football spin-off thread: clubs who won unexpected or sole league titles...
The most obvious example in English football is probably Ipswich Town's 1961-62 title. Under Alf Ramsey, they were promoted from the Second Division only the season before and went on to win their first and only top-level title, beating favourites Spurs and Burnley (post-Munich, post-Wolves dominance, pre-Shankly days, innit) and by all accounts completely baffling most opposition tactically. Ramsey left the following year for the England national team job, and Ipswich finished bottom of the leaugue during the 63-64 season.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961%E2%80%9362_in_English_football
This probably wouldn't fall into the unexpected catagory, but in reading a bit about different leagues i found out about Dundee United's 82-83 title under Jim McLean. Before i was born and that, but it's their sole championship to date. The bigger story, though, is probably how competetive they were in Europe around that time, under Jim McLean. During his tenure, they made eight Scottish Cup finals, four Scottish League Cup finals, reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, and final of the UEFA Cup, admittedly losing both, but knocking out sides such as Barcelona, PSV, Monchengladbach, Monaco, Anderlecht and Werder Bremen. Their 82-83 title was won with a then record points and goals tally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982%E2%80%9383_Scottish_Premier_Division
Probably the most interesting is Hellas Verona's 84-85 Serie A title. After accusations of match-fixing, the Italian FA chose to introduce the random assignment of match officials, much to the annoyance of the big clubs. Verona won the championship, but the next summer the league dropped the new system, allowing Juventus to bang out a few more titles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serie_A_1984-85
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Not a single bite?
I feel i must go back to the drawing board.
fine, 'man city 2011-12'.
No, mate.
Fits neither of the criteria, obviously.
http://www.iheartsoil.org/
in the late 90s
kaiserslautern won the 2.bundesliga, then the 1.bundesliga the season after. back to back champions.
Montpellier last year surely?
Had three properly good players (Yanga-Mbiwa and Giroud have left, only Belhanda remains), and a mental chairman. Remarkable given the size and wealth of second-place PSG. Would be given greater importance if Ligue 1 hadn't been won by 5 different teams in 5 years.
Blackburn 94-95
not /that/ unexpected given they were runners up the season before
but still
80 years since their previous title-winning side
it's gonna be a while until the next one as well I'd wager
like City though, not really that surprising when you consider the sudden cash injection.
the season Blackburn won the league they spent about £6m.
in fact over that season and the two precedding it, they only spent about £25m.
even when you put that into relative terms, i'm not convinced they bought the title, really.
£6m was a lot of money back in my day.
they did
cheers
it shouldn't hurt after this long, mate.
their spending was comparable to other teams, they were just unfashionable so people didn't like it.
and in the same season United paid £7m alone for Andy Cole
for some stupid reason man united are never considered big spenders.
even though they spend fucking loads EVERY year.
ain't that the truth
they spent over £5m in 1989/90, ffs.
let's not turn this into a United! thread, though, you know how they normally go.
I think people forget that Man Utd used to break the record transfer fee
virtually every summer throughout the late 80s/early 90s.
nah, not true at all
that statements just like when a player from outside of a top 4 team in england scores a great goal, someone always pops up crying 'oooh if ronaldo would have scored that everyone would have been talking about it' when everyone already is talking about it. no one thinks that man utd don't spend a lot, or says that.
But their fans spend ages
talkingages talking about how much Chelsea/City et al. spend
Swings and roundabouts.
are you saying they haven't spent loads?
really don't get why every football discussion on DiS has to end up with people whinging about man utd.
man united are short sighted
neverscoredagoal in his-toree.
which one of united sides has 'bought the league' though?
probably all of them (gary neville and co aside), but everyone just muses on what a great manager alex ferguson is.
Don't forget that the Nevilles, Beckham and Giggs were all poached from other clubs.
ok i'm bored of talking about this now.
someone get some bulgarian lower league stats to hand ASAP.
See, that level of nitpicking is where you start looking daft
Wilshere is a Luton product by that logic. Academies work by looking for talented kids and nurturing and developing their talent. If kids are at a club from the age of fucking 14 and under then that club can say that they came through at that club.
but how is that relevant in a discussion of 'sole' league titles?
i thought the point of this thread was to bring up examples of teams winning one-off titles, so Blackburn would be relevant where Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal wouldn't, no matter the amount of money they spent?
