I feel like someone is going around reporting posts they'd think I'd report as some kind of troll lol

It's probably better to dismiss useless and misleading data points than import them into one's argument though.

Except that they're only useless and misleading if they show what you don't want shown.

I mean, the whole argument boils down to "we can't possibly have any idea how these teams will perform on the field as teams, even though we do actually get to see how they perform as teams a decent amount, so I'm just going to make subjective judgments about a bunch of people with no regard to how well or how often they actually play together and then declare that as the obviously correct way of evaluating talent", and it's just totally ****ing ******ed even beyond the fact that the person making those arguments probably sucks at evaluating relative strength of leagues to begin with.

citing friendlies = citing nfl preseason results. i mean, literally the same thing. stop.

Only solution - Football Manager 2014. Fortunately it will be out soon, and all of this will stop. Oh wait, European bias. Darn you simulator.

So, basically, the games in which the US beats or draws good European teams don't matter because they're friendlies, and the games in which the US handily wins its qualfication hex are all meaningless because none of those teams could ever sniff (insert random third-tier European team)'s jockstrap -- even though none of those teams really have any results to compare either? Have I got your argument right?

Tell me how this ever boils down to anything other than "it's true because I say so"?

Rosters - duh? -- oops, sorry. shallow roster analysis.

Yes so because those data points are near useless, the best we can do is look at rosta and leveraging issue thereby. I am not saying sort by rosta predict outcomes 101%. I am saying its the best we can do. I cant believe I am having to explain this.

We obviously dont have perfect information.

But it's not like there are significant samples of international competitions among leagues to compare that fairly either.

Obviously. But "sort by roster" obviously completely ignores the stuff you say you'll take into account but never really do.

I also, quite frankly, kind of doubt you could name the Ivory Coast's starting eleven without resorting to a Google search, which makes "BUT ROSTERS" even sillier.

I can't believe this is still going!

Slow news day.

I'll let a fellow American answer this:

Why are you trying to be fair? The USA is subpar. They are too far from Europe or South America to be considered decent.

The distance from a country that has won a World Cup is the only measure of how good a National Team can be.

With how QPR narrowly escaped the season before, basically everyone knew they were in serious trouble. They were always going to be one of the worst 4/5 teams, everyone in the EPL thread thought this. No one was saying "They will be fine, look at their squad!"

But their roster. Or wait, other things come into play. I don't believe it.

Wat.

This must be the silliest thing said so far, cant compare relative strengths of two entities using research, wat, jfc.

As it happens you must be ignorant of who plays for IC because they do have in fact several high profile players so knowing the important players on there rosta is standard.

Could you straw man any harder?

No, by their roster, they were a bottom 4/5 team. With how they were coached and how they basically bought an entire new team, they ended up being by far the worst team itl.

Off the top of my head.

Bony, Drogba
Gervino, Yaya Toure, Tiote,
Kolo Toure

Ok, I'm done. While very nice a team is only as good as it's weakest link. See Robert Green.

QPR: So they bought a whole new team, yet the results from the season before mattered. I'm getting more and more confused. And coaching matters??? But the rosters are our comparisons.

WOW.

Jimmies must be rustled if you cant stop yourself from posting passive aggressive toss like this.

See, but you haven't actually presented any such research, or as you'd call it, "substantive reasoning". And you can't possibly do so.

Go then, name their entire roster.

Or is it "they have four or five really good players I rate, therefore obviously they're better"?

Also, how well do those guys actually mesh together? Clearly you're just guessing at that too, because lol sample size.

Easy question, I guess: who's got a better roster, USA or Mexico?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/pr...gnore&u=103885

I said knowing the important players.

Break it down why you cant do an entity comparison without research.

Your argument is this:

I researched the two entities and decided that X is better.
Your conclusion is invalid, because you came to it via research.

Thats one ****ed up POV.

Also btw we already did a comparison of IC v USA squad, so before going full over it, perhaps try reading the thread.

Comparing a club team, over a long season who underperformed but was still expected to do really badly because they were really poorly run seems like a weird tangent for an International team thread where such is impossible. The problems with QPR won't affect any national side. You could see QPR would have similar problems since their problems in year one were replicated in year two in the EPL. Buying too many players a the end of their careers for too much money, not giving them time to fit in, not focusing on defense and it happened again the next season.

The IC would be favorites vs the USA. In a 10 game neutral field sample, it would probably be something like 5 IC wins/3 US wins/2 draws. You can say something silly like they're only as good as their weakest link, but the 5-6 strongest links on the IC are just much, much better then their US counter parts and the weak parts on IC (mainly FB) are also very weak for the USA. It also makes a big difference when it's 2 of Gervinho, Bony, Kalou attacking those FBs.