Foreverinbluedreams wrote:If you go back 20 years Sparty a very different picture emerges. I just had a look through starting with 94/95 and it wasn't until I got to around 6 seasons in that the team with the best defence won the league, there were more examples of the best attack winning it.
Like I said above, it seems that since Jose and Rafa rocked up that the accent on defence has been more succesful.
As promised..........
Pre 2004/5
GF - 53%
GA - 23%
GD - 55%
Post 2004/5
GF - 38%
GA - 65%
GD - 9%
So the pre-Mourinho era as I suspected, champions were more successful by scoring goals than worrying about conceding them. However what is interesting is that the correlation between goals scored and conceded is 70% in the pre-mourinho era, compared to 57% since. What I take from that is that United and Arsenal, on the whole, played attacking football in their title seasons with a 'score more than you' philiosophy. Attack was arguably the best form of defence back then - which may explain why people retain a fondness for this approach - however this was an era, of total and complete dominance by two clubs, exactly as you have in Spain today.
The advent of Abramovich and Mansour to create competition at the top, the increase in TV money which has seen the mid table clubs increase their revenue massively in recent years has clearly seen the game change beyond recognition in England. This has resulted in mid-table clubs being able to acquire better players than ever would have been the case in the early days of the PL, meaning the league gains strength in depth, becomes more competetive and meaning top teams generally can't be cavalier in their approach to steamrollering smaller, far inferior teams, as the rags and arsenal used to do in the 90s.
The game today is totally different to what it used to be because of the increased quality throughout the league, and as a result league winners these days in England generally have to be less cavalier than was the case in the past in order to get over the finish line. An obvious anomaly was last year which was football like we've not seen in ages in the league, but ultimately, what saw us over the line was a considerably better defensive record than liverpool, given that we scored the same number of goals and therefore even in a single anomalous year, the argument stands that the defensive record is more important than the number of goals scored.