Europe a step too far for England’s finest

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore does not like it when people label the English top flight the ‘best league in the world’. It is possibly the richest and most sought-after global football brand, but being the best is not something Scudamore has ever claimed. And judging by the recent form of ‘his’ clubs in the Champions League, he has never been more right.

Arsenal and Chelsea’s European defeats this week leaves them both facing challenges to qualify from the Champions League group stage and with neither Manchester club currently looking like world beaters, there is a serious danger England will lose one of their four places in the tournament to Italy for the 2017-18 season.

The coefficient rankings are dull at best, though, and what is more pressing for managers Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, is how to arrest a slide in form at international level.

Chelsea, who lost at Mourinho’s former club Porto, are not doing much better domestically, and have now lost five of 11 games in all competitions this season.

Mourinho clearly did not have the transfer window he wanted this summer as he failed to sign defender John Stones from Everton and is battling to manage an ageing defence in which Branislav Ivanovic is struggling and inspirational captain John Terry is becoming a peripheral figure.

And was Barcelona’s Pedro really the pick of the crop from La Liga? Hardly.

Chelsea, along with Manchester City, are the richest of a ridiculously wealthy league, but even they are finding it hard to buy as they please any more. When Everton can resist offers in excess of £30 million (€26 million) for an up-and-coming player, it tells a story and Barcelona do not sell top strikers to European rivals.

If Chelsea rally want to make an impact, why not go for Luis Suarez, Neymar or Lionel Messi? Because they know they won’t get them and Barcelona won’t and don’t pass on their best.

Nor do Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, and that is why Manchester United failed to sign Sergio Ramos this summer, Robert Lewandowski and Thomas Muller are still in Germany and Wenger could not lure Karim Benzema to North London. Mesut Ozil maybe, but he is still looking more like a cast-off than a cast-iron match-winner. Arsenal, who seem on course to be heading out of the Champions League after two opening defeats, suffered the humiliation of losing at home to Olympiacos. The perennial Greek champions had been dispatched on each of their three recent visits to London, but were relatively easy winners on their fourth trip to the capital in seven years.

One of the architects of the Greek’s win was midfielder Esteban Cambiasso, a man well-placed to analyse the Premier League plight having played there with Leicester after seasons gracing Spain’s La Liga with Real Madrid and the Serie A in Italy for Inter Milan.

The 35-year-old takes exception with Scudamore and believes the problem lies in the strength of the Premier League, not a decline in its top clubs.

Talking after Arsenal’s defeat made it five losses from the first six matches played by the English clubs in Europe’s elite competition this season, he explained: “There will be a lot of attacks on the English teams because they have not won games, but I also think you have to remember the Premier League is probably the hardest league.

“That has an effect; the English teams do not arrive rested and relaxed when they come and play in the Champions League. When you have a competition of such a high level at home, it changes things. In the leagues where the big teams can have slightly more simple games, the players can arrive more rested.

“You have to remember that when you have a league where the best players are playing and they are in the league, the Champions League, the Euros, the Copa America, they are playing 60 games a year and that is not easy to maintain your level.

“I don’t share this point of view [that the English clubs are terrible] – the hardest thing is the internal competition. They are not arriving at their games in Europe in the best possible way because of that. It is simply that. But it is only a couple of years since Chelsea won and Manchester United were always there. It is only six games. Let’s see how many qualify.”

Cambiasso has a point. Bayern are almost German champions again already and no-one is taking bets on Barca and Madrid being split in Spain. Olympiacos, for example, won a record 17th domestic double last season, making it 42 league titles and they have gone through their entire league season undefeated six times. They had, however, NEVER won in all of their 12 previous European matches in England, so something must be changing.

Alfred Finnbogason, the Icelandic striker who struck the winner in the Greeks’ 3-2 win believes the European opposition no longer fear the Premier League elite and Arsenal in particular.

He pointed to Arsenal’s lack of marking at set-pieces and their general inability to defend.

He said: “The first corner is something we trained on the training pitch because we know they have no man on the edge of the box.

“When you play against this team you know they’re going to have a lot of the ball. And you know you’re going to have spaces because they don’t want to defend. So our plan worked.”

In conclusion, it seems the Premier League teams might have been sussed out and no longer possess a fear factor, not all of the best players in the world play there and those that do are spent by midweek, having given everything to try and win three points of a weekend.