Underwhelming Champions League performances from English clubs proves golden age of Premier League may be over – but it would be naive to think our clubs are in terminal decline, writes IAN LADYMAN
As Pep Guardiola walked off the field at the Etihad Stadium this week it was impossible not to wonder about the imminent sporting passing of one of the Premier League’s most iconic and influential coaches, but also about recent steps taken backwards by the game in this country.
All good things come to an end and maybe a golden age of Premier League football has run its course almost without anybody realising it.
Guardiola may leave Manchester City this summer. He has a year left on what he has declared will be his final contract and is endlessly contradictory on the matter of whether he will see it out. But after Tuesday’s bruising Champions League exit to Real Madrid, he looked very much like a coach travelling the end of a very long road.
More broadly, the last-16 stage of Europe’s elite competition has been sobering for English clubs. As Arsenal and Liverpool pushed on to the last eight, Newcastle, Chelsea, Tottenham and City lost their ties by an aggregate of score 28-11.
Newcastle and Chelsea, in particular, were embarrassed by Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.
So the noise we hear now is dramatic and reactive. We hear talk of Premier League players being worn out by the schedule and hindered by the lack of a winter break. More gloomily, there are connections made between relative European failure and a more rudimentary style of football currently to the fore in our domestic game.
England’s poor performance in the Champions League is no cause for major concern
Premier League clubs have been through these cycles of peaks and troughs before
There is a little truth in some of that but not much. More relevant is the fact that English football is simply moving through a stage of a cycle with which it’s actually quite familiar.
The Premier League – whether it realised it or not – has recently lived through a golden age powered by the standards set by two exceptional sides and only Arsenal have appeared capable to stepping in to the void left behind.
Liverpool and City. Jurgen Klopp and Guardiola. Maybe only now we appreciate what we had. Guardiola’s treble-winning side of 2023 has fallen apart quickly while Klopp is now to be found on the padel courts of Marbella.
Their rivalry was spectacular, though, and it drove standards both here and for English football across Europe.
There was a spell, for example, between March 2021 and May 2022 when Liverpool played 75 games in all competitions, lost only five of them and still didn’t win the Premier League with 93 points. Three years earlier, 97 points hadn’t been enough either. City pipped them by a point on each occasion.
For a while that felt normal because it endured. But it never was and so it hasn’t.
England had four clubs in the last eight of the Champions League in 2019 and three in 2021 and 2022. But there was always going be a levelling and here it is.
Liverpool and City both have the look of teams that could go either way in the next couple of years just as Manchester United and Chelsea did as they moved through cyclical change following their own stellar period of shared domestic dominance between 2005 and 2012.
In the last two decades, 41 English clubs have made it to the quarter-finals of the Champions League – just over two per season
Back then English clubs were front and centre in the Champions League. Between 2007 and 2011, for example, the Premier League occupied 3, 4, 4, 2 and 3 of the available quarter-final places in Europe. It felt it would last forever but it didn’t.
Sir Alex Ferguson left Manchester United while Chelsea’s constant managerial churn caught up with them. City were on the rise but still to find their way in Europe, while Liverpool were entering their dreadful and desperate Roy Hodgson/Kenny Dalglish era.
No co-incidence, then, that between 2012 and 2017, England’s presence at the back end of major European competition fell away. In 2013 and 2015 we didn’t have any teams in the last eight. In 2012, 2016 and 2017, we only had one. Only once, in 2014, did we have two as David Moyes’ Manchester United lost to Bayern Munich and Chelsea squeezed past PSG on away goals.
Over time, the Premier League gave rise to fresh excellence and it was reflected by renewed prominence in Europe. City, Liverpool and then, a little later, Arsenal. That change was driven in part by smart coaching choices – Klopp, Guardiola and Mikel Arteta – but also by vast wealth. In all likelihood, it’s the latter that will take us back there again.
Standards at the top end of the Premier League this season have not been high enough. The rather unedifying scramble for places four and five is proof of that.
If this is indicative of English football’s struggle to always spend its money well, it at least continues to have plenty of it and that remains the primary driving force in the modern game.
When Deloitte released a list of the richest football clubs in January, Liverpool, City, United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea were all in the top ten. They are all on the Forbes list, too, just in a slightly different order.
Clubs such as Liverpool, City and Tottenham – driven forward by bigger and more efficient stadiums – make more money than ever before and that represents the best kind of future-proofing a club can have.
Some of our top clubs are in rebuilds or have not spent their money in the best way possible
Certainly, the experiences of Newcastle, Chelsea and Tottenham have been painful to watch over the last fortnight and there are reasons for each.
Squad depth is an issue at St James’ Park and Newcastle’s recent schedule has caught up them. Chelsea still can’t grasp the value of consistency and continuity in the head coach’s office while long-term planning remains alien to them.
Tottenham? They finished 17th in last season’s Premier League and have subsequently sacked two managers since their Europa League win gave them passage into the only competition that really matters. So why are we surprised?
In terms of how they managed to reach the last sixteen in the first place, just take a look at who they beat in UEFA’s new league phase of the competition (Villarreal, Copenhagen, Slavia Prague, Borussia Dortmund, Frankfurt) and where those clubs eventually finished in the table (35th, 31st, 34th, 17th and 33rd).
Thomas Frank’s team – as it was back then – simply got a lucky draw against what effectively represented the cannon fodder of Europe’s blue riband competition.
Arsenal and Liverpool will take us forward now and we should be optimistic about the Premier League leaders’ chances against Sporting Lisbon in particular.
Liverpool will not start favourites against PSG – probably the one outstanding team in Europe – but will face the champions at home in the second leg and there is much to be said for that.
This has not been an outstanding season in the Premier League and that is certainly reflected in what has come to pass this week. But rumours of its extended demise are certainly being exaggerated.
The number of English clubs in the last eight of the Champions League over the last two decades? There have been 41 in twenty seasons. You can work the average out for yourself.
