{"id":619857,"date":"2025-12-08T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/619857\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T10:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:37:11","slug":"leeds-united-3-liverpool-3-a-sign-of-a-weak-premier-league-behave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/619857\/","title":{"rendered":"Leeds United 3 Liverpool 3 a sign of a weak Premier League? Behave…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve seen a lot of people saying that such poor sides as Liverpool or Manchester United sitting within touching distance of the top six<\/strong><\/a> shows the poor quality of the league this season. And also that Arsenal are top by winning games from set-pieces and that Manchester City are over-reliant on Erling Haaland. I honestly don\u2019t know what such precious people want. Have you bought the \u2018elite\u2019 rubbish the league has been selling for decades?<\/p>\n

It perfectly illustrates how a certain mindset has been inculcated into some fans when the league tries to make a virtue out of tedious predictability. What do you want \u2013 competition or dominance? Surely competition wins every time? Money bringing success has become the default; don\u2019t you find that depressing? Can\u2019t you enjoy the smallest temporary cracks in its hegemony?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to see Villa win the league<\/strong><\/a> (they probably won\u2019t) but let\u2019s not pretend the current travails of some big clubs represent a change in the overall direction of travel. The richest clubs will assert their dominance sooner or later. I think some people actively dislike unpredictability. It\u2019s like people who buy fast food because it\u2019s always the same and predictably so. Homogeneity reduces everything to a facility or product without the dirty unpredictability of humanity.<\/p>\n

Leeds United\u2019s 3-3 against Liverpool<\/strong><\/a> wasn\u2019t an example of the weak league; it was just really enjoyable football.<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t enjoy that without making some overarching judgement about this mythical concept of \u2018quality\u2019, I pity you. Living life as a series of judgements on where everything is placed on a notional quality league table sounds very anal.<\/p>\n

That draw \u2013 was it quality? Why bother judging? It was just fun. It\u2019s not an essay writing competition. You can resort to clinical facts, of course, as if we enjoy football for the logic and statistical conclusions rather than emotion. But surely the important thing, regardless of this supposed quality, is whether it\u2019s actually enjoyable. I take enjoyment above any skill level you want to reference. Poetry stimulates your synapses in a way maths doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

If a defender kicks it in off someone\u2019s backside, that\u2019s clearly more fun than a technically perfect 0-0 draw.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, the same teams will be back hogging a lot of the talent and dominating soon enough. There hasn\u2019t been a revolution. It\u2019s more than likely that City, Arsenal or Chelsea will win the league; let us just enjoy a brief moment where sometimes we don\u2019t know the result of a game before kick-off.<\/p>\n

Why do these people insist on the Freudian practice of trying to measure everything and everyone to arrive at a \u2018satisfaction\u2019 quotient? Is it a result of computer football where everything is presented as predictably good, average or poor, with a corresponding price? That\u2019s not reality.<\/p>\n

The irony is, more typically, the Premier League is less regularly entertaining and more predictable than the other four major European leagues and certainly less entertaining than the Scottish Championship so enjoy this, almost certainly brief, period where results are unpredictable. Because history suggests it won\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n

Stop mithering that a side isn\u2019t good enough in your vague, imprecise assessment of \u2018quality\u2019 to be top six. If many of the sides are all bunched together and keep flying up the table<\/strong><\/a> and dropping back down, that\u2019s a good thing. Yes it\u2019s unusual and a break from what has become the norm, but the opposite of a sign of this league being poor. It makes it more compelling. Better.<\/p>\n

The companies, organisations and states who own top-flight football crave predictability and want to invest in a safe bet and use huge amounts of money to ensure it. The last thing they want is teams going up and down the league as it might harm their income stream. Don\u2019t be like them. Their influence is already pernicious enough. Celebrate unpredictability because it won\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve seen a lot of people saying that such poor sides as Liverpool or Manchester United sitting within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,163,4884,225,83215,2922,179,98,122477,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-619857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-front-page","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-johnny-nic","14":"tag-leeds-united","15":"tag-liverpool","16":"tag-manchester-united","17":"tag-popular","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115683514427437823","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}