After the poor collective performance of the English teams in the Champions League Round of 16, a rumor started that English teams are not all that, that the Premier League is not all that and that it would be more marketing than something actually visible. Those who defend this use mainly the six bad results of the English teams this week, and I understand why they use this as an argument, but I feel they are mixing things.
The Premier League is, yes, the best league in the world, and that is clear, but that does not mean that its top is levels ahead of the top in Europe, levels ahead of the others. The middle and lower classes of the English league are much better than the middle and lower classes of other leagues, and that is evident. Newcastle, for example, is 12th in the Premier League and you are going to tell me that they would also be 12th if they played in La Liga? Behind Osasuna? It does not seem so and it does not even make sense to put that into question.
In these six English games we had a weak Liverpool, a Newcastle that played better than Barcelona but an individual mistake cost the win, a Tottenham doing more than it knows: nothing, a Man City being surprised and some mistakes from Guardiola, an Arsenal that was not convincing and a Chelsea that I do not think deserved to concede five goals, but that, at the end of the game, let itself fade.
This Premier League, in terms of football played, is not flashy, mostly because of this trend in which corner kicks became basically a circus inside the box, where everyone pushes and it looks like a UFC ring. The culprit? Everyone is, but the pioneer of this almost new corner sport is Arteta and his Arsenal. Does it work? Yes, but it makes the game ugly. Outside England this does not exist and I see no problem saying that English clubs maybe deserved a “wake-up” to make these tactics less ugly and return to what they were, or innovate and improve the spectacle, which these corners currently do not.
Besides corners, there are also long throw-ins, throws into the box with the hand that create the same circus, as if it were a corner situation.
Conclusion
English teams are not overrated, but the English top is not levels above the European top. What is levels above is the English middle and lower class compared to the other middle and lower classes across Europe and the world.