You must be good in discovering hot water :)

What ridiculous comparison!!! The gap between the top 4 teams and the rest in England is so great that they mostly trash other teams home and away. Is this what you call competitve league?

yutut

"Mostly thrash other teams home and away". Thats why we just had the tightest premiership ever, with the top four dropping more points than ever before, with more of those points being spread over the lower end of the table than ever before. Suprising that in a league where the top teams just take a walk round the park to win against the lower teams.

The Epl race must have been tightest ever. But the comparison is done with other leagues and in this case the french league. Look at the stats the EPL top 4 won 97 the ligue 1 top 4 won 72, the ligue1 top 4 lost 32, the EPL top 4 lost ONLY 15 games (and that is mostly against each other) At the bottom the EPL had a team with ONLY 11 points. And the 17th had 36 points, in the french league you weren't safe with 41 points!!! Either way this whole article is ridiculous when the author is trying to ridicule other team's victory and trying to glorify his league and team by making a ridiculous comparison. Seriously the world isn't spinning round the EPL and manchester united!!!

First, I am not a Man U fan, I am a Liverpool fan. Secondly, I am not singling out the results of this season to demonstrate the competitiveness of the EPL. Rather, I compare the more recent history, whereas Lyon his racked up 7 straight titles with a poor European showing, meanwhile there have been three different winners over the same stretch in the EPL combined with some rather good showings in the European Champion's Cup. Therefore, the level of competitiveness in England shows up in the European competition over a series of different English teams (all top 4 have made an appearance in the Final over the last few years). Granted, there is a burgeoning gulf being created between top flight and the rest, but over time, I believe other top class organizations will rise up, helped by financial support. This is the state of many professional sports -- although in the US, there are now salary caps and the teams at the bottom of the league get first dibs on the new prospects as a way of giving the losing club a chance to rebound. Another concept altogether.

It doesn't matter if you aren't a manc, you being a fan of a top 4 EPL club doesn't surprise me...Anyway. Well, I believe you didn't follow much of Ligue 1 over the last 7 years reading your article and this reply. Lets talk of the leagues first. In the last 7 years, there has been 4 close finish were the gap between first and second was less than 5 points in France. In the EPL there was ONLY 1 and this was this year. Many people not following the league thinks that they are having a cakewalk year in year out. I suggest you follow more football outside the EPL if you want to make articles comparing 2 leagues. Next lets talk about goal difference. Goal difference usually shows the difference in level between teams in a league. The higher the number the more likely you are to see one sided games like 3-0 or 4-1. Lower the number closer are the matches. The average Goal difference by the top team in the last 7 years is around +34. The average goal difference by the EPL winner in the last 7 years is a astonishing +50. We have also had teams going the entire season without losing. lol To say the EPL is more competitve is absolute rubbish seeing how few teams in the league monopolizes the top4. I'll just give you some stats. In the last 7 years ONLY 2 teams manages to get into the top 4. Newcastle ( during the pre-RA era) and Everton (mostly because Liverpool had their mind in the ucl). In France the last 7 years saw 10 different teams getting into the top 4. Lens,OM,PSG , Bordeaux,Auxerre all 3 times, Monaco, Lille, Rennes 2 times and 1 time for Nancy and Toulouse. Usually in a week when the top 4 teams aren't playing each other the EPL can be resumed as a fight for the UEFA cup spot and a fight to avoid relegation cause in all likelyhood the top 4 would win their games 2-0 or 3-1... And whats that about Lyon's poor showing in Europe? Are you serious? Do you even know whats the different in budget between Lyon and the 4 english clubs? Even Spurs has a better budget than Lyon. In the 1st 2-3 years they were just learning what was the ucl all about... And still during that time they used to get results like Lyon 3–0 Bayern Munich Bayer Leverkusen 2–4 Lyon Internazionale 1–2 Lyon Then between 2004-2006 They reached 3 times the quarter finales each time toping groups that included, Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Real Madrid. In 2007 They again topped the group which included Real and this year they again qualified to the knock out stage after an extremly poor start. That is quite a record when you compare their budget with the teams around them. Besides they lost so many key players over the years. Each year one of their main player is sold. They still find the strength to comeback from all that... When Real are trying to buy Manu's main player we can see how tough it is for the fans and how their manager is loosing it. Well each year Lyon has been losing one of its main players. Looking at their performance in Europe over the past few years, remembering where they came from and all other circumstances they have performed brilliantly in Europe. It only is foolish to compare that to clubs whose budget is twice that of Lyon. If Spurs or Newcastle who have around the same budget as Lyon makes it to the last 16 or quarters of the ucl would you say they had a poor european campaign? Having said all that I hope you will seriously start watching more football outside whats happening in the UK before writing such articles and making lame comparison. Also hope you learn to appreciate more what teams with limited budget has to go through and their achievements.