Adrien Rabiot

[Garrus]

I’ll make this short.

To get an idea of the level of ligue 1 teams, You only have to look at Europa league, Specifically how many times French teams actually made it into the 16-stage in the past 4 years, That’s not a tough metric is it?

64 “teams” made it into the 16-stage over the past 4 years in Europa league, Spanish and Italians teams made it 12 times each, Do you know how much French teams did this simple accomplishment?

4 times.

They share this pathetic number with the Ukrainian and Portuguese teams!
Belgian teams did it 5 time!, I’ll say it again, Belgium had higher qualification into the 16-stage than France.

Yet here we are, In multiple pages of arguments with, Let’s be honest here, A slime ball, Who despite getting banned on almost a weekly basis, He still spouts BS with no restraint, And saying the name ‘kante’ Like parrot.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I'm still perplexed how BBZ can rapidly reply to posts within 10-20 minutes, while including obscure statistics spreadsheet which would take any normal person at least hour to dissect and then copy paste into .txt file. I think this dude is some sort of an AI.

 

[Jair Ventura]

I’ll make this short.

I'll do the same. The 4th place team in France made the Europa league final last season. If we're only looking at the Europa league, that's pretty good. Especially given Lyon made the final 4 the season before, the same season Monaco reached the final 4 of the UCL. Sounds like the Belgian First Division, right?

The reason why so many of you can only offer arguments that make no sense is because you're trying to grade a league without watching it. You literally have no knowledge about what you're discussing.

 

[Thiago10]

This is getting ridiculous, you don't need fancy calculus or spreadsheets to understand that the Ligue 1 isn't nearly as good as the other major leagues...

 

[Bulgroz]

You know what is arrogance? Thinking that just because you "watch a league" more than someone else you are the only authority capable of making arguments about it and completely above a metric like the UEFA coefficient designed by people who's careers revolve around football which basically accounts for ALL European results and not just the ones you watched here or there and maybe happen to remember. Seriously, it's not even like a Whoscored/Squawka rating which at least has a subjective valuation system that can be completely criticized. It's literally just an accumulation of results.

Even assuming you watch every single Barca game (which you very likely don't considering a lot of your statements) I watch a LOT more of La liga than you do. That doesn't mean I think of myself as above you in any argument you make about la liga or spout the horseshit of "why don't you just shut up? I watch more La Liga than you do" basically every single post as a central argument.

Nor do I reject a standardized comparison out of fear, I submit La Liga to the exact same standards as I use for Ligue 1 when I compare them. Whereas you want to hide away from these objective comparisons and pretend like they are meaningless in the face of your grand personal knowledge of Ligue 1.



Same as the above, your entire argument revolves around "I watch it more than you do so shut up". You actually think I've never watched Ligue 1?

It's no half assed calculus and it's not just a couple of seasons, but you can try to belittle it to that if you wish. The UEFA coefficient, the point distrubion argument, and the mobility of the bottom clubs is something I looked into all the way back to around 2012/13 which is pretty much all that's relevant for current discussion. It is also FAR more of an attempt at an objective argument than either you or Jair Ventura have attempted to make.

You've unilaterally asserted that the bottom 10 in Ligue 1 is more or less equal to that of La Liga because you think so and I should take your word on it. Why? That's complete rubbish. I've outlined several reasons to the contrary, whereas you have yet to come up with one outside of "but do you watch as much Ligue 1 as I do??".

You make a big talk about "5th grader trying to prove relativity" and roundabout bullshit of "failing to account for several factors". What factors? I'd love to see you actually dive into a line of thinking rather than just skirt about and avoid the debate altogether fearfully. I don't have respect when someone talks a lot of shit and insults and then provides nothing of their own volition to back up claims.

Gosh, where in hell did I pretend I was "better" than the UEFA ranking ? I merely said that a 5th grader equation (that's not an insult, that's a fact: it's basically a cross-multiplication) applied to it was a very inaccurate way of evaluating the level of a league. But if you think you've got yourself a scientific proof here, then good for you.

And if saying I know more about Ligue 1 than somebody who never watches it makes me arrogant, then sure, I'll take it. Coming from a forum where people call it "a farmer's league" that can't really mean much anyway.

As for Rabiot, I already said a few words earlier but they've been lost between all those very interesting stats. But since it's been ask politely elsewhere, short version:

I think he'd be a good player to buy, if we're only talking about football (depending on the price tag, obviously). Very versatile, good as a DM or a CM (which has been a huge debate around him these past 2 years), he'd definitely bring something new, be it with or without the ball. His mother might really be a pain in the ass though, but I don't know how much of it is going to stay true. I'm pretty sure the fact that he missed a WC because of his attitude might change him a bit for the better, but it's still a too early to say.

