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are Bundesliga champions after thrashing Werder Bremen 5-1. Both the strikers Grafite and Dzeko have scored 30 goals this season. Might see Dzeko at chelsea next season.

thats a relief

Phew :D

 Its shows a healthy league in Germany when an outsider can win the title...the Premier League has become as uninteresting as Scotland.

German football has always been interesting, the book Tor! by Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger is a good effort of the general history.

Felix Magath was a good appointment for VfL Wolfsburg - they'll miss him next season.

I guess Setanta's coverage is giving it some wider coverage these days.

 The main problem for me is the sides have such dull functional names...apart from St Pauli.

no it hasn't.i think this season,the prem has been superb

With the same top 4 again for how many years. The Prem just bores me fucking shitless and althuogh I want English clubs to win in Europe another Man U v Chelski final just wouldn't have done it for me. The last one was absolute crap.

But ultimately totally predictable. The 'top 4' teams thing is totally sickening.

Newcastle getting relegated would be good. But the way Villa folded was very dissapointing. Spurs also pulled clear very easily.

No signs that the top 4 monotony will be broken any time soon.

I'll be cheering on Barcelona come Wednesday (it is wednesday innit?). Andybody having a few in a pub whilst watching?

same top 4 yes.but the relegation battle is going down to the last day.liverpool were right in the title race until recently.the football is more pleasing on the eye.the players are better.etc.etc.

despite the flaws,the prem is no way as bad as the scottish league.which was the reason for my first post.

I take your points Arriba but I'm still fucking bored watching the same old teams turning over the weaker teams. If I had a choice of watching Man U v Chelsea or Rochdale v Accrington then its a no brainer for me. You may get more skill etc but I just can't be arsed watching the same old, same old. At some stage there will be a backlash.

er.so who would you rather watch from those two matches you mention?

I'd like to see Rochdale v Accrington for the novelty rather than Man U v Chelsea which I could have occasion to watch many times in a season. English football is going exactly the same way as the Jock game. For Rangers and Celtic substitute Man U and Chelsea. i can't see Liverpool or the Arse doing it for some years. Chelsea may yet implode but Man U are there for a few years yet as no matter who replaces Fergie could be absolute dogshit and the machine will continue relentlessly for a while like when Dalglish won the double at Liverpool..

dont be daft.liverpool have run man ure close, and league 2 football is fucking awful.(we were there,it was painfull)man u,chelsea,liverpool or arsenal could win the prem next year.celtic or rangers will win the scottish league.
i'm not banging the prem drum, but fuck me i think its pretty good really

As someone who watches far too much football I can safely say that all levels conjure up its fair share of enjoyable games and complete dross :)

The relegation scrap going to the last day really isnt that big a deal? Vast majority of leagues go to the last game of the season.

It hasnt been a bad season for the top flight. But the richest team has won, again. The richest team also played the best football and had the best players.

Its supposed to be sport. But all I can see at the top of the Premier League is £$£$£$£$ signs talking.

If Newcastle dont get relegated it will have been a right let down.

A great example of how unhealthy it is would be Arsenal. They finnished in the top 4 and reached the semi final of the champions league. But their supporters are beside themselves with grief. Almost hounding their best ever manager out of the club. IT IS NOT HEALTHY. Bottom line is Arsenal fans are not enjoying football very much. These teams fans need to feel the full range of emotions of being a football fan, including relegation.

I'm not hugely concerned about the other fans experience to be honest. Although, we've experienced our fair share of ups and downs - the older TEF'ers have pretty much experienced it all.

A vast amount of Manchester United, Liverpool et al fans support them because of the guarentee of some kind of success and as it stands they'll only feel the woes of 4th place or a Runners-Up medal (sob). Older Geordie fans experienced hard times, they'll hurt because they became spoilt - the Premiership needs a bigger scalp, Spurs in the 90's would've been quite significant.

Today the Premier League and Newcastle United will go their separate ways.

Has the richest team won again? I thought the amounts Chelsea and Liverpool have spent in recent season have to come close or have spent more then United.  Look at leagues around the world and you will see the vast majority are dominated by the same teams i.e Spain Barca & Madrid, Italy the Milan Clubs and Juve.

I don't think it has been boring at all, the premiership is a great watch and the relegation battle today should be an excellent watch.  I really don't know how anyone would rather watch a league 2 game, no atmosphere, terrible ground and awful players.  I would watch Swindon over any premiership game but them aside I would not watch lower league rubbish over a big game in the premiership.

The premiership is good for betting as it is reasonably predictable and teams tend to maintain form. Not that many upsets. You can put the big four into multiple debts to increase your returns, especially when they're playing away.

All three of them are massively in debt thanks to their benevolent foreign owners (although at least Abramovich didn't saddle the club with 3/4bn of debt to finance his own takeover) so I doubt any of them qualify as richest in a bottom line sense. In the sense of "money to spend" who knows? Football is still living the economics of the madhouse.

Plastic :)
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I could be up for this...dig out my Barca shirt :)

Arriba, I'm surprised you think the Prem has been good this season, you seem a discerning sort of fella. I'll grant there has been the odd decent game, but it has become a stale format, more or less with a predictable top 4, maybe 4 or 5 wannabe sides next, then the rest who play a mostly negative game because they fear getting relegated.  Has any player scored 20 league goals this season?

