Yeah better than Championship, but I think a bunch of these guys end up in Leeds-y (relegation war) teams
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Verrrrry casual Arsenal fan + disliker of CFB Sat morning shows who will watch whatever soccer is interesting before noon kickoff so if I have this wrong, wouldn’t be shocked. But if you really want to get into a specific team, think you’ll need some kind of streaming service no matter who you follow. ESPN+ has the Bundesliga and La Liga. And the Championship? Peacock has EPL and they’re putting more and more of their top tier games there rather than on the NBC Universal cable networks, I think? Paramount Plus has La Liga + Champions League.
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Doesn’t this apply to basically any sport at this point?
EPL and UCL coverage is pretty elite at this point in the US. Both studio shows are fantastic, some of the best in any sports IMO. But yeah, you need Peacock for EPL and Paramount for UCL.
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Is Pulisic is definitely a big minutes guy on a top 4-5 club in a top 5 league? Was kind of hoping he’d go to a mid table side that would for sure give him lots of minutes.
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To follow ~95% of games of the team I follow on CFB, CBB, or MLB, cable is just fine. Think it’s probably true for NFL but I don’t have a team so maybe that’s wrong. I seem to always catch Bears games on accident tho.
From what I can tell that’s not true of Arsenal or whatever non-EPL club I might choose.
I don’t think Pulisic is going to be a big minutes guy at a title contending team in the EPL, but I think he can be a big minutes guy on a Europa League fringe UCL league team in Italy or something like that.
I’d love to see him at somewhere like Newcastle or something, but we’ll see.
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For EPL you need Peacock
UCL Paramount+
Bundesliga and La Liga ESPN+
I just think that’s clearly changing across all sports. Going to be tons of Big Ten stuff on Peacock, etc.
At this point I’m not even sure what is better for consumers between a game on Peacock or a game on CBS Sports Network or something like that. Streaming services are just channels at this point IMO.
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That may eventually be true but it hasn’t been so far so it seems fair to let somebody know who wants to follow a specific team what to expect and how the choices you make about which streamers to subscribe to could influence the team you choose to follow. Peacock given the B1G contract makes a lot of sense, e.g.
It’s also why I was annoyed at the contract. I already have a lot of $$ on subs, being asked to do an incremental one is annoying bc it’s $5 or whatever I wasn’t already spending. It’s especially annoying for sports bc it’s the reason I have cable. Maybe I’m the dumb one for not just cancelling and subbing to all the streamers instead.
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Been a City supporter since 2006 thanks to this article …
I didn’t want to jump on a bandwagon and specifically this part spoke to me …
Bandwagon Potential: Couldn’t be lower. In fact, one of my neighbors (Brian) is a native Irishman and a huge Man City fan; when I told him about this column and how Man City made my final four, he said, “Oh, you don’t want to pick them. You’re born into rooting for Manchester City. You would never want to arbitrarily pick them. You should choose someone else.” Well, then.
By the time the buyout came along in the next few years, I was already hooked and getting Robinho and the 5 years rise from mid table to prem champs was absolutely wild. I spent most matches listening to the radio on yahoo sports UK back then, was tough to ever find a match on TV.
Anyway, that didn’t work out as I planned picking a non-bandwagon club with very little support outside of Manchester proper, but I was already too far in so now I just get called plastic glory hunter on every cove of the internet. Good times!
If I had to pick today, I’d either buy low on Sunderland (Championship games are easy to catch with ESPN+, I think every game of the season is on that platform), Leeds hoping they get back up quickly or if you are dead set on a Prem team, you could buy high on Brighton. They are run well, have some dope kits sometimes and are about to make a buttloud of money on transfers and should be able to invest back in the club this season, also, you’d get Euro League out of the gate which would be fun.
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I used this article to pick Arsenal iirc. Think the Nick Hornsby thing sold me in particular since I was pretty obsessed w High Fidelity.
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Millwall is the answer. “No one likes us, we don’t care.”
My final 3 were City, Newcastle and Sunderland. The sky blue kits were my deciding factor at the time over Newcastle’s ref looking shirts. That was my big final push.
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Their jerseys are fuego for sure. Sky/baby/whatever blue prob the consistently best primary uniform color. UCLA, Chargers, UNC, Man City, Tulane, etc etc
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Puma doing their best to wreck them. Our 3rd shirt is basically a budget super hero costume for a lightning based character. Puma freaking sucks man, I hate them so much.
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This is worse than what Adidas did to UCLA which is saying something
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I just think that regardless of streaming service, following the EPL is going to be way easier because NBC’s coverage is so strong.
You aren’t going to get as much if you try to follow Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga, etc.
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Also, don’t pick Spurs either. At least while Levy is there.
Poch should have Chelsea humming again eventually, might be a decent buy lower option there.
Piggybacking on Dylan’s comment, you do want somewhere with a stronger online community as well. Pretty much all the EPL clubs should have a blog or message board that is pretty active, some of the championship clubs as well.
Oh and my fav place for gear, classicfootballshirts.com
The story in Fever Pitch where Arsenal had just gotten bounced from a Cup, and Hornsby is staggering around London drunk out of his mind and sees a few players having dinner at a nice restaurant with a few players of the team that beat them
And realizing how these guys are able to compartmentalize far better than he can and it’s actually happening to them
Is one of the more instructive fandom anecdotes I have ever encountered
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