Time for a bit of off season debate, following on from conversations in other threads about the A League's strength relative to the SPL or English Championship. Where do people see the A League relative to other leagues globally? SPL? Championship? ASBP? Bhutanese 3rd division?
How good is the A League?
I was looking at Rukavytsya season after he left for Israel the other. He's scored 14 goals in 28 games. (They came third. Which is a much better record than when he was last in the HAL with an average WSW side. They are ranking 23rd in the UEFA coefficients.
Time for a bit of off season debate, following on from conversations in other threads about the A League's strength relative to the SPL or English Championship. Where do people see the A League relative to other leagues globally? SPL? Championship? ASBP? Bhutanese 3rd division?
Miles behind Championship but ahead of the SPL IMHO.
ASBP as we know is one of the best leagues in the world (considering it has the third best club in the world in it and a record participation in the the club world cup), certainly better than the Championship and SPL.
Here's a test Ryan
best and worst in both leagues,
Would Adelaide beat Celtic and
Would CCM beat Dundee.
If so then a league is stronger. Not, then behind.
Here's a test Ryan
best and worst in both leagues,
Would Adelaide beat Celtic and Would CCM beat Dundee.
If so then a league is stronger. Not, then behind.
do you mean if Adelaide was in the SPL, would they win the league?
Here's a test Ryan
best and worst in both leagues,
Would Adelaide beat Celtic and Would CCM beat Dundee.
If so then a league is stronger. Not, then behind.
Statistically wouldn't you have to pit the average or median team from both leagues against each other rather than top and bottom. So it'd be Perth Glory v Ross County or Melb Victory v Dundee. I reckon the A League teams would be in with a great chance!
Here's a test Ryan
best and worst in both leagues,
Would Adelaide beat Celtic and Would CCM beat Dundee.
If so then a league is stronger. Not, then behind.
Well if I remember statistics properly you remove the outliers and CCM is definitely an outlier.
Another way of looking at it is to look at the median, would Perth or the Victory beat Ross County or Dundee? Probably yes.
Also it's Dundee united in last not Dundee itself, I don't know how good Dundee united is.
Also it's Dundee united in last not Dundee itself, I don't know how good Dundee united is.
How good are we? Well we have played Barcelona 4 times in European competition and never lost! but that was in 1966 and 87 (oh to have a team half the quality of the 87 team would be fantastic)
If you'd asked the question a season and a half ago we were fantastic, 2nd in the SPL, in the semi final of the Scottish League Cup and Scottish Cup, so what does our chairman do? Sells our 2 best players to Celtic and seems more interested in trying to buy Newcastle Jets, and starts the rot which has seen us have one of our worst seasons ever and get relegated, CCM probably would have hammered us 4-0 this season we have been that bad!
We last got relegated 21 years ago but then we knew we had a decent team and would bounce straight back (which we did via a playoff win against Partick Thistle) this time we don't and I think it could be a long while before we are back in the Premier league.
Anyway back on topic, I've watched alot of SPL & A-League football and would say the A-League is similar to bottom half of the premiership \ top half of the Championship.
Perfectly timed article by Michael Lynch in The Age:
Imo mid table Championship on occassions, otherwise top League one. Better than SPL. If Celtic and 'Gers are so good and win everything pretty much everywhere locally, why do they almost always fail in the qualifying or first rounds in any european campaign?
I think part of the difficulty with gauging the strength of the A League is the salary cap and lack of relegation. The MLS is probably the closest comparison in terms of league structure. I've seen a bit of the MLS over the last few years and I think the best teams there are better than the best A League teams but the middle of the road teams are roughly the same. Glory or Victory definitely wouldn't be disgraced in the MLS.
I also think that the standard of reffing lets the A League down. Too many cynical challenges are ignored or not carded, so skillful players have less opportunity to influence games and teams can't string flowing moves together as easily. I think that makes the A League worse to watch that's it otherwise could be. If refs were consistent with yellow cards for repeated infringement or professional fouls then teams might have to play cleaner and the games might flow more.
I think part of the difficulty with gauging the strength of the A League is the salary cap and lack of relegation. The MLS is probably the closest comparison in terms of league structure. I've seen a bit of the MLS over the last few years and I think the best teams there are better than the best A League teams but the middle of the road teams are roughly the same. Glory or Victory definitely wouldn't be disgraced in the MLS.
I also think that the standard of reffing lets the A League down. Too many cynical challenges are ignored or not carded, so skillful players have less opportunity to influence games and teams can't string flowing moves together as easily. I think that makes the A League worse to watch that's it otherwise could be. If refs were consistent with yellow cards for repeated infringement or professional fouls then teams might have to play cleaner and the games might flow more.
I think part of the difficulty with gauging the strength of the A League is the salary cap and lack of relegation. The MLS is probably the closest comparison in terms of league structure. I've seen a bit of the MLS over the last few years and I think the best teams there are better than the best A League teams but the middle of the road teams are roughly the same. Glory or Victory definitely wouldn't be disgraced in the MLS.
I also think that the standard of reffing lets the A League down. Too many cynical challenges are ignored or not carded, so skillful players have less opportunity to influence games and teams can't string flowing moves together as easily. I think that makes the A League worse to watch that's it otherwise could be. If refs were consistent with yellow cards for repeated infringement or professional fouls then teams might have to play cleaner and the games might flow more.
Think it's a great league.
Would have still plumped for it 5-6 years ago when the quality was thin in terms of players and teams, but I still enjoyed it.
This years finals series, while probably not having the phenomenons like Postecoglou's Brisbane or the distinctive team work of CCM, I think it's been the most competitive in A-League history, with teams playing at a very high level.
MLS makes me retch. Soz.
The easiest leagues to compare the A-league to are the other East Asian ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_clubs_in_...
It seems to be roughly on par with these, as A-league clubs have decent results (similar wins vs loses) with the K-league and the CSL (although the later I think will get stronger and stronger). Results against Japanese Clubs have not been good in the past, although it seems that they're getting closer.
This is the first time that two A-league teams have made it out of their groups, and because of the fact that they qualified a year in advance, they are actually mid-table A-league clubs. (Adelaide however did get knocked out in a single (home) tie vs Shandong.)
The AFC ranks it the 6th best league in Asia, however they hardly ever play west asian teams, so the comparison is hard, but it seems the east Asian leagues are stronger.