How Strong Is The Premier League?

With the Champions League quarter final containing 3 sides from the English Premier League the simple argument would be to suggest that it has regained it's place at the pinnacle of the European Game again after being usurped by big spending behemoths from Madrid and Barcelona. The argument that Spanish league was the best league in Europe could not be disputed after Barcelona took Manchester United's crown in 2009 and then Real Madrid smashed the world record transfer fee to take their spearhead, Cristiano Ronaldo for £80 million, the very same summer.

My suspicion is that La Liga still remains the best league in Europe. Obviously it depends on what criteria you use to determine the strength of league - representation in the latter stages of the Champions League would favour the English League by 3 to 2 (Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United for England and Barcelona and Real Madrid for Spain). The secondary Europa League does not offer much indication into the strength of any of the major leagues with only Villareal of Spain in the last 8 (The Dutch and Portuguese Leagues dominating here with 2 a piece).

Another argument would be to predict where a mini league between the current top 6 of the two leagues would look like, seeing as Inter Milan are the current European Champions the top 6 in Italy can be included as well to see where this league would fit.

Currently 18 teams would read as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Villareal, Valencia, Espanyol, Athletic Bilbao from Spain. England's top 6 is Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham, and Liverpool with Serie 'A' represented by AC Milan, city neighbours Inter, Napoli, Udinese, Lazio and Roma.

If the hypothetical season was to start tomorrow with all short and medium term injuries clearing up (i.e Owen Hargreaves hasn't got off his death bed to be the midfield destroyer that Manchester United crave) I would reckon the league would look something like this.

1. Barcelona
2. Real Madrid
3. Manchester United
4. Inter
5. Chelsea
6. AC Milan
7. Arsenal
8. Tottenham
9. Manchester City
10. Villareal
11. Liverpool
12. Napoli
13. Valencia
14. Roma
15. Udinese
16. Espanyol
17. Lazio
18. Athletic Bilbao

If you aggregate the position of each team from the various leagues then the championship with the lowest total should be judged as having the strongest league. Lets look at this alphabetically then:

England 43
Italy 68
Spain 60

Those results are really surprising to me and I think that the spending power and general strength of Barcelona and Real Madrid have weakened the rest of their league. Perhaps if clubs such as Atletico Madrid and Sevilla in La Liga were performing closer to the standard that clubs of their size should then La Liga may well be closer to the overall strength of the Premier League. The same argument can be made for Juventus in Italy and to a lesser extent the clubs from the capital who are placed in 5 and 6 place currently. Its also difficult to judge the strength of the Milan giants as well, I'd back Milan to be a stronger outfit next season with Cassano having a pre-season with them as well Van Bommel who were both ineligible for European competition and Inter getting over the Benitez debacle.

So I suppose the conclusion is that overall the Premier League is the strongest league when it comes to the top 6 but I would always back Real Madrid and Barcelona to have edge over the English Pair of Manchester United and Chelsea and I think AC Milan and Inter would run them close as well.