Premier League sides

[BillyStubbsTears]

Covering themselves in glory in Europe again tonight eh?

Never mind. Everyone knows the EPL is the world's top league...

[LincsRover]

Yep, it must be with all those sky billions going into the players pockets! Best in the world! Certainly better than all those funny little sides in Europe......my arse!!

 

[Rovers91]

It's the most competitive and entertaining league in the world but in terms of quality the English teams aren't at the level of the top European teams apart from maybe Chelsea when they are on form.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Fat cats.

[Colin C No.3]

Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Man Utd ('68), now that's when 'we' were beating all the European 'fat cats'.

Celtic too. Won the European Cup in '67 with a team all of whom were born within 25 miles of the club.

England on 'Top of the World'. Bobby Charlton, Denis Law & Best all winning European Footballer of the year in same decade. Ah....makes me happy to have been a child of the sixties!

You can't beat a bit of nostalgia.

[Sammy Chung was King]

It's because every point in the league was hard won back then, the fitness of players is better, but is the technique?, each team back then had a real top class playmaker in the top league, and best of all they were mostly english!.
The game today is played just like back then, but with a fast forward button constantly being pressed, our game and the style we play destroys our players and the foreign one's.

Every game played is at 100 mph, the foreign games are not as exciting but they use they're brains to play the games, in our games it's heart, fitness and durability.
The foreign places pass the ball to each other accurately, they are technically better, and they will burst into a real pace when there is a real chance, our players are valued for how many miles they run in a game, instead of looking at what they achieved running all those miles.

Berbatov was the perfect example, seen as a lazy player, because he didn't chase full backs into the corners, but watch him come alive when the ball reached his feet.
For our national team to ever win anything, a team has to be formed, because our individuals are not good enough to wait for things like Berbatov was.
Ramsey had the guts to leave out one of England's greatest ever goalscorers in Jimmy Greaves, he had wingers in his squad, tried them it didn't work, so came up with a team with no wingers.
What i am trying to say is England haven't had a manager brave enough to leave his best player out for the good of the team system!, and neither was Paul for us, both Hodgson and Dickov are very Sven like avoid the problem fit the player in somewhere, it's lack of bottle to make decisions that they are paid to do, the team always comes first!.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sammy.

The technique of players these days is incomparably better than it was in the 60s and 70s.

Go and watch ANY game from that era and you will be astonished at the basic mistakes made by players. Lack of positional awareness. Regular mis-control of simple balls. Regular mis-placing of 10 yard passes when not under pressure.

There is not a single player from the 60s who, if they played like they played in the 60s, would get anywhere near the current Rovers side. And that includes Pele, Bobby Charlton, Alfredo DiStefano and George Best

[BillyStubbsTears]

PS

If you don't believe me, watch the first 30 seconds of the 1962 World Cup Final.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx4aDnXr3Gs

Trust me. It doesn't get any better over the subsequent 90 mins.

First few minutes of the 1970 final are marginally better but the standard is pitiful compared to even a bottom end Premier League side.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YnRKW1HOM5Y

[dickos1]

I agree on the face of it, it doesn't look as good
But I don't think you can compare, everything is so different now, the fitness, the training, the diet, the boots, the balls, the pitches , the coaching,
I don't see how it's possible to say George best wouldn't be any good in this era or Wayne Rooney would be so good in the 60s
There's too many variables

[Sammy Chung was King]

Good players will adapt to any situation, Stanley Matthews was a fitness fanatic, he would have played in this era no problem, George Best would have, but wouldn't have lasted long with the drinking, just like many now who do the same don't.
Nobody can really say for definite, it can only be an opinion, but i think players back then if given the same training, would be just as good.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dickos/Sammy. You are missing my point.

I'm not saying that those players couldn't have improved. I'm Just commenting on the standard that they DID play at. We have evidence for that in those videos. The standard was dreadful compared to today. That 1962 World Cup Final is barely at County Senior level today. Put present day Man City into that match and they wouldn't have had enough zeroes for the scoreboard.

I've been saying this for years, that if you took Jamie Coppinger, playing at the standard he did in 2008 and put him in the 1960s, with everyone else playing at the standard they played at then, you would never have heard anyone talk about Pele. Coppinger would have been the best player in the world by a million miles.

The real point is not what the potential of old-time players was. It's what they actually did achieve. And it is unarguable that players these days are streets ahead on bothe fitness AND technique than players were 50 years ago. Today's players are not just fitter and stronger. They play at a high intensity AND pass, dribble, tackle, control and shoot better than their predecessors.