The Champions League, Premier League Grind
It's harder than ever to navigate the demands of league and Europe, especially with a fiercely strong Premier League. Liverpool picked a bad year to be below par.
English teams had a terrible three days in Europe last week. The media couldn’t believe it. As always, headlines blow this way and that depending on the outcomes. The eternal demand for content makes such rollercoaster analysis an inevitability.
“Champions League - why are Premier League sides dominating?” was a BBC Sport article in late January. They followed it with “The 24 hours that damaged the Premier League’s best-in-the-world reputation” after the first legs of the Champions League Round of 16.
Three English clubs lost by three goals. Liverpool have more of a chance of advancing but struggled to string three passes together. Arsenal needed an 89th penalty to secure a draw while Newcastle may regret not hanging on to their one-goal advantage to take to Barcelona. It was little better in the other European competitions, with Aston Villa the only victors (1-0), Crystal Palace drawing (0-0) and Nottingham Forest losing 1-0 at home.
If the subsequent media catastrophising was inevitable, little seemed to be made of the league results that followed for those clubs in gameweek 30 of the Premier League season. This is not as simple to unpick in the sense that four of them played each other.
Nonetheless, the league leaders needed two goals after the 88th minute to beat Everton (who have been notoriously poor away to big six sides for decades under David Moyes). Across town, Newcastle won 1-0 at Chelsea. None of the other sides who were in European action won, with five involved in draws and Villa losing at Old Trafford.
Just as it can be hard to separate Arne Slot’s shortcomings from the difficulties Liverpool’s players have experienced with form and grief this season, so something of an opposite effect is happening with Michael Carrick at Manchester United.
The Red Devils will play a total of 40 matches this season when the nine Premier League clubs in European competition have all gone past that already with an average of 45.3 games on the board. Whatever improvements Carrick has made at United, freshness of squad is very advantageous at this stage of the campaign.
Especially as the standard of opposition in England has never been as high. The collective Elo rating (which is an “estimation of [team] strength based on past results”) for the 20 clubs has risen above the already lofty vantage point of 2024/25. It’s why the champions this season and last will have had lower points tallies than those to which we had grown accustomed. Competition is too fierce to get into the mid-90s or higher.
As this weekend showed, it’s very hard to win matches in a hugely competitive Premier League following a match in Europe. This is not to excuse Liverpool for their performance against Tottenham, who themselves played away in the Champions League while having a more injury-ravaged squad.
Once you look at the data across the whole campaign, you realise it isn’t just the Reds who have struggled with domestic games after European adventures. Liverpool have had similar issues in previous, far better seasons too.
