If you look at Madrid's recent results, their performance levels this season and the injuries they currently have, I think it's hard to make an argument for them being favourites against City. City have been far from perfect this season but they're second in the PL, ostensibly the best league in the world, and finished above Madrid in the group phase while also beating them at the Bernabeu. This is a major fumble from them imo.
Yeah the City one is the only big surprise, I also expected Arsenal to win both legs, even if ugly. If anything though, it’s balanced out by Newcastle being more competitive than I thought they would be. I also didn’t expect this Liverpool to win in Turkey and that’s not even hindsight.
The last time the PL, as a whole and not just one team, was genuinely good in the CL was 21/22. A finalist, two semi finalists and three quarter finalists, and City and Chelsea were both unlucky to go out in their respective ties that season. 22/23- Just City. 23/24- Poor. 24/25- Only one semi finalist. 25/26- early days still but shaping up to be disappointing.
I think there's something to the quote but at the same time i'm not sure this round of games proves it so much. Liverpool losing was a big shock (though i'd still back them to overturn a 1-0 defeat at home) but none of the other games are really out the bounds of expectations. Maybe City doing worse than you'd expect in terms of scale of defeat but Guardiola disastrously overthinking his tactics in a big European game is almost par for the course at this point.
I think you could also argue this timeline coincides with top European clubs moving away from strict positional play principles and moving to more fluid systems, while Premier League clubs have largely doubled down on it. We spoke about this a lot in the knockout phase last season but it's really on show again tonight. The man-to-man press that PL clubs deploy isn't set up to deal with it.
The irony as well is that bar City with Pep, most of the other big pl clubs have young coaches who should in theory have a fresher, more modern approach and not be set in their ways.
Well, I think I can safely say that the winners of this years Champions League won’t be coming from an English team.
Jörgensen has had a horrible night as well, not just because of passing it straight to their player. Another managerial decision to change the keeper backfiring, although neither Vicario nor Sanchez have been all that convincing either.
I also don't see a quick fix for the PL sides in the short to medium term. Even if City don’t get hit by the charges, Pep is likely gone soon and they are undergoing a big transition. Liverpool have so many unknowns with a manager change potentially on the horizon and lots of squad building still to do before they are back to a good level again, as well as players who have been stalwarts being phased out. Chelsea are not interested in being a winning force and whilst United have had a good few weeks, you just can’t trust them long-term as we have seen over the last 13 years.
The Premier League probably needs a culture change to start seriously being a dominant force in the Champions League again. Premier League transfer strategies that prioritise players suiting the current PL meta - hyper athleticism, duel winning etc - arguably aren't conducive to winning the UCL. Teams probably need to start recruiting for Europe rather than recruiting with a sole focus on the PL. Then you've obviously got the playing style. Sign whoever you want, but you won't get as much out of them as teams like PSG and Bayern get out of their players unless you let them off the leash like they do. We might be a fair way away from any of this yet.
The jocks having a laugh at English club's expense. Tossers. Maybe they should have a look why their own club's are so shit
Correct on the Champions League He had played 2 games this season - The last being at the end of October Still not the best idea to change your keeper. Why not give him a game in the league before that ? Seems Chelsea are messing with their keepers as well. Never seems to end well
I think there is always an instant overreaction to things and there is a lot of context that gets ignored. Looking at a lot of the goals English teams have conceded most of them are either - - playing ridiculous high lines and getting countered. - playing out from the back poorly. - simply disgraceful goalkeeping. The best performance from an English team was Newcastle and they played what you could argue was a traditionally English style but just really lack final third quality. I’m not even saying the style is correct for European games or whatever but at least you can understand the approach. People slag off Arteta but at least he has a coherent game plan. The likes of Guardiola and Slot have been abysmal this season considering the resources available to them. Not to mention the Chelsea experiment of giving a coach a role he should be nowhere near. My loose theory is that clubs can’t find coaches they feel they can trust anymore. The style of Dyche or Allardyce can’t guarantee league safety now. It feels like the super coach from abroad is failing more often now. I don’t think PL clubs know where to turn now unless it’s a data driven drone type club that desire specifics. Maybe that is where every club will go. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse group of goalkeepers representing English teams in Europe.
I do find it quite amusing with this big failure in the Champions League with our English Clubs and the usual sort of words that get bandied about on social media about overrated English etc when all but one team hardly play any English starters. I find it ironic that the best performing team from this week and six out of the starting 11 English qualified was Newcastle and really should have won. Chelsea and Arsenal the next best with 3 English starters fwiw.
Germany are thinking of sacking Nagelsmann and replacing him with Klopp according to Bild (German version of the Sun but newly sister paper of the Telegraph)
One thing you notice is that whenever the PL has success it's because of the foreign imports, but whenever they fail it's "the English".
Yep you hear this sort of narrative all the time, even heard it last week by Simon Jordan who openly said the success of the Premier League is due to all the foreigners playing in it and not the English players. Drives me nuts listening to him at times!
Way too risky, there are too many good teams in the PL to potentially jeapordise the actual qualification for Europe in the first place. This is one area where the PLs strength, makes it their weakness in Europe - there isn't any chance that teams like Barca, Real, PSG, and Bayern ever fail to qualify for the CL so even if they had a total disaster season it doesn't kill them financially
I don't think it would jeopardise their chances of success though. I think it'd do the opposite. There isn't any need for mega clubs with vast resources to recruit and play in a style seeks to nullify and counteract clubs like Brighton and Crystal Palace. They need to act like big clubs. Are we saying that the current meta in the PL is the absolute beacon of football and there's no room for innovation? I'd argue it's a bit stuck in the mud tactically and that there's tonnes of room - in fact, it's crying out for - a bit of outside the box thinking. I'd bet that the first team to be brave and start doing things a bit differently will be quite handsomely rewarded. The fact of the matter is also that under their current transfer strategy, most big PL teams are still extremely prone to having disaster seasons. It's only Arsenal and Man City that are nailed on qualifiers for the Champions League. Everyone else is a bit of a joke. I think a lot of it does just come down to poor squad building and playing style more than the style of player targeted, but I do think they need to some need to shift their priorities a bit.
You could say the same about Barcelona real madrid bayern. Who all are full of foreign players. Only Barcelona have a key player from their own country, Yamal. Real Madrid rely on Bellingham Mbappe vinicius Jr. Bayern rely on kane olise Diaz
🚨 Liam Rosenior on Chelsea XI leaked early on the press: “I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of that if that's the case”. “These things now happen quite a lot but I'm more worried about the end result rather than before the game”. pic.twitter.com/S0vr1Op2IX— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) March 11, 2026 One of the reasons that United were so keen to get rid of him.