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4425596#r7341635
i can see why the thread has taken this path.
as you say, Blackburn won a sole Premier League title (they've actually won the league three times), and so it led to people discussing the merits of that title. comparing their spending at the time to rival teams is reasonable enough.
It's really, really obviously true
that United do not have a reputation for 'buying' the league though.
Because we've always supplemented the big purchases with players the club has produced to a larger extent than other big spenders
That's not really an explanation.
I don't particularly care how or why a team comes to win league titles and, short of a violent military coup, I've no moral or ethical qualms about clubs climbing to the top. But United's dominance of the league for the last 20 years is built upon financial dominance and being able to outspend the vast majority of clubs. How many more titles would they have if Abramovich and Mansour hadn't come along?
And in full knowledge of how sanctimonious and wanky this sounds
There's a distinction between spending loads of money you've earned and spending loads of money you've been gifted
Only if you want there to be.
There certainly isn't a distinction if you're merely discussing the importance of financial clout and spending ability to success.
But we're discussing an issue of perception rather than the importance of financial clout
So?
I'd suggest the 'perception' that United don't resort to buying the league has little to do with their financial model and everything to do with the fact that 'buying the league' is a concept that has been formed in opposition to United's dominance of the league. Did anyone 'buy' a title before United dominated England's top division? It seems to be a fairly modern complaint, even if it has happened at numerous points in English football history.
My bias is clear for anyone to say, but I've always found the distinction you refer to above between means of garnering spending power ridiculously pompous. It's probably not 'fair' to someone to suddenly get a load of money but is it really any more 'fair' for one club, somewhat fortuitously-placed as the tectonic plates of football shifted, to race ahead of everyone else and monopolise football? I'd say no. We're all shits in our own ways.
Not at all, like I said, we're discussing perception rather than any ethical side of anything
I don't for one minute think that Utd's finances are as a result of anything other than a combination of being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of cynical, business-bastards to capitalise on it. As I've said plenty of times, we opened the door to the clusterfuck that modern football has become and it's not something I or many other fans would be proud of.
If you're questioning why we don't have a reputation for buying the league though (which is a perception issue) I think the less dramatic acquisition of funds combined with the fact we've got a legitimately brilliant academy system is a pretty major part of why that reputation doesn't exist. (Rightly or wrongly)
Fair enough.
Your take on the academy system is interesting though. THAT crop aside, it seems to me United have a fairly average (for top-level sides) academy. What they do have is a large senior squad which, contrary to popular belief, is a good thing for kids on the fringes- a manager can 'risk' playing them with the security of a trusted senior player ready to step in if necessary.
Which is where Chelsea fail horribly- star signings are made at the expense of squad size and so there's never any chance to properly blood youth (though there are plenty of chances to throw them to the wolves and, again to contrary belief, the one thing Chelsea does well by its kids is to not do this). Arsenal seem to be slipping to the other side of this after years of success- throwing kids in to circumstances it's not fair to throw kids into because they've no trusted, fit senior options.
Erm, imagine I phrased any of that as a question you can respond to.
I went into all this in pretty embarrassingly defensive detail a few months ago
But our academy is really, really good and has been a hallmark of the club for as long as it's existed frankly. Homegrown representatives in 3,600+ consecutive matches stretching back to 193something, 30+ full internationals produced since the 92 batch etc etc.
I can only imagine how frustrating it must be from that point of view for a Chelsea fan as you've had some very, very talented kids through your ranks who haven't been given a chance and have dropped off the radar/succeeded elsewhere.
Chelsea's youth academy is nowhere near as good
as most Chelsea supporters would have you think. It has the opposite problem to the one I described for the senior squad above- it looks impressive on paper and, often, on the pitch because it's so huge. It takes on huge numbers of players, which allows the team to be well-rested and motivated for any games. The fact that a few of those players then go on to create a buzz creates the impression that the academy is producing talent at anything like a decent rate. I'd suggest that academies are not scale business- the more money you spend on them and the more punts you take, the smaller the yield.
To be completely honest, virtually none of Chelsea's academy products have succeeded elsewhere. Cork, di Santo, Stoch and (until recently) Sinclair carved out decent enough footballing paths but that's it- none of them are missed opportunities as far as Chelsea are concerned.