I was going to go into more details both about his style of play and everything that's not really football at all (i.e: his mother, his relation to the NT and so on) but I hardly see the point right now. I'll post something in a few days once the discussion is quieter though, probably during the weekend.


PS: I don't think I've insulted anybody. I talked about arguments, not about specific people. If I have insulted anyone, then I'm sorry, really. Though, in all fairness, if I did, it might have something to do with the fact that many people here basically shit on the french league in quite harsh terms and think that allows for a peaceful debate. Just maybe.

 

[BBZ8800]

I’ll make this short.

To get an idea of the level of ligue 1 teams, You only have to look at Europa league, Specifically how many times French teams actually made it into the 16-stage in the past 4 years, That’s not a tough metric is it?

64 “teams” made it into the 16-stage over the past 4 years in Europa league, Spanish and Italians teams made it 12 times each, Do you know how much French teams did this simple accomplishment?

4 times.

They share this pathetic number with the Ukrainian and Portuguese teams!
Belgian teams did it 5 time!, I’ll say it again, Belgium had higher qualification into the 16-stage than France.

Yet here we are, In multiple pages of arguments with, Let’s be honest here, A slime ball, Who despite getting banned on almost a weekly basis, He still spouts BS with no restraint, And saying the name ‘kante’ Like parrot.

Sorry, Garrus, as I said, this sounds like a stupid arguing over nothing, but I seriously think that this is way more complicated.
Not because of France in this case.
But because of England, and for example: Germany which is supposed to be better than England in the last few years.

We can agree that Spanish top teams are better than ALL other top teams from all leagues.
About France, they had only 3 teams in EL group stages last season. Ok, they lost Bordeaux in qualifiers.
All 3 went through.
Germany, the 2nd best European country had 3 teams in Europa league, none qualified from the group.
Spain had 3/3.

If you look only the last 2 years:
Cl 2017:
semis: Spain, Spain, Italy, France
Cl 2018:
semis: Spain, Germany, Italy, England
EL:
2017:
semis: Spain, England, France, Netherlands
2018:
semis: Spain, England, France, Austria

In the last 2 years, from 16 spots in CL and ELs semis:
Spain: 5
France: 3
England: 3
Italy: 2
Germany: 1

Of course, CL is more important.
But as I have said a lot of times, these stats can always be viewed in lots of ways.

French guys could say: France is improving lately and they had EL finalist this season, and CL nad EL semifinalists last year.
And with more clubs in the competition in the future, their coefficient will grow.
With a higher coefficient=you are seeded and get easier opponents.
When other big countries will lose points, they won't be seeded, they will get tougher opponents and lose even more.
That is always a vicious cycle.

So, in this story about coefficients, my biggest mystery is Germany and how were they on the 2nd place for years?
Based on rankings, their league was very, very strong in the last few years.
While it is a mickey mouse one-horse race.

Since they aren't THAT good and in the last 2 years, their clubs are quite poor in Europe, except Bayern, as always.
Last season, out of 6 German teams in group stages, only Bayern qualified. And they were 2nd placed.
And they started a season as a 2nd placed country in Europe...

Spain is on top as always.
England is quite good lately in Europe.
France is better and better.
Italy and Germany were meh in the last 2 seasons.

So, my post is about these stats and how can they be viewed in lots of ways.
And still, none of this written in the last 2 pages says anything about the relative strength of Spanish, English, German, Italian and French 17th placed team.

 

[God Serena]

The "You don't watch Ligue 1" argument is such a joke. I watch as much Ligue 1 as I watch non-Barca La Liga games. Ligue 1 is just a substandard league in comparison. [MENTION=23081]Bulgroz[/MENTION] going full Jair Ventura on us arguing that their teams are just as good outside of the top teams is odd considering his own club (6th place last season) is taking our dead weight B team RB on loan when said player pretty much unanimously is understood to be nowhere near top flight La Liga level.

 

[Bulgroz]

I didn't say our teams we just as good, I said they were probably not significantly worse. And that it's quite hard to tell. But apparently everyone here is an amazing pundit on that matter.

As for the Palencia's transfer, he's coming in as sub, and should play something like 10 games, barring suspensions and injuries. I'm not going to mention everything that's going on in Bordeaux, I talked about it in the Ligue 1 thread, but short story : our managers are just try to spend as little as possible.

