2426255 Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 (edited) It's difficult to judge the standard, but from what I've read (2 years ago) I'm settled on the idea that the standard ranges from the top of league 1 or top-6 of the Scottish Premiership up to the teams in and around the play-offs in the English Championship. I wouldn't argue if that was simplified to around English Championship level. The bottom line for me is that the MLS isn't better than the top-6 of the English Championship and that's the lowest level of player that Ryan Gauld is competing with for a place. The Whitecaps I believe are a pretty middle of the road team within that division, so to follow that idea through it would put Ryan Gauld at a team in the bottom half such as Swansea City, Blackburn Rovers, Millwall etc. The evidence for my view are in this thread along with a discussion around this somewhere in late 2021 I think, but I don't have the inclination to search for it at the moment. There was a good article from Groundhopper guides where the guy did a fairly good study on it where his conclusion was bottom-half Championship after attending 100+ games from both countries/leagues, it's maybe a bit old now though. https://groundhopperguides.com/how-do-mls-teams-compare-to-english-teams/ Edited October 23, 2023 by 2426255 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Twelve Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 The MLS is a weird league - lots of teams, so the standard is, I think, much more varied than you'll find in any decent European league. It's clearly stronger than the Scottish Premiership though. For example, one of Ryan Gauld's opponents at the weekend was the former Arsenal and Real Sociedad striker, Carlos Vela - he's 34 now, but in his 5th season at LAFC. I'm finding it difficult to imagine a player of that calibre coming to Scotland while still in his prime. It's already a feeder league for a lot of central and south American players looking to put themselves in the shop window for European clubs. Villa signed a couple of youngsters in the summer, iirc - the boy Duran was one - I think Arsenal and Chelsea signed players from there too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigkillie Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 The fact it is a league designed primarily as an entertainment product means that the majority of the spending goes on attacking players, and there is very little investment in good defensive players. That's why you've got situations like Lionel Messi regularly going up against jobbers like Danny Wilson. I think that makes it hard to judge the performance of any player versus those in Europe, where there is typically more balance through the team. Forwards are going to end up overrated because they're generally up against players well below their level, while the converse is true of defenders to some extent. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Twelve Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 23 minutes ago, craigkillie said: The fact it is a league designed primarily as an entertainment product means that the majority of the spending goes on attacking players, and there is very little investment in good defensive players. That's why you've got situations like Lionel Messi regularly going up against jobbers like Danny Wilson. I think that makes it hard to judge the performance of any player versus those in Europe, where there is typically more balance through the team. Forwards are going to end up overrated because they're generally up against players well below their level, while the converse is true of defenders to some extent. I would say the salary cap is the reason for the attack heavy nature of the league - if you're only allowed to pay big wages to a maximum of three players, the chances are that most of those are going to be game winners rather than game not-losers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2426255 Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 You could always look at it the other way and ask the question how would Ryan Gauld's competition - John McGinn, Ryan Christie, Stuart Armstrong, Lewis Ferguson or Scott McTominay - do at a Vancouver Whitecaps? I'm not going to try and answer that, but just to put it out there. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtual Insanity Posted October 24, 2023 Share Posted October 24, 2023 On 23/10/2023 at 13:25, craigkillie said: The fact it is a league designed primarily as an entertainment product means that the majority of the spending goes on attacking players, and there is very little investment in good defensive players. That's why you've got situations like Lionel Messi regularly going up against jobbers like Danny Wilson. I think that makes it hard to judge the performance of any player versus those in Europe, where there is typically more balance through the team. Forwards are going to end up overrated because they're generally up against players well below their level, while the converse is true of defenders to some extent. The MLS average goals per game in 2023 is 2.76 which is lower than the EPL for season 22/23. Certainly question marks about the standard overall but I wouldn't say attacking players numbers are skewed particularly. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted October 24, 2023 Share Posted October 24, 2023 It would be great to see some kind of crossover tournament between the MLS and Scottish Premiership, as I get the impression that there are still a number of people who think of the American league in similar dismissive terms to how the English press like to refer to Scottish football ("pub league, innit"). 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scary Bear Posted October 25, 2023 Share Posted October 25, 2023 7 hours ago, BFTD said: It would be great to see some kind of crossover tournament between the MLS and Scottish Premiership, as I get the impression that there are still a number of people who think of the American league in similar dismissive terms to how the English press like to refer to Scottish football ("pub league, innit"). That would be quality, but I think some of the Scottish teams would shit their pants at the cost of the away fixture. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB_Bino Posted October 25, 2023 Share Posted October 25, 2023 12 hours ago, BFTD said: It would be great to see some kind of crossover tournament between the MLS and Scottish Premiership, as I get the impression that there are still a number of people who think of the American league in similar dismissive terms to how the English press like to refer to Scottish football ("pub league, innit"). This is quite possibly due to the exposure of it over here though. I searched for Sportscene type highlights show for the MLS a couple of years back and it didn't exist, so if you want to fallow it over here then it's hard to do, so people's ignorance to the standard is not altered from their own perception 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2426255 Posted October 25, 2023 Share Posted October 25, 2023 (edited) 13 minutes ago, BB_Bino said: This is quite possibly due to the exposure of it over here though. I searched for Sportscene type highlights show for the MLS a couple of years back and it didn't exist, so if you want to fallow it over here then it's hard to do, so people's ignorance to the standard is not altered from their own perception I think most people would probably say the MLS is a better standard of football than the Scottish Premiership and a worse standard than the English Premier League and therefore is the football standard is somewhere around the English Championship level. Could be wrong, but the Scottish Premiership isn't a particularly good league so I'd be surprised if people thought the MLS was worse especially if you take the gruesome twosome out the equation. Edited October 25, 2023 by 2426255 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Twelve Posted October 25, 2023 Share Posted October 25, 2023 1 hour ago, BB_Bino said: This is quite possibly due to the exposure of it over here though. I searched for Sportscene type highlights show for the MLS a couple of years back and it didn't exist, so if you want to fallow it over here then it's hard to do, so people's ignorance to the standard is not altered from their own perception You need to get online for coverage - there's about seven minutes of highlights per match for every MLS match on the league's youtube channel. Better than the SPFL equivalent (which tends to be about five minutes per match). SPFL youtube also does a nice lower league round up every week which is about half an hour long. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB_Bino Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 20 hours ago, Alan Twelve said: You need to get online for coverage - there's about seven minutes of highlights per match for every MLS match on the league's youtube channel. Better than the SPFL equivalent (which tends to be about five minutes per match). SPFL youtube also does a nice lower league round up every week which is about half an hour long. I didn't know about this, but will check it out. Thanks @Alan Twelve, appreciate it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2426255 Posted November 11, 2023 Share Posted November 11, 2023 Saw this article with Barcelona's Julian Araujo comparing the MLS to La Liga and thought it added an insight into the existing conversation, highlighting speed of thought as a key difference between the leagues. Quote The biggest thing I have noticed is how important it is that you can now change your action decision at the last second. Being able to open your hips up a lot faster is really important to that, so a lot of the physical work goes into that. Technically the players here are a lot better and the key thing is that they think a lot faster. Now you have to think before you receive the ball more on what you are going to do, where your teammates are and what position your opponent is in. Julian Araujo https://www.fotmob.com/embed/news/01hemwavhr6k/julian-araujo-reveals-biggest-differences-mls-la-liga-las 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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