Abramovich has been conned by absolute shysters at the academy who have moved on (Arnesen), or will do (Emenalo) before their mistakes have been noticed. I'd point to the academy's failure as a the most significant cause of Chelsea's issues over the last few years.
AND RELAX.
This is getting into some pretty shaky hypothetical ground which makes it pretty pointless to discuss frankly
But I think it's difficult to pass judgement on how good a kid could have been for a club without them having been given a chance, the transition from gifted kid to full-on good player is so fraught with chance and coincidence that simply looking at where a player has ended up as a mean to justify their lack of a chance is a bit of a false argument. (Obviously the exact same thing applies in reverse as well to an extent)
There could be some weird alternate timeline where Conor Clifford got a lucky break in your first team and absolutely flourished to be a valuable member of your squad.
Oh I agree.
Terry is the only kid we've brought through in 12 or so years, but he's by no means the only talented kid we've had- he's just the last remaining player from a point where we had no money or options so had to play kids. A fair few others came through with him- they fell off because they weren't up to standard.
But if you are going to discuss subjects like this, the only measure we have to discuss is what has actually happened, and actual ability. Personally, I've liked the look of plenty of our youngsters but there are very few I've had any confidence would still be playing pro football by their mid-20s.
And as we all know, John Terry is the luckiest, most in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time charlatan with the most unconvincing talent:success ratio in the history of football
HE SHAGS WHO HE WANTS
I think the culture/ manager
of the club has also played an important part in the more recent successful progression of youth at Man U. I imagine the 'education' of youth players at Man U to be far better than at most clubs. I think the outcome is that players with arguably less innate talent will more than compensate with a good attitude and hard work.
I don't think there has been a sustained positive culture at Chelsea, or many other clubs, which I am sure is to the detriment of consistent youth development.
totally this^
whilst on the subject of youth academies...
why havent teams copied La Masia yet? I dunno exactly how it works, but it seems like an all-encompassing training camp that kids spend their lives at and go to school at or whatever.
Seems to work absurdly well, anyway. Surely that's the way forward?
A little thing called
THE LAW. Although I think all those regulations about where kids can be signed from and how long they can train etc have been relaxed now.
oh right
i hope we can make one soon.
The world's football academies must be properly littered with la masia rejects. We have three in our reserves, two of whom will become decent-to-very-good players
See here:
http://www.aspire.qa/media/Pages/MediaNews.aspx?KeyWord=&NewsMon=&NewsYr=&categ=Football
A Qatari foundation has basically copied the Barca model (I'm not suggesting that there is anything to do with sponsorship or any financial corruption that has anything to do with this except that I am suggesting that) and they're basically sweeping for physically strong African kids to put through their academy in the hope that they take on Qatari nationality for the 2022 World Cup.
Their team absolutely destroyed at the Milk Cup a year or so ago.
City are trying to.
Of course, you can't create the same folklore around a state of the art training complex and two of Barca's former big wigs, but the aim is similar results.
Chelsea were granted planning permission
for an extension to their academy facilities the other day ... A few clubs will be rolling out La Masia knock-offs in the next few years.
Definitely.
I think risk is the biggest thing with playing kids- playing a kid when you don't have a senior player ready to come on if all goes wrong is a risk, and it's an even bigger risk when you're only a few bad results away from getting the boot.
All ifs and buts but if Chelsea halved their academy spend and used that money on unglamourous senior players, I'd wager a few managers would have lasted longer and a few more kids would have got their chances.
West Ham have done e decent job historically.
Different situation, but still positive atmosphere for youth development. I guess youth at West Ham are happy because they are stuffed full of jellied eels and know they will get a chance because it's the West Ham way.
hmm, i dunno.
i think United's would stand up against any squads academy to be honest. i mean if you look who is playing now, excluding Giggs and Scholes, you could have a team of...say
-------------------Ziegler
--Simpson - Shawcross - O'Shea - Richardson
-Brady - Fletcher - Cleverley - Bardsley - Welbeck
-------------------Campbell
i'm not sure which other TOP teams could put out a line-up of that level of just academy products, even if there are a couple duds.
what level?
they mostly play for Sunderland, or in the Champiohsip.
well yeah, they'd be a lower level PL team
but what top-level clubs could put out a better academy-product only team?
What happened to Kieran Richardson?
