La Liga vs Prem

[Yank]

Would be an interesting pre season idea to have the 20 teams play each other to see which league is best

Forget the ICC, that is actually a great idea. In the US in college basketball they do something similar. Theirs conferences for pretty much every region an Atlantic coast conference, southeastern, Big 12 (southern Midwest, Texas, Oklahoma based schools), Big 10 (Northern Midwest, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa based schools) and the Pacific coast. The schools would never schedule each other and it made it hard to rate them. Now early in the season they play a ACC/Big 12 challenge. Or an SEC/Big 10. The point is, they play teams that usually never play until post season so you can get a feel of what division is stronger. Typically the strong teams would play weak ones and you'd learn nothing.

The games are played early enough where they won't ruin a season, but have added a ton of interest to the game in what is typically a dead time.

 

[dancing llama]

I'm a bit of a stats freak... Soooooooo there have been quite a few studies on the correlation of various factors with league success, and in most cases the most important 3 factors affecting final league position are revenue, wages, and attendance. Suprisingly (or not, after last season) the amount spent on transfers in a single season has a very small impact on the following finishing position so I'm ignoring transfer spend.

Anyhow here are the figures - mostly from 2016/17 apart from the La Liga wages which comes from 2017/18 as I couldn't find the 16/17 figures for all clubs.

Revenue
PL £4.797 billion
La Liga £3.046 b

Total Wage Bill
PL £2.226 b
La Liga £1.965 b

Average Attendance
PL 38,274
La Liga 27,700

Just an interesting note on the wage bills where La Liga are closest - Real and Barca account for over 45% of La Liga total whereas top 2 in PL is only 23% of total.

As much as we all like to pretend otherwise, money talks in football (we can't really kid anyone can we, Mersey Millionaires ffs). In a league v league super deathmatch last 20 clubs standing thing, we would probably end up with a top 9 with 3 Spanish teams (Barca, Real Madrid, Atleti), then 3 more Spanish clubs in the bottom 11 (Sevilla, Valencia, Villarreal) giving the Premier League a 14-6 victory.

The 10th place trophy is ours!

 

[barneygumble]

There is such an uneven divide in Spain, it's beyond unfair. The gap which Real and Barca have on Atletico, to what they then have on the rest is ridiculous!

There is no split in TV revenue and various other factors teams like Eibar, Girona and Leganes will never compete. The reality is, whichever major city you walk round, be that Valencia, Seville, Malaga there are still so many wearing Real and Barca shirts, it's a joke.

If the Premier League followed a similar path that La Liga did and didn't share it's prize money, then we'd be in the same boat to be honest.

Does La Liga have 5-6 good teams yes, they do. Would the rest survive in the Championship? I'd say no chance. As a Málaga supporter, it's hard to watch Spanish Football because the best you can hope for is to stay up really, such is the huge divide in revenue. If the Spanish teams had the same money we had, they'd be a lot more competitive.

It's so corrupt it's actually hilarious!