Magners League of Football?

[ArdeeBhoy]

Complete and utter rubbish. Out of interest, how many Scottish Division two games do you watch, and how do you think Crawley Town would fair against Juventus? Or Fleetwood Town against Dynamo Kiev or Hertha Berlin?

As for soccer "always being a distant third"....that's only been for the last 10 years of success in rugby, yet you think this will continue forever now?

More than you. Those conference teams wouldn't do much worse than the EL teams in 'one-off' games.
And rugby has been bigger than domestic soccer for the last 20 years or so. So what? Notice you swerved the GAA point....

[Adrock]

And you also wrote "the LoI is nowhere near Championship level"


The level playing field is relevant to my opinion, when somebody says a number of LOI club could compete at lower championship level. I don't think they could - even that basic standard is much higher than those LOI clubs could survive amongst. A couple of the reasons why it is higher, is that championship players benefit from full time and better facilities.

Yes but their facilities are a lot worse because Championship sides are basically much bigger and better clubs, with a lot more fans, much better players they can afford to pay much higher wages, sponsorship, tv interest etc........its the whole package you have to look at. You could say any clubs in any third world league in the world would be a lot better if they had these advantages, but they don't because the standard of the league and the level of support for it doesnt allow for it.

In any case you could give any of the current LOI squads all those facilities and training and they are still not going to have the quality to match championship teams or those players would alrady be playing in the championship were they good enough.

[SwanVsDalton]

Roy says all his players including reserves should be in the Ireland squad so they I figure they must be class acts

Roy says a lot of things. Maybe if he got these 'class acts' playing somewhat better than guff I'd take what he says more seriously.

[jinxy lilywhite]

hogwash
I hate to say it but Bohs and Shamrock Rovers with their current squads could easily compete at an english champioship level.
with the exception of the bottom 3 the remainder of the loi could imo compete at an SPL level or at a league 1 level
having seen a lot of games in the bristol area over the past 18 mths the standard of loi is not that much lower than league 1. The lack of crowds, facilities any long term vision from the loi clubs is the only major difference

[Charlie Darwin]

English league clubs play 46 games a year plus cups. I don't think Rovers or Bohs could manage that without bigger squads.

[jinxy lilywhite]

they would not need that much more bigger squads. about 4 or 5 extra.
Also both teams had sizeable squads.
I am going on an observation from watching Bristol Rovers and City (very average sides) and their opponents.
BTW those rovers are the only rovers I like

[Adrock]

hogwash
I hate to say it but Bohs and Shamrock Rovers with their current squads could easily compete at an english champioship level.
with the exception of the bottom 3 the remainder of the loi could imo compete at an SPL level or at a league 1 level
having seen a lot of games in the bristol area over the past 18 mths the standard of loi is not that much lower than league 1. The lack of crowds, facilities any long term vision from the loi clubs is the only major difference

How exactly could a club like Bohs charging say €15 and getting maybe an attendence of a couple of thousand compete against a club like Bristol City who get a gate around 15,000 and charge twice the amount? Plus tv income sposnsorship etc
The standard of football is subjective but the sums don't add up. If the players were good enough to play at that standard why not go where the money is? Do you think there is any other motivation for them to be playing in the LOI other than that they are not good enough for league football in England?

[Jicked]

For those arguing that mathematics to prove that the Championship is in a different stratosphere of class to the LoI (some posters still even calling it the "eircom League" shows how many games they must watch)....do you think the Championship is in the five or six best leagues in Europe? Attendance wise, and financially, it must be pretty close right? The same people would probably argue that Celtic

And ArdeeBhoy, I'd love for you to explain how strong the AIL was in 1990?

EDIT: A very quick google shows that in 2009 the Championship attracted more fans than Serie A over the course of the season.

[Adrock]

For those arguing that mathematics to prove that the Championship is in a different stratosphere of class to the LoI (some posters still even calling it the "eircom League" shows how many games they must watch)....do you think the Championship is in the five or six best leagues in Europe? Attendance wise, and financially, it must be pretty close right? The same people would probably argue that Celtic

And ArdeeBhoy, I'd love for you to explain how strong the AIL was in 1990?

EDIT: A very quick google shows that in 2009 the Championship attracted more fans than Serie A over the course of the season.

Well they play plenty more games in the championship thats why - average attendance combined with admission price is the best guide really, for instance the Bundesliga is easily the most watched league because the admission charge is relatively low.I expect the championship is one of the top dozen leagues (EPL , La Liga, SerieA, France, Russia, Holland, Belgium, Ukraine, Portugal, Turkey, Greece probably better) What is for sure though is that a league with an average attendence of a thousand or two, charging around €10 a ticket is not going to have the resources to put out quality teams unless they have a very generous Sugardaddy owner and who would bother splashing their millions on a cruddy LOI club?

[Stuttgart88]

I think The Championship is the 4th most watched league in the world. The LOI has no chance of competing commercially and it's a relatively proven fact in football that quality is very closely correlated to wages. It's an open labour market but a closed product market - i.e., there is one big pool of labour in the EU and little in the way of intervention (salary caps etc.), but several discreet leagues for them to go to work in. By and large, the best labour will go to where it gets best rewarded. There'll obviously be exceptions but it's a fairly reliable rule of thumb.

[osarusan]

I don't see how it's possible to accurately compare the two leagues (or any two leagues) in terms of where the top LOI teams would fall in the English tiers. It's just speculation on who would beat who if the two teams ever met regularly and competitively.

Also, I don't see what real relevance it has to ideas to reform the LOI in some way.

[Saint_Charlie]

unless they have a very generous Sugardaddy owner and who would bother splashing their millions on a cruddy LOI club?

Garrett Kelleher?

[ArdeeBhoy]

For those arguing that mathematics to prove that the Championship is in a different stratosphere of class to the LoI (some posters still even calling it the "eircom League" shows how many games they must watch)....do you think the Championship is in the five or six best leagues in Europe? Attendance wise, and financially, it must be pretty close right? The same people would probably argue that Celtic

And ArdeeBhoy, I'd love for you to explain how strong the AIL was in 1990?

Any chance of some sort of translation??

PS.LOfI/EL, whatever! And we're comparing different sports now.
If it was the LofI in its heyday, we'd hardly be having this debate, FFS....