Unfortunate injuries, mental attitude, or a combination of both? He looked like a genuinely exciting prospect a few years back...
He was a massive prick when he was at Utd for the most part, questionable social group etc
He also wasn't particularly good either, he was the Darron Gibson of the time for making an inexplicably large amount of first-team appearances compared to how good he actually was/his impact on games.
I think he's found Jesus now and has been enriched with the cleansing blood of His sacrifice and to be fair to the guy, he's played regularly in the Premier League for quite a long time now. Not exactly a flop of a career really.
I would disagree...
...to this outsider he looked like he had something, could play in a number of positions, and be involved in match winning situations. Much more so than Darron Gibson for example. Two goals on his England debut too. For a year or so, he cartianly didn't look out of place at Manchester United/England level yet now he's just a jobbing pro.
To this Utd fan
My main memory of him is the bewildered and infuriated reaction every time his name was on the teamsheet.
I can't be arsed filling in all the blanks
West Ham could have Ferdinands, Johnson, Lampard, Cole, Defoe, Carrick and current West Ham players.
yeah, but i did state 'top team'
Playing a LB in net?
Optimistic.
as recently discussed...
if it wasn't for various degrees of investment by Jack Walker, Danny Fiszman, Roman Abramaovich and Sheikh Mansour, they could have conceivably won 20 consecutive titles.
Reading winning the Championship last year was pretty unexpected. THey basically trolled the whole league.
Were pretty terrible for the first half leaving them languishing in midtable as Xmas approached. Then a crazy run saw them move up to second with 4 games to go, beating title rivals Southampton at St Marys 3-1 (guess who scored two late goals for Reading) to take top spot, where they stayed.
All the Benitez chat in the other thread has reminded me of Valencia 03-04
Was a real planets aligning type thing, the collapse of Real Madrid and a mediocre Barcelona side coinciding perfectly with a well built, balanced Valencia and players like Aimar and Mista having their best seasons by miles.
Vicente
was amazing that season
Aston Villa?
Their European Cup victory is even more barmy.
I know it's not strictly their sole title as they won the league seven times around the early 1900s, but I still think it stands out for me.
It's a fair shout.
Pre-WWI titles don't really count, and even if they did, Villa basically invented the league and then dominated it before anyone else could get good. Bit fishy, imho.
They also won the English Baseball Championship in 1890.
One imagines the competition wasn't that fierce.
didn't quite happen as they didn't win the title
but 2002-3, Real Sociedad were incredibly close to winning La Liga
fell two points short in the end
that would've been incredible. real flippin' sociedad
though they won La Liga twice in the early 80s
still
on the subject...
any other teams who really should have won major titles but who fell just short?
Villa, Newcastle and Liverpool should've all won the Premier League, really, but there are probably some more interesting examples overseas...
i never thought Liverpool would
whereas i expected Newcastle to. which is funny considering their recent history.
Perugia 1978/1979
Went undefeated and still only finished 2nd.
leverkusen probably should've in one of those nearly seasons
01/02, one point off Dortmund, also the year they lost the CL final to Zidane's volley.
Every time none of the big three win it
I.e. 6 times in the last 55 years. AZ won it twice (1981 and 2009), the others (DOS, DWS, Sparta and FC Twente) have a sole league title to their name. A quick look at the current table reveals that it is unlikely that these statistics will change any time soon.
Vitesse could buy that title if they wanted to.
mad how it's such a piss-poor league considering the technical ability of lots of its players.
Lack of money means all the good players leave for richer leagues
as soon as they reach their mid-twenties.
Vitesse have never finished any higher than 3rd. Financially, they are the fifth biggest club in Holland. Their Georgian owner isn't spectacularly wealthy so nothing will change any time soon.
Not really the same thing
but I get the impression that power shifts hands in Brazil really often. No one club seems to maintain a stranglehold for that long.
I'm a really casual, irregular observer though, so maybe I'm wrong.
Leagues over there are probably about as professional as the
Northern Premier League though aren't they?
The top division is very well monied these days
and highly respected by FIFA in their coefficient type thing.
Like England are in the world rankings?
The world rankings get a pretty daft beating where England are concerned tbf.
England loiter around in the top 10 whenever there's been a decent number of games, which is probably where they belong. Most national sides are a bit pish.
Fix
how about wolfsburg 08-09 too?
grafite and dzeko on FIRE