In Scotland Rangers and Celtic get £700k a year for tv rights if there lucky In the english premiership teams like Man utd get £35-40m a year. If Rangers an Celtic had the extra funds from the premiership things would be so different and this is one of the main reasons that teams in the premiership don’t want Rangers and Celtic to join Englands top league which is a disgrace as they never had a problem letting teams like Cardiff and Swansea join.

@Chris

I had read the article, I had read the comments, Chris you’ve started an interesting debate, I’ve added to it. I didn’t think I called you an idiot at any point. Apologies if it came across that way. There’s no malice in my comments (as you can tell by the lack of exclamation marks and capital letters). There is a bit of banter in there though.

My main point was that the ranking system was flawed. I thought it may lead to some suggestions on how to improve it to give a less predictable result but without it becoming too convoluted. For example, make it up to 10 points;

10 retaining European Cup/UEFA Cup/CWC
9 winning Champions League post 98
8 winning European Cup/UEFA Cup pre ’98
7 Retaining domestic league
6 Winning Cup Winners Cup/Winning domestic league
5 Retaining domestic cup, winning World Club Cup/Intercontinental cup (means a lot in S America and some European countries)/UEFA cup post ’98
4 Winning domestic cup/Euro Super Cup (when it was two legs)
3 Winning minor domestic cup

And so on. There may even be a case of points for losing finalists of major continental trophies (this would push Milan and Juventus up the list). Bonus points for a combination of domestic and continental trophies in the same season (Barca, B Munich, Milan and yes United would benefit here). The great Juventus team of mid-late 90′s made 3 CL finals in a row, that’s got to be worth something.

@Soccer snob

It’s not biased propaganda, yes I’m a Man Utd fan but at no point did I claim they were innocent in the transfer market. Football’s corrupt, we all know that. If I write a comment it’s going to be short and to the point, it wont be a book or an essay, I don’t have to qualify everything I say just in case your inferiority complex decides to pick holes in it.

Gentlemen over to you

I would refer you to the first paragraph of my response to EddieM.

I’m not claiming this system is perfect, far from it. I’m not declaring which teams are the greatest, all I’m doing is using a system (one which is as objective as I could make it) to produce some results. I’m not an idiot, of course I know which clubs most people consider to be great, the results of my system do not necessarily reflect my views. It’s a system, these are the results. That is all this article is saying. That is all I intended it to say.

Also, you clearly didn’t read the whole piece because I didn’t write of the Cup Winner’s Cup, I included it. Don’t comment before you’ve got a grasp of the article, it just embarrasses you.

Can everyone please stop missing the point of this article!

Doesn’t success in the UEFA Cup indicate a level of consistency in both domestic and European competition that should be rewarded?

Before 1998 only the team that won their domestic league could enter the European Cup/Champions League. Since then an increased amount of teams who didn’t win their domestic league have gone on to win the Champions League e.g. Man Utd 99, Liverpool 05, Milan 07, Barcelona 09, to name just a few.

Before this change the UEFA Cup was deemed the hardest to win because it included all the clubs who were developing into top teams or all the teams who previously were top teams but were in a slow decline.

To write off the Cup Winner’s Cup as minor is also absurd. Look at Man Utd’s run in 84, they had to play a Barcelona team containing Maradona and Schuster, then Juventus who had Platini and Boniek. In 91 (after an easy route to the final) they beat a Barcelona team (Koeman, Laudrup, Stoichkov, Guardiola) that won the Champions League the following year.

Madrid wouldn’t have won all those early European Cups if they hadn’t stolen Di Stefano from Barcelona. An illegal move made possible by Franco’s regime.

A great club is not determined on how many trophies they have (Crewe Alexandra, Nottingham Forest and Preston NE to name some domestic examples).

Go and read up on your football history, go to the grounds of as many clubs as possible, you’ll probably find there’s greatness on your doorstep.

Lies, damned lies and statistics.