That being said, want to talk about the fact that you bought our winger for 41 millions, even though we're a shitty team from a shitty league? How does that make sense? We can also talk about Mauro Arrambarri, awful in Bordeaux, starter for Getafe. As I said, you don't win an argument with examples. You might mention Neymar doing even better in ligue 1 than in la Liga, and I can respond with Krychowiak, from team of the year in la Liga to hardly playing in Ligue 1. And this could go on and on and on.

Without having any type of interest whatsoever, unless you get into very specific examples (on type of players working well in a specific league, or on particular flaws that prevent a player from making it in one country...).

 

[Jair Ventura]

You've brought up Kante like 100 times with no relevance at all.

Just because you say something doesn't make it so. An obscure French player in Kanté moving from a bottom side in Ligue 1 to dominate the EPL speaks to the depth of quality coming out of French football. There's no way around it.

Tell me plainly. What does Kante coming from Ligue 1 have to do with the strength of bottom Ligue 1 teams?

It says even second tier clubs in France are capable of producing world class players. That isn't something that's regularly happening outside of France, because the talent pools of its neighboring leagues aren't as deep.

Not "but they produce talent that goes elsewhere", their ACTUAL success in the league. Does the fact that Kante went on to kill it in the EPL make Caen some superteam? Does it raise their perpetually pathetic position in the table? Tell me, what does Kante have to do with that team's success and the success of small teams in Ligue 1?

What is with these ridiculous straw men arguments you're offering? The discussion was never whether or not Caen were a super team, but how it's possible for the second tier clubs in France to be far off the second tier clubs in Spain when it's the former that are producing world class talents. Rayo Vallecano and Leganes aren't producing class players that go on to dominate Europe's top competitions. Caen and Amiens are. So how are the Spanish pair far above their French counterparts? Because Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico perform well in European competitions? That's nonsense.

Dijon and Nimes tied with PSG prove that Ligue 1 is competitive? After 2 games? Hilarious, desperate. Sevilla is in first place and Levante is ahead of Real Madrid right now, guess that means they broke the oligopoly that Barca/RM/Atletico have!!! See how wildly stupid that sounds? Honestly you should try to pretend you never said that, it's pretty outrageous.

Don, these are your words:

Really resounding argument about the ability of bottom Ligue 1 teams to compete with the top ones, eh? N'Dombele and Lemar also left tiny Ligue 1 clubs to strengthen the top ones, further increasing the divide between the top and bottom. Also proving my point about how the bottom clubs are nothing but feeders and have pretty much NO hope whatsoever of rising up the table.

You say this, yet when I point out two newly promoted teams being atop the table you act perplexed? Dijon defeated two clubs that finished in the top 10 the previous season to be where they are. Nîmes are experiencing their first season in the top flight in over 25 years and in their second match they defeated Marseille 3-1. A club that finished top 4, reached the final of the Europa, and whose best player is a world champion.

When was the last time a newly promoted Spanish team defeated a club that finished top 4 the previous season?

Malaga did have a billionaire owner and at their height went to the CL quarter finals, guess that makes them as good as PSG eh? Lmfao. Their owner pretty much cut ties with the team like a season or two after that. Hell, his unwillingness to commit to their project actually ended up screwing them over in a couple of different ways.

Again, your words:

And using Monaco as an argument is hilarious, they literally got a billionaire investor and had some transfer windows as one of Europe's top spenders before they ever got near the league title or European success.

We both know Monaco was sanctioned, forced to sell players, and then reworked their project. That aside, if all a club needs is a billionaire investor to be successful, why isn't Malaga as strong as Monaco? Stoke City or Deportivo?

City is a success story for how oil money making a club one of the richest in Europe can propel them to success. Well done. Leicester/Tottenham/Everton are the ACTUAL EPL success stories of small teams being able to compete above their means and grow organically. You seem to think that is the same as having some oil rich Arab company throw money at a team until they win.

Your politics are your politics. I won't comment on that. In the context of football, City is success story because they've become the top club in England over the decade.

 

[Jair Ventura]

The "You don't watch Ligue 1" argument is such a joke. I watch as much Ligue 1 as I watch non-Barca La Liga games. Ligue 1 is just a substandard league in comparison. [MENTION=23081]Bulgroz[/MENTION] going full Jair Ventura on us arguing that their teams are just as good outside of the top teams is odd considering his own club (6th place last season) is taking our dead weight B team RB on loan when said player pretty much unanimously is understood to be nowhere near top flight La Liga level.

What's a joke is acknowledging that you do not watch a competition, as Don and Vill have, only to go on to condemn it as if baseless opinions carry weight.

