Kris did you watch games last season or3 years ago.
I live in France but have only seen ligue 1 football but technically a lot of the teams are up there with PL teams. Monaco and PSG last season would both have been top 4 teams.
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Seeing as you can't be bothered to elaborate on your experiences of traveling to watch French football, I can't draw any conclusions on your views of French Liguria 2. Since RJK's spreadsheet is still in development, I can't draw any conclusions on that either.
So, I am left with my own experiences and opinions. Monaco would be a top 6 Premier team. Check out some of their results last season. The difference between Monaco and the clubs at the foot of the SAME division is much larger than the gap between Chelsea and clubs at the bottom of the Premier. Monaco were winning games 6-0, 6-2, 5-0 (3), and 4-0(4). If Ligue 2 is as strong as the Championship then how come Ligue 1 isn't anywhere as competitive as our own Premier division?
Damour could be a good signing, a late developer. But, Ligue 2 games are notoriously well scouted, and bargains are available. Damour has played an awfully long time at that level.
Kris did you watch games last season or3 years ago.
I live in France but have only seen ligue 1 football but technically a lot of the teams are up there with PL teams. Monaco and PSG last season would both have been top 4 teams.
There are some stinkers in their first division but teams like:
Lille
Marseille
Nice
Saint-Etienne
Bordeaux
Lyon
Could all be mid table here I think. Not that I saw any of them last year. I am going off what I know of them in the past. They aren't tin pot clubs anyway.
Here is a view of a simplified version, for only the leagues mentioned here.
leagues.jpg
Ligue 1 starts off as good as the top of the premier league and ends up towards the bottom of the championship. I bet they have some mismatches in that league.
That seems to be roughly in line with what people are saying from what they've seen also.
A very rough assessment of relative strengths of the top 3 leagues in the English pyramid and the top 2 in France
That suggests the top team in the Championship is far superior to the second placed team, when they won the league by one point? Also, that suggests Newcastle are better than 6 PL sides, and roughly equal to 2 more? Also, it looks like the there are instances where a lower placed side is ranked higher than the side above it?
I don't think I'm saying otherwise but it seems my actual experience of watching games in that league physically is not as important as a graph built on a one person study. Even the author says it is very rough!
On Damour, time will tell as always. Expectations seem unrealistic though, but what's new there?
As I answered above, don't focus too much on the individual points, more the general trend.
I would say that the graph says that the top of the championship isn't that dissimilar to the bottom quarter or third of the premier league. Which I don't think is too far from the truth most seasons.
I'm not claiming it's perfect, but I find it useful to try to gauge the strengths of some of the lesser known European leagues
An alternative way of showing the data would be as a single figure for average of the league.
If the premier league is normalised to 100
This makes la Liga 94
Germany and Italy about 90
Championship about 66
League one 29
Ligue 1 80
Ligue 2 43
SPL would be 42 under that system (34 without Celtic).
Again, I'm not claiming that to be gospel. Just a bit of fun.
A single average value struggles a bit in leagues where there are 2 or 3 really strong sides and a load of shit
I don't understand how this thread has evolved (probably the wrong word) like this!!
I don't care if someone has watched 3 games in ligue 2 or whether it's 16% better than the South Wales senior league!
All i know is that at one time Loic Damour was once regarded good enough to be one of 25 kids to be taken on at Clairefontainne and given the technical training to push on to the next level.
He failed in that quest up until now but the man himself has revealed that his attitude wasn't always what it should have been.
Now he is at a make or break age to prove that he has enough commitment to realise his obvious raw talent.
He has been brave enough to step into a faster and more demanding league to prove this. He cost us next to nothing so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's got.
In the brief time that i have seen him play i have been quite impressed and think he can nail down a first team spot.