Come on then, what do you blame it on? The tactical naivety of English clubs in Europe? Slipping standards in the Premier League? Perhaps the game’s loadsamoney culture which grants teams unconscious licence to overspend on sub-standard players? In the rancorous wake of Chelsea’s away-goals defeat to Paris Saint-Germain we are all poking and groping for answers, a unified theory to explain English teams’ malaise in the Champions League and Europa League.
And with good reason. If Arsenal, Manchester City and Everton also crash out this week it will be the first time since the 1992-93 season that no Premier League side have made the quarter-finals of any European competition. No wonder then that another fusty but familiar idea is getting an airing – the need for a winter break. Certainly Sam Allardyce has no doubts about its likely transformative effects, pointing out last week that “playing as many games as we do through Christmas and New Year gives every club that plays in Europe a disadvantage”.
Instinctively that appears to make sense. Most of us can recite Michel Platini’s comment about English players being lions in the winter and lambs in spring. While PSG’s players didn’t have an official game between 21 December and 4 January, Chelsea travelled to Stoke, Southampton and Spurs and also faced West Ham and Watford at home.
But there is an obvious problem. English clubs have not played considerably more games this season than their opponents in Europe. PSG have played 45 times compared to Chelsea’s 44. Barcelona 42 times to Manchester City’s 41. Arsenal 44 to Monaco’s 43. And these overseas sides have actually played more games in 2015 too.
Only in Germany, where they have a six-week winter break, is there a noticeable difference. Bayern Munich, for instance, have played 37 games this season and only 11 since the new year.
But there is a conjoined argument, voiced by Luis Suárez in his autobiography, that it is not just about the number of games but their intensity. After arguing for a 15- to 20-day break in January, he said: “If you compare the intensity of the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Premier League you can see that the English league’s harder.”
Is there evidence that players in England fade because of these physical demands? Well, possibly. The Premier League began to collate physical data only last year so there isn’t a great deal to go on, but its official EA Sports Player Performance Index – which, among many things, tracks distances run and the number of sprints (runs of seven metres a second or faster) in a match – has some interesting findings.
Last season English clubs involved in the Champions League ran an average of 108.5km per Premier League game before Christmas, with an average of 508 sprints per match. After Christmas their average kilometres per game went up slightly to 110km but their sprints per game declined to 493.5.
Across the Premier League last season there was a similar pattern: the distance run was up slightly after Christmas but the number of sprints fell by an average of 20 per match.
It might sound like a lot but it is only two fewer sprints per outfield player per game. To get a richer picture you would want to track the percentage of distance covered by sprints pre- and post-Christmas; it may be that as the season goes on the sprints are not only fewer but also shorter.
Ideally, too, you would monitor this over several seasons and compare it to physical data from other European Leagues.
However, when you examine the physical data of English clubs who have played in the Champions League this season, there is no obvious sign of a slump. Indeed, Chelsea and Manchester City have actually covered more distance and made more sprints on average since Christmas. When it comes to leading players for the PFA’s player-of-the-year award, only Cesc Fàbregas’s distance run and sprints stats have dropped markedly in the second half of the season.
That could be down to tiredness. But physical data is noisy. It is affected by the score, a player’s position, possession, whether a team parks the bus and much more. That said, Omar Chaudhuri, who works with several clubs as a head of football intelligence for 21st Club, tells me there is evidence directly from clubs that physical output for Premier League teams does tend to drop off towards the second half of post-World Cup and European Championship seasons, which is understandable when the league is often the most represented at these events.
So those calling for a winter break may be on to something. But the absence of one doesn’t explain why English clubs are facing complete meltdown in Europe this season. Here the reasons are probably more prosaic. We are looking at a tiny sample so inevitably we read too much into surprise outcomes, such as Arsenal’s stinker against Monaco.
Chelsea and Manchester City have had tough draws against even richer teams – both PSG and Barcelona are ahead of them in Deloitte’s Football Money League. Tottenham and Liverpool fielded weakened teams in the Europa League.
None of this will hide the Premier League’s embarrassment if Arsenal, Everton and City go out this week, of course – but it might at least partially explain it.
