone saw Fulham against Arsenal for example they looked a class above any team I've seen at Ashton Gate this year.

[Jon atyeo is my dad]

I think take the top six to eight from the prem out of it and what you have left is twelve very average teams ! You have a very good chance of staying up !

[DaveF]

I think a massive difference between the Premier League and the Championship is that all decent defenders in the Premier League are excellent with the ball at their feet, good passers, and the full-backs are good going forward.

[WTFiGO!?!]

A lot of the Club's over the last few years are making a better fist of it than what used to be the case, Club's such as Stoke and Wigan.

Wolves have made a second year as did Hull and so far so good for Blackpool. I think it's as competitive as it's ever been.. yo-yo Clubs such as West Brom and Birmingham are even establishing themselves and there's no dead certs for the drop like their used to be.

This doesn't mean to say the gap's narrowing, maybe promoted Club's are just adapting better to having the money.

The main difference for me is PL players already have in mind what they're going to do with the ball before they receive it, it is slicker.

[CITYRED]

Nicky Hunt played for a prem side not too long ago, nuff said.

[Alex_BCFC]

I think it is a little closer as a lot of the top prem players begin to move to Spain etc. I would still say there is a gulf in class but it is getting smaller. Hopefully the trend will continue.

[Barrs Court Red]

I think alot of it comes down to players being far more athletic these days, which means players at the lower end of the scale suddenly are on a more equal footing. It's the reason why international football has got so muuch tighter in the last 10 years. This is just a continuation of that trend. Also players tend to be alot better on the ball at any level than say 20 years ago.

Like WTFIGO says, one of the big differences is normally upstaires, but that can be coached. Youngsters at fairly basic levels now are taught how to posistion themselves to recieve the ball, so they are better to move the ball to the next player.

[spudski]

There are some Talented kids in this Country. The biggest problem is the standard of coaching. The foreigners are miles ahead of us. It will take at least a generation to catch up.

If you look at the England under 18's and below, we win a lot. As soon as it gets to Senior level it all falls short. We still have a mentality in this Country of putting throught the kids that have matured quickest, rather than technical ability.

I recently passed my 'B' Coaching License this year, and all the talk was of what is going on in Spain, Germany and Holland. I say to anyone who is interested in coaching to go and visit the set up's at Ajax and Barcelona, or come to think of it, any of the Spanish Clubs training centres. They train and coach completely different to us. It's a totally different mentality, that goes right back to Cruyffs ideas and philosophys.

The Foreign Coaches in the Prem struggle to get British players to play how they want, hense the influx of Foreign players. Wenger was asked why there were so few British players in his team. He implied that a lot of British players couldn't understand his training and that they wern't particularly bright.

I think the void between both divisions is overlaping. Player for player...The bottom half of the Prem is pretty much the same as the top half of the Championship. It's the difference in coaching that helps. All imho of course.

[Red Cloud]

I think the gap may be closing between championship and lower prem team due to the massively unfair distribution of wealth within the prem

take Man Utd for example, very rare do they kick off on a Sat at 3pm, virtually every single week they're on sky/esp taking the lion's share of the TV revenue - until the FA enforce some sort of distribution of wealth, teams like Man U are only going to get richer & richer and further ahead of the rest.

Did you know, last season they were on the box twice as many times as league leaders Chelsea!

[WellRedPhil]

Yeah I think we've certainly seen an improving amount of quality in the 2nd tier of latr, while the Prem seems to have lost a certain amount of je ne sais quoi.

I agree with this. I also agree with your point about players becoming stronger and more athletic. The resurgence of the 'Holding Midfielder' has also allowed teams to stop the opposition more and with what appears to be a slight lack of quality of late teams find it harder to break down a stubborn 4-5-1, leading to the 'lesser' teams picking up a lot more points away from home than they used to.

[CiderHider]

Championship is a much better spectical imo, I'm not sure just becuase a Prem player is paid 100 x time more than a Champ one makes him 100 x better.