Who Are The Best Team In The Championship?

Simple question, hoping for some unbiased, well-reasoned responses.

 

Deem the best at what?
Scoring, defending you need to be more specific.

 

I think they publish a table with the answer to this on it.

 

Whoever wins the league

 

Football

 

Well Norwich because they have the most points.

 

I think Barnsley are the only team other than Norwich who can plausibly stake a claim to this. Clearly more than the sum of their parts due to their tactics/structure/style of play.

Bournemouth are the side in the league with the highest ceiling and have a very strong squad. When they're on it (as they have been throughout this latest run) they're on it, and that's why they have (if memory serves) so many wins by 3+ goals - I'd imagine more than us or Norwich. But they have lacked consistency and seem to be less able to grind out results when they're off colour which is so crucial.

But yes, at this stage of the season, the table doesn't lie (or rarely lies)

 

Us. Objectively.

If we’d had all of the squad available from the start, playing 433, under the right manager, instead of a shambles for a summer, we’d be closing in on 100 points.

 

Player for player, it's probably us, I've little doubt that if we'd played our strongest XI from September rather than February, we'd have won the league, but fair play to Norwich, they're also one heck of a team but unlike us have been consistent all year, and despite Cantwell and Buendia momentarily throwing strops because they fancied moving back to the top flight, they were much more settled than us

 

Objectively, lol.

 

As we're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen, I'd say its watford

 

This post was motivated by reading the Brentford forum where while most of their fans are far less objectionable than many teams, there seems to be a noisy minority who believe they are either the best or second best team in the league, regardless of how many draws they pick up.

I’m interested how far people consider the league table indisputable fact or whether there is subjective wriggle room.

Example would be our 14/15 promotion side was streets better than Bournemouth despite them picking up a solitary extra point.

 

Lol. Brentford have 3 players who would improve our team and squad. Thats it.

 

I liked the look of Blackburn and Brentford when we played them good footballing teams. Blackburn defending has let them down and Brentford injuries haven’t helped them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

At various points this season us, Brentford, Bournemouth and possibly Barnsley have had a claim to be the best team in the division.

But if you look at the quality of football played over the course of the season, it's Norwich. Even when we were in our purple patch we were more like a ruthless winning machine than a slick passing team that could play through opposition and were brimming with creativity.

Our style may well be more suited to surviving in the Premier League though...

 

Judging by how Norwich have 0 points from 4 games against us and Bournemouth (didn't see their first game this season, and I know they had Giannoulis sent off the other day, but we beat them fair and square twice), they certainly aren't ready to stay up yet, but that said, you'd think they could spend a bit more than us if they wanted to

 

Some would say Narrich, but we have beaten them fair & square twice this season also we could actually overhaul them in the league yet, and all this without decent strikers?

Therefore I'm sitting on the fence as I have not given up hope of being Champions, which of course would make us the best team in the league.

 

Putting biases aside, I genuinely think that we are the best team in the league. Norwich may go on to win the league but we have done the double over them this season and last. Norwich had a stable club and players at the start of the season which has been the difference. I believe that we would be top of the league if we hadn't had all of the chaos and so many players out at the start of the season, despite the slow start they are still only 5 points ahead of us.

 

With the objective of football being to win 3 points every game and finish top of any competition then the best team is the one who wins the league, which of course we still might do. It doesn’t matter if we beat Norwich twice because we beat Liverpool last season on aggregate but it doesn’t make us better than them. It’s what you do across the whole season across every team that actually matters.

If you class best team as the one that plays the best football then for me that’s still Norwich. They play the nicest football in the league. As Watford fans were biased towards our own team and are entertained by our own team when they’re winning because that’s what we’re willing to happen, it’s what we desperately want to see and when we see it then it makes us happy, but objectively the most entertaining football I’ve seen is Norwich, it’s also fairly probable that it will prove the most effective as well.

 

Not sure it's that simple. They were battering in form Bournemouth until the red card. And although we beat them fair and square, they did look on the beach. But perhaps it does hint at a weakness of Farke. He seemed to make no attempt to stop Sarr whilst we had clearly worked on denying Buendia space.

 

Yes, I went on there a while back and plenty of them were debating that they are the best team in the league despite having just lost three in a row and one of those was Coventry where they got played off the park. Bang overrated team and I have been saying all season that their form wouldn't last. Most people thought I was chatting **** when I said they were nothing special in January but it turns out I was right after all.

 

The difference between us and Brentford is that we’ve won 5 games that they’ve drawn instead. Funnily enough they’re pretty much the same games, they couldn’t hold onto leads against Forest and Derby as an example, and we could. The injuries to Da Silva and Henry haven’t helped them at all, without those they’d be a bit closer.

 

I think the difference between ourselves and Brentford is that we are solid at the back and they are vulnerable almost every time the ball comes into their box.

 

Which is actually odd considering the defenders they have, so at lot must be Frank’s fault, or losing Da Silva brings too much pressure on it.

 

In fairness, I thought we beat them fairly well in Xisco's first game, yeah they had players out, but we had Deeney and Gray up front, Hughes only came off the bench and looked off the pace, and Ngakia started at left-back (albeit Masina was able to make a telling contribution off the bench). We also didn't have Bachmann in goal yet, and Wilmot, while he did a fine job, is probably our 5th choice CB

 

At Crochet? Norwich.

 

It could be that, good players elsewhere on the pitch can both protect the defence well and also give opponents something to think about in their own defence, but I suppose the biggest issue is they're tired. We just about hung in there pre-Bristol City with many key players out and odd selections, but now we are picking our best players regularly, and they're relatively fresh unlike Brentford and Swansea who look to be running on empty at the moment

 

An open question. For me with the resources at their disposal it's been Wycombe.

 

Millwall.

 

I think we'd really need to define "best" to be able to answer this question.

Best what? League position? Results? Raw squad potential or ability? League performance in relation to investment? Position in comparison to expectation? Potential for Premier League survival?

The answers to all of those would be quite different.

In order of how I listed them above, for example, I'd say:

- Norwich
- Barnsley
- Watford
- Unsure off the top of my head (although I think you could make an argument for Brentford given their success after making continual sales of important squad players)
- Barnsley
- Watford

 

I also liked the way Xisco had clearly identified a major Norwich weakness; their vulnerability to midfielders arriving late in the box in dangerous positions. He had clearly instructed Gosling to make those runs, at which I seem to recall he was very adept at Muff. Take a look again at how JP delayed his pass, clearly looking to see when, not if, Gosling would get into the optimum position.
Maybe he’s not as tactically useless as he’s portrayed; at least, not in setting up for the game, as opposed to in-game changes when necessary.

 

I posted this under the Championship 20/21 thread but equally applies here

Are Norwich the best team or are they flat track bullies? Two teams have done the double over them, Watford and Bournemouth. Both teams were relegated later than Norwich last season so theoretically didn't have as much time as Norwich to prepare for life in the Championship but both of which I feel are consistently better when they have a full squad available. I think us and Muff suffered at the beginning of the season due to the transfer window being open until early October while Norwich had time to settle their squad in readiness for the season and made it clear they were not selling anyone after the season had started. If after 46 games Norwich have the most points then they deserve to win but lets not heap praise on Norwich as they were not infallible this season.

On the basis that we had a settled squad much later I would say we have been the best team this season (and I cannot bring myself to say Muff but they probably are our equals)

 

The only question mark was they were 1-0 up against Bournemouth and they barely touched the ball until the red card. Obviously it’s impossible to say what would’ve happened, but it was a completely different game up until that point.