As I've been saying for the past few years, the EPL is in decline and the results (and style of play) really reflect this.
Would not surprise me to see the Bundesliga overtake them in the co-efficient rankings soon - not that it makes a difference though. But yeah, the quality of football in that league is nowhere as good as it was 4-5 years ago.
Things can always change though, given that their top clubs have seemingly never ending sums of money to spend on players, but as it stands the current "top four" are not a patch on EPL top teams of the past.
The German teams have been awesome this year.
All topped their groups and they've only lost one game between them - and that was a freak result with Bayern losing to BATE.
The English sides won't do anything until they remember that you need a midfield to do anything.
Chelsea have Ramires, Mikel and past-it Lampard.
Man Utd have Carrick, Fletcher, Cleverly and past-it Scholes.
Arsenal have Arteta, Wilshire, Diaby.
Man City actually have some okay midfielders, but the other players don't work hard enough.
You compare those current English midfields to what other good sides have just now:
Juve - Pirlo, Marchisio, Vidal
Barca - Xavi, Iniesta, traffic cone
Real - Alonso, Khedira, Modric
Bayern - Schweinsteiger, Martinez, Gustavo
And Dortmund show how you can play without a brilliant central midfield if you have a gameplan that really suits the players you do have.
Hell, even Milan's midfield, with De Jong and Montolivo, compares pretty favourably to what the English sides have just now.
If you don't have the presence in midfield, you can't control the game and you and going to really struggle, no matter what you have around that midfield.
- - - Updated - - -
No. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe this is the rest of the world thing, but this "has to be there to defend their title" smacks completely of unmerited sentimentality bullshit in my mind and has no place in choosing who qualifies or not. You defend your title by winning your league -- not by not even bothering to show up in the win, place, or show categories of your domestic league.
If you want to kowtow to teams who can't be bothered to come anything close to the champions in their league, then make them play the qualifying rounds. Don't slide them into the group stages like they have proven anything relative to the rest of the clubs that qualified fairly.
Yeah, it's a bit of a hangover from the old formats of the European Cup.
Was fair enough back then to be allowed back in as defending champions when you actually had to win your domestic title to qualify, but now that there are multiple representatives of the top countries (anyone who can realistically win the CL will come from a country that has at least three CL spots) there really isn't any reason to hang on to the exemption for the defending champions.
The World Cup and the European Championships both make the champions go through proper qualifying (that's a relatively new thing for the World Cup, not sure about the Euros), so don't see why the CL should be different.
Buy on AliExpress.com
