Are the English sides once again the teams to avoid in the next round of the Champions League?

With only three places left in the next round of this sea­sons Cham­pi­ons League and with only five teams capa­ble of fill­ing those spots it seems like a good time to look ahead to the draw for the knock­out stages.

Once again all four Eng­lish sides look set to qual­ify for the next round, with only Chelsea yet to con­firm their place with the Blues need­ing a vic­tory over Cluj in the last match to make sure. How­ever that would seem to be a for­mal­ity (famous last words!) and along with La Liga the Pre­mier League will once again be the dom­i­nant force in the knock-out stages.

With the last four finals being con­tested by Eng­lish sides the teams from the Pre­mier League have become the ones to avoid and once again this sea­son won’t be any different.

Whilst there have been a cou­ple of impres­sive per­for­mances by the Eng­lish sides, Arsenal’s 5–2 win in Fener­bache being the stand­out one, all four look like they will qual­ify at a can­ter. In truth only Chelsea have been really tested in qual­i­fy­ing for the next round, that mainly com­ing from their trip to Rome.

We have already seen Liv­er­pool and Man­ches­ter United up against the other big force in the Cham­pi­ons League, the Span­ish sides, and really in all four games the Eng­lish sides should have taken all three points.

The only side capa­ble of chal­leng­ing the Pre­mier Leagues dom­i­nance of Europe will be Barcelona. The Cata­lan giants have been in remark­able form this sea­son, destroy­ing all of those in front of them and if you are drawn against Pep Guardiola’s side in the knock-out stages then good luck!

Barcelona looked a shade of the side you might have expected when they took on Man­ches­ter United last sea­son but with Lionel Messi lead­ing the way the Pre­mier League sides will be wary. Apart from Barca though there doesn’t look to be any series con­tenders to the Eng­lish dominance.

Look­ing through Europe you still have the big names in the next round, such as Inter Milan, Juven­tus, Bay­ern Munich and Lyon but not even these sides look good enough to upset the foot­ball odds and claim Man­ches­ter United’s crown.

Despite all four sides lead­ing their respec­tive leagues, or being in sec­ond place, and hav­ing on paper the qual­ity to chal­lenge for the Cham­pi­ons League you just can’t see it hap­pen­ing. Inter and Juven­tus play in a league where the qual­ity of foot­ball is dread­ful amongst the sides out­side of the top seven. Bay­ern Munich still have a good side on paper with Franck Ribery, Miroslav Klose and Bastien Schwe­in­steiger good enough to walk into any side. How­ever they aren’t play­ing like a team, with dis­jointed per­for­mances being a hall­mark of their sea­son. As for Lyon they will prob­a­bly walk the French league again but once again there resilience on Jun­inho means if he doesn’t play well they will crumble.

All four are good sides and there are more teams left in this sea­sons com­pe­ti­tion that you would group in that cat­e­gory but they aren’t great like United where last sea­son. I don’t believe them to even be good enough to upset Chelsea (if they make it), Liv­er­pool and Arsenal.

How the tide has turned from ten years ago when those Eng­lish sides left in the com­pe­ti­tion would be wary of who­ever they drew in the knock-out stages. Who­ever the Pre­mier League sides draw I would expect them to all go through to the quar­ter finals and I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see two or three sides make up the semi-finals as well with the win­ners once again com­ing from Pre­mier League.

Tagged as: arsenal, barcelona, bayern munich, champions league, chelsea, inter milan, juventus, liverpool, lyon, manchester united, Premier League