State of La Liga

[No Soy Galáctico]

The competitiveness of La Liga and how it will get worse

With the heightened media attention over the countless Clasico matches this year, something tragic has been happening right under our noses. With Mata’s imminent transfer to Chelsea, this will be the 3rd top player in this transfer window to be leaving a competitive yet underachieving La Liga team to join the EPL elite. These young footballers are leaving clubs that should be challenging for the Primera division title in a gap that should be far closer than has achieved in almost a decade.

The Spanish league as we now know it is suffering from a massive gap between the top two teams and this gap will not close with continuous revolving doors at Atletico Madrid, with the loss of their young promising keeper and Aguero. Similarly with last seasons loss of David Silva for Valencia who has been sensational at Man City. And now with Mata, these clubs are have to continuously nurture new talent to cater for big spenders, which I find a tremendous shame and detrimental to the competitiveness of our league.

 

[House of Flies]

Not at all. Mata has sufficiently been replaced by their signings. Valencia is cashing in on reputation rather than talent.

Just like Atletico did. Selling Kun and getting a better goal scorer in Falcao. De Gea only came into At. Mad squad when their number 1 Asenjo got injured. It would be very hard to comment on Asenjo without seeing him. At. Mad consistently makes good keepers in its academy so De Gea is adequately replaced. They also have a really promising keeper on loan from Chelsea.

La Liga maybe is losing competitiveness which happens when you get best two teams (possibly of our generation) going against each other. But rest of the liga can stand their ground against the rest of the world.

 

[La Furia]

Yeah, if anything both Atletico and Valencia have improved this offseason, cashing in on reputation.

The only La Liga side of importance to take a step backwards this summer was Villarreal, and even then they improved their backline.

 

[diegomessi]

plus malaga got money and getafe too

 

[Barcafan 2304]

Not just a Spanish problem. Every league seems to have 2-3 at the top who are miles ahead of their domestic competitors. There are a lot of arguments about whose league is best and that is deflecting attention away from the worrying trend of football in almost every league set-up becoming increadingly less competitive

 

[Raed]

But is always the case of replacement not addition. What Galactico is trying to say is that with Mata and they came so far, how much further will another player be able to take them? 2-3 points more than last season? okay, 5? Valencia should be in a position to bring those reinforcements and keep Mata for squad depth, harmony, strength, continuity.

 

[La Furia]

But is always the case of replacement not addition. What Galactico is trying to say is that with Mata and they came so far, how much further will another player be able to take them? 2-3 points more than last season? okay, 5? Valencia should be in a position to bring those reinforcements and keep Mata for squad depth, harmony, strength, continuity.

Actually, as a balanced view of it from a Valencia blog puts it ( http://vcfcentral.com/latest-news/matas-exit/ )

"If Los Che end up buying a right-back and a centre-back of high calibre with some of Mata’s money, then I can confidently say that we are better off without Mata."

And that's the thing. I rate Mata highly but Chelsea are overpaying for him, an indebted club like Valencia needs to take advantage of this, because one more good CB or a good RB and they are in much better shape than they will be with Mata.

There's no point in using the money to replace him, when the squad is already filled with people who play his role. Mata is right now better than Canales, Piatti, Bernat and Jordi Alba, but those players all have the potential to be as good (some would argue better).

Valencia had a clear position this off season, they want to keep Mata, but if an offer they can't refuse comes in, they will sell him. And that's what happened, it looked like Mata was staying, but Chelsea got desperate, and Valencia would be stupid to turn down that money.

Clubs like Chelsea are killing football, in the long run if this continues the only clubs that will be relevant will be Barcelona, Madrid and anyone with a Russian or Arab owner (until the oil money runs out). But their short sighted stupidity is actually helping Valencia out in this case. Gala's point still stands, but he used the wrong example.

 

[Beast]

I personally find Mata so overrated . he can't do shit on his own i think Valencia won't be any different without him .. Piatti and Parejo will do the trick

 

[La Furia]

I personally find Mata so overrated . he can't do shit on his own i think Valencia won't be any different without him .. Piatti and Parejo will do the trick

Parejo is shit but Piatti and Canales will definitely do the trick.

Mata is definitely a great player, but I agree that he has gotten overrated, he's very replaceable.

Sadly Valencia's Real Madrid reject fetish looks to continue..rumour is that they will use the money to bring Albiol back.

 

[Beast]

He is overrated when they had Villa and Silva he looked WOW.. after both left he was ok but nothing special , he is good player
Parejo a lot better than u think..
Valencia taken over Getafe role is awesome for us

 

[Barcafan 2304]

Valencia survived and had a good season depite Silva and Villa leaving. Think they will move on to without Mata but the principle from Non Soy is correct. It is depressing to think that arguably Spain's 3 rd force of recent times is getting cherry-picked and cannot hang on to it's top players.

 

[No Soy Galáctico]

Exactly Raed, this is no building block, or a good tactical approach to building a title challenging team such as Valencia were 10 years ago. The point is, we’re seeing la liga striped of talent by the wealth of the english league. Whether we think the Mata deal is good for Valencia or not is only relevant because we know of their financial difficulties. That is where the good stuff ends, anything beyond this is a massive shame, they can ‘make do’ without Mata. They can replace him with someone at the fraction of the price in Parejo, and perhaps this in the long run may help them over come or at least ease both debt and club competitiveness. But it isn’t helping the now, we’ll see another 20-25 point gap between 2nd and 4th again this season, and this is unacceptable for La Liga.

 

[No Soy Galáctico]

plus malaga got money and getafe too

Yet they are still a long long way off and still in a different world to those of City, Chelsea. I would like to think that they’re being sensible on moral grounds, but also pumping huge monies in from the start to clubs that are so tiny in comparison could achieve nothing for these clubs as they are unlike the English clubs, and have a lot of building from the grass roots up before they’d be even remotely be prepared for such a dynamic change.

 

[La Furia]

Exactly Raed, this is no building block, or a good tactical approach to building a title challenging team such as Valencia were 10 years ago. The point is, we’re seeing la liga striped of talent by the wealth of the english league. Whether we think the Mata deal is good for Valencia or not is only relevant because we know of their financial difficulties. That is where the good stuff ends, anything beyond this is a massive shame, they can ‘make do’ without Mata. They can replace him with someone at the fraction of the price in Parejo, and perhaps this in the long run may help them over come or at least ease both debt and club competitiveness. But it isn’t helping the now, we’ll see another 20-25 point gap between 2nd and 4th again this season, and this is unacceptable for La Liga.

Valencia is still a better team than they were last year, even without Mata. The team is finally finding balance.

Does this mean they have bridged the gap? No, and that's where the problem is, but you are exaggerating their victim status. The fact remains that they ripped Chelsea off. Chelsea's reckless spending habits are hurting English clubs as well as Spanish.

Is Atletico "cherry picking" Porto by paying 40M for Falcao?

 

[Raed]

Valencia is still a better team than they were last year, even without Mata. The team is finally finding balance.

Does this mean they have bridged the gap? No, and that's where the problem is, but you are exaggerating their victim status. The fact remains that they ripped Chelsea off. Chelsea's reckless spending habits are hurting English clubs as well as Spanish.

Is Atletico "cherry picking" Porto by paying 40M for Falcao?

First of all, where the hell did that last line come from? I click on Reply with Quote and I got an extra line? I am freaked out.

You argue finances, we argue football. Plus how do you even know that Valencia are better off?