 

[KingMessi]

Only those who have watched more than 2/3 of 380 Ligue 1 matches in the season may comment on the leagues quality. #Fahcts

 

[BADGERBHOY]

I'm still perplexed how BBZ can rapidly reply to posts within 10-20 minutes, while including obscure statistics spreadsheet which would take any normal person at least hour to dissect and then copy paste into .txt file. I think this dude is some sort of an AI.

 

[DonAndres]

[MENTION=16942]BBZ8800[/MENTION]

Ok I'll take it bit by bit.

You used the point distribution method as I did, but you made it go from 6-17 rather than 10-20. I was simply trying to categorize teams as "top" and "bottom" to go by halves. The reason being teams around #6-8 in the table, especially in the cases of La liga and EPL, still refers to top teams who accumulate lots of points even if they can't break into the higher rankings. Over the past 5 years it routinely included clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Sevilla, Valencia, Villarreal, etc. all of whom consistently contribute to a league's UEFA coefficient and are generally top teams.

Ligue 1 doesn't have as many top teams as La Liga/EPL, around #10 is where you can start to see a real cutoff where you can't outright tell that the EPL/Liga team is superior to the Ligue 1 counterparts. You made your point that things could be skewed when a league has a super strong top 2-3 teams which inflates their UEFA coefficient or whatever. But that isn't solely the case when it comes to Spain/England vs France.

-Sevilla are 3 time Europa League champions
-Athletic Bilbao Europa League finalists and semifinalists
-Valencia, Celta Vigo, and Villarreal (2x) all semifinalists
-Malaga CL quarterfinalists and Sevilla have made KO stages
-SEVERAL Spanish exits in quarter/semifinals/finals have been at the hands of other Spanish teams like Athletic/Valencia/Villarreal losing to Atletico/Sevilla
-Athletic Bilbao/Deportivo Alaves making CDR finals over teams like RM and Atletico

That's 7 teams right there alone COMPLETELY aside from Barca/RM/Atletico, and I'm only counting since 2010. Not even mentioning others like Real Socieded who routinely get very high league positions and have strong records against the best teams in La Liga. Compare that to France outside of PSG/Monaco. Marseille have made a EL final, Lyon have made a semifinal and that's literally it. England too has far greater superiority in Europe from a number of different clubs in top 10. So Liga/EPL top 10's are quite clearly ahead of Ligue 1.

Therefore, if Ligue 1's bottom 10 was actually equivalent to EPL/Liga's, numerically speaking you would expect them to be much closer in points to the top half of the table than Liga/EPL's bottom 10 are to their respective top half. But what you actually find is that the distributions between all the leagues are relatively equal. In fact, just as you said, you're likely to find that point distributions across the bottom 10's will be relatively similar for ALL leagues no matter how great or shit they are. But you wouldn't assume that the Portuguese or Dutch or whatever leagues bottom 10's are anything close to the bottom 10 of La Liga/EPL/Bundesliga/Serie A just because the two sets of teams have never actually played.

*Point being that most leagues are relatively the same in their distribution of strength and that if you know the strength of the top 10 then it's highly unlikely the strength of the bottom 10 will be abnormally higher than expected. Leagues are usually self consistent in their strength and a worse league is most likely to have a worse bottom 10.*

That's the Occam's Razor argument so to speak.

You also disagreed with my argument about upwards mobility. You cited that if Eibar can finish in the top 10 it shows that Liga's midtable teams are weak. Well, no that's not true. We already showed that the midtable teams are routinely successful in Europe and against strong domestic teams. So if clubs like Eibar and Celta Vigo can climb up to have almost the same or more points as Athletic/Valencia/Villarreal then they are able to compete at a decently high level. And if teams like Athletic and Valencia can keep relatively the same core of players yet drop from top 7 in one season to bottom 10 or bottom 5 in another, it shows that it isn't easy and takes a lot of consistency to maintain your position in La Liga.

Whereas in Ligue 1 teams really don't change positions even close to half as much as La Liga. Teams like Caen or Toulouse and the likes are consistently stuck in mediocrity. You might say "well that means teams like Marseille/Rennes/etc. are really strong" but in reality that isn't true as they've proven to be FAR weaker than the Spanish counterparts when it comes to European competition.

 

[te amo barca]

People trying to argue with two hardcore Ligue 1 fans, lol. It is futile, they will never change their opinion. As biased as it can get.

 

[El Flaco]

[tw]1034191033138069505[/tw]

Says Barca will make one final attempt at signing Rabiot this week