Troy
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People keep posting that the Championship is a shit league, it isn’t. It’s one of the best and most competitive leagues in the world.
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The relative quality this season is quite low though. There's no dominant teams, and everybody looks beatable. So it's not that it's a bad league to watch or anything like that, but just a weak one, and people are frustrated that a little more investment could have us really competing at the business end of it.
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Weak why? The quality of individual players hasn't decreased imo. The fact that it's very close and anybody can beat anybody doesn't mean the league is of a lower standard, it just means that there aren't any outstanding teams relative to the others at this stage of the season. It's no coincidence though that (except West Brom), the teams with parachute money are close to the top and over the season as strength in depth becomes more important, the gap will become more evident. Even West Brom will be there or there about come the end of the season.
So.... "like a new signing" will be the mantra from CH and PR after another failed window to bring in a quality striker 😉
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None of the teams in this league get close to Fulham or Bournemouth last season.
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True, but from memory it wasn’t ‘till late on in the season that Bournemouth started to pull clear. Even Fulham weren’t that far ahead at this stage of the season and remember that we did the double on Bournemouth.
All I’m saying is that the overall quality of the league isn’t the same thing as the competiveness, it seems to me that you’re confusing the two. If there’s little difference between top and bottom, everybody could be class or everybody could be crap.
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Aye, but will spend til April running tentatively for fear of it going again, probably.
Thracia
Club Owner, or wingback, depending on your view
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After 13 games last season, Bournemouth were top and unbeaten with a goal difference of +13, Fulham were 2nd with a goal difference of +15.
How the fook did he manage that? A bit Balsa?
Unfortunate
Unfortunate
Did his hamstring twang when he hit the ball? I thought it looked more like when he set off to celebrate which makes it even more unfortunate.
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That's how it looked to me.
Set off legging it, releasing all that built up emotion of not scoring for so long and then scoring the winner on a big away day, only to twing his hammy in his overwhelming joy.
Really feel for the lad.
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By which time, Cole Stockton will be firmly installed as our permanent striking partner to Riis. Assuming Emil isn't sold. 😒
You say weak, I say it is competitive.
Who wants a Fulham running away with it destroying every team like City in The Prem.
The fact that this league, this season, is much of a muchness, makes it compelling viewing.
Isn't this what fans have always cried out for, financials aside, on the pitch 11 v 11 competitiveness. This season is showing this.
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But nobody was disagreeing with that? Its definitely preferable.
The point people are making when they say its a weak division is that it means we aren't far off a team that can do well, everyone is beatable!
Give me this over the Premier League any day of the week.
City will piss it, Arsenal are just pretenders at the moment.
Fulham weren't far off 100 points in the end. Very good championship team and they've started well in premier league.
If you look at points tallies so far then top 2 will probably need low 80s to get promotion which will be considerably lower than previous seasons and that should have a knock on for rest of league.
Normally 75 points is what you need to be sure of top 6 and again I think it could be lower when you look at what 6th place has mustered so far.
Think Norwich are a good case in point, joint top yet that side isn't a patch on their last two versions in this league that have comfortably won the league on each occasion.
Saw Morecambe highlights v Ipswich and he had a decent chance near the end and did a strange chip that rolled well wide of the post.
He is 29 in March so I simply see no logic whatsoever in this apparent link. As recently as 2018 he was scoring one goal in 20 + games in spells at Hearts and Carlisle and then went back to Tranmere and scored once in 16 games.
Done very well at Morecambe but that's the level he should stay at. At least Bodin and Stockley were younger when they signed but neither were anywhere near good enough for championship level.
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I'm not disagreeing with that, all I'm saying is that overall quality of league is no lower than last season and that not having teams run away with it doesn't change that. There's 3 factors getting mixed up here. Overall quality, competitiveness, and having a couple of dominant teams in the league.