Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
Yes, for the "quality" it brought them there was an awful lot of money wasted and teams like Stoke, Swansea, Southampton, Watford, West Ham, Bournemouth and Everton really weren't very good when you consider how much they spent.
Right, but then you can always pick a few teams near the bottom of the table and say they weren't really good, particularly if you pick two of the relegated sides also. But, for a bit of perspective, have a flick through the squads of the Premier League sides ten years ago. 2007/08 saw a Sunderland team fielded a 36-year Dwight Yorke, Fulham's number 9 was David Healey and Middlesbrough were relying on Jérémie Aliadière. If you were to de-age those players ten years and dump them back into English football, I'd imagine they'd end up at some mid-table Championship teams like Preston or Bristol City, not surviving in the Premier League in the days when Fulham can spunk £25m on a French player from Nice without breaking a sweat.

And sure, you could try to argue that those three players are actually good, and we could be here all night because that is subjective, or that they were cherry-picked, or list some players you think were iffy from last season's squads. Fine, whatever. But what I really wanna know is, if you genuinely believe that half the Premier League ten years ago could sign better players from across the world with half the money spent today... how did they do it? And how can we copy them?

But really I think football fans nearly always say a league is the weakest or strongest ever. They love 'em some superlatives.