The likes of Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan, Sunderland even Pompey are truly dire to watch. Stoke are comedy value, in the same way as Wimbledon used to be, MBoro take some credit for trying to produce English footballers, but it has got them relegated.

Newcastle have been value for comic ineptitude on and off the pitch.

Spurs have just been Spurs...exemplified by David Bentley, someone who looked a decent player, gets his big move, and a stupid haircut, and promptly tries to see out the season, on the back of one somewhat fortuitous goal in October.



Now we have the farce of your middling Prem sides not bothering with the domestic cups, for fear of tiring the players, and sides around the top 6 eg Fulham, Villa saying they don't want to qualify for Europe, because of the extra games.

A good argument well made Reg, I can't argue with that.

I've thoroughly enjoyed some games this season - but the problem for me is that when you see Blackburn vs. Bolton or Wigan vs. Portsmouth on tele we joke that it'll be shit... but on the whole those types of fixtures are indeed shit.

Still, in Brum, Wolves and hopefully Burnley there will be a further three 'footballing' sides in the Prem.

The problem with the Prem, is not so much the top teams being the same, but more the complete lack of chance that anyone is going to come along and break that up without serious hard cash.  You always had a team dominating, but you could rely on some smaller less fashionable team to run them close or in the very odd season, pip them (Derby, Forest, Watford, Villa, Everton etc during the Liverpool years).  It's a season of avoiding relegation for 10 teams these days - look at the delight amongst clubs who had fucking awful seasons.

But Rob, the same can be said in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and many other leagues. It is not just the Premiership.

Yes, which is what used to be so much more interesting about our league, and probably what allowed the PL to become so popular at the start - it, and the FA Cup still trade off past romances.  Italy is a little more open I think.

Newcastle got relegated, which saves it a bit.

The efforts of the bottom 5 on sunday were fairly pitiful (apart from maybe WBA).

Agree with Reg that something has to be done about the cup competitions. The FA needs to get some balls and give a Champions League place to the FA Cup, Platini has already given the go ahead.

So we can win it and not be allowed to enter again!

League Cup. FA Cup. UEFA Cup. Inter Cities Fairs Cup. European Cup.







www.wikipedia.org

 ;D

Italy more open? Inter have won the last 4 and previous to that Milan and Juventus shared the previous 4 titles.  So dominated by 3 teams in the past 8/9 years, I fail to see how that is remotely open.

I said a little more open - a few more teams challenge around the edges (Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina, Sampdoria) - 5 teams having won the league in the past 10 seasons.  Still not "open", but enough teams to keep it interesting, at least until now as TV money begins to rule there as well.  There are always teams in dominance in leagues, it's about having the prospect than in any given season a team can break into the top group.  Unless huge money (Chelsea) comes a teams way, ours has been pretty set in stone for the past decade, with 3 winners in 14 years.  Check out the top 3 from about 95 backwards, and even with Liverpool winning more often than not, the variety was huge.  It is that variety which allowed the PL to come along and squeeze it.

  Champions League money has had a very negative effect on diversity, particularly in England...where perhaps Everton have had a single entry outside of the usuals in recent years. Worst hit though seems to be France....mercifully Lyon wont win the title this year, but have done for about the last 7.

  Before this the French league was wonderfully open with the likes of small town clubs Auxerre, St Etienne, and Lens, all winning. Nantes, although big picking up a couple.

 Lyon could achieve this because regular CL football meant money for players....who are then snapped up by the likes of Chelsea on vast transfer fees.

 

Lyon had, indeed, won the French titles 7 times in a row.

Q: How many French titles have Lyon won overall since officially forming in 1950?

A: 7 :D New money!

 Whatever happened to Stade de Reims?  Ah Raymond Kopa and Juste Fontaine *sigh*

That'd be Champagne football then Reg ?

A midtable Ligue 2 team... Not too bad since their 50's/60's hayday.

As much as it is good to see a different team win the league, it's a little bit annoying for such an absolutely nothing club to be the one who wins it (at least it wasn't Hoffenheim I suppose).

This is a club who a couple of seasons ago used to often get gates of under 15,000. Yet on Saturday there were 30,000 in the ground and 100,000 in the main square watching on a giant screen. A club from a town that was 'invented' by the Nazis in the 30's, a town with, like the club, no history or anything about it whatsoever.

Or maybe I'm just bitter that KSC went down despite winning 4-0, all because the referee in Cottbus was a total idiot.

Harsh. Just because they haven't won a title before or even been a mainstay in the Bundesliga doesn't mean they have a history. Why can't a small team win the top flight? 

Either way, Armin Veh will struggle with them next season.

I think you may be bitter...no German side has much history the way we'd understand it.

 Professional football, ie The Bundesliga was only formed after I first started watching STFC...previous to this it was a mainly amateur game, run by the Nazis with Jews and Communists banned from playing.  I guess they thought gays wouldn't want to play, so never bothered banning them.

It's not a case of them being a small team or having not won a title before, it's a case of them being a completely nothing team from a completely nothing town with completely nothing fans.

But yes, I don't think they'll qualify for the Champions League again soon, Schalke might though!

Do you need to have a professional national league to have history? There were still national champions before the Bundesliga, which I don't think is too unfair to count as titles.

There is a good chance I am just bitter though. At least St. Pauli away should be fun next year.