“Second, this is all just your excuse to justify Arsenal finishing outside the top 2 for 3 (and after this year, 4) years in a row, isn’t it? That if we judged on the quality of football played, Arsenal would win all trophies?”

To me it is just unecessary irrelevant dig at Arsenal as nowhere did i try and justify Arsenal finishing out of the top 2. I never ever said that the team that plays the best football is the best team something which you have failed to realise.

I would like to request that this article be removed unless the title is changed to what i originally had it as, as it creates the wrong message and sets an agenda which i haven’t followed. The article is asking whether the table does lie not saying that it does, it looks compares subjective and objective judging and comes to the conclusion that in some cases it does and in rhw majoirt it doesn’t, but people aren’t intelligent enough to realise that unfortunately.

Firstly the problem seems to stem from the fact that the editor changed the title, nowhere in the article did i say the premier league table lies, and that wasn’t the point. The question was whether the league table lies.

I was asking a question, whether the objective way of deciding who the champions proves who the best team is, and using analysis to come to the conclusion.

The conclusion i came to was that the league table proves who was consistent and stronger but it is up to us to decide if we believe they were the best team was.

@ahmed, i never said that we should use subjectivity to determine who is the best. I asked if we should and gave reasons why we do in other areas.

it had no baring on whether penalties should be given etc

If you look at this paragraph you can see what i said

“To wrap up, I am not saying that football matches should be marked like in boxing or gymnastics, where you get points for aggression and artistic interpretation respectively. I am not saying we should introduce some sort of weighting system that takes into account all of the possible mitigating factors during a system. What I am saying is that the notion that the league table doesn’t lie, is in fact a lie in itself and that we should give the League champion credit for their consistency, strength and overall quality.”

But the rest of the argument is self-defeating.

One, you argue that football is inherently subjective, which by definition means that bias and personal preference will influence your judgment, and then you propose that we use that same subjectivity to evaluate ‘quality’ in football?

In other words, we should let our bias dictate whether Liverpool should get a penalty or not, or whether a United player should get a second yellow or not, and so on?

I’m all for figuring out a better way of doing things, but your proposed approach causes a myriad of problems that the current ‘objective’ system is supposed to avoid.

Second, this is all just your excuse to justify Arsenal finishing outside the top 2 for 3 (and after this year, 4) years in a row, isn’t it? That if we judged on the quality of football played, Arsenal would win all trophies?

Good luck with that…