So this post peaked my interest in that, what is the basis of being a big club in order to get to the "ideal/Optimal" list of Premier League clubs. Personally i think it should be based on their record covering the period since football 'actually' began, so number of accumulated points + number of league titles. I've worked on the basis that each league title must be worth an extra 100 points to the overall points. So on this basis, the optimal league table would look like this:
Position Team Accumulated Points (end of last season) Top flight seasons League titles Total Points Final Position
1. Liverpool 6945 106 19 8845 1
2. Arsenal 6779 104 13 8079 2
3. Everton 6704 118 9 7604 4
4. Man Utd 6409 96 20 8409 3
5. Aston Villa 5899 107 7 6599 5
6. Man City 5311 91 6 5911 6
7. Chelsea 5140 86 6 5740 7
8. Tottenham 5109 85 2 5309 8
9. Newcastle 4895 88 4 5295 9
10. Sunderland 4551 87 6 5151 10
11. West Brom 4066 80 1 4166 11
12. Blackburn 3703 73 3 4003 12
13. Bolton 3697 74 0 3697 15
14. Sheff Wed 3564 66 4 3964 13
15. Wolves 3492 66 3 3792 14
16. Derby 3309 66 2 3509 16
17. Sheff Utd 3224 62 1 3324 18
18. West Ham 3172 62 0 3172 20
19 Middlesborough 3062 62 0 3062 21
20 Leeds Utd 3062 51 3 3362 17
21. Burnley 3050 57 2 3250 19
22. Nottingham Forest 2949 56 1 3049 22
Therefore Middlesborough and Nottingham Forest miss out and West Ham scrape through by the skin of their nose.
* I appreciate I put far too much thought and effort into this and mostly no-one will either care or agree, however, it killed an hour at work and makes sense to me.
