The premier league clubs, always leaving it late.

 I’m talking about the champions league,  nowadays it’s always a final match thing to qualify, we even have to carry calculator and be doing small math, to see how many points we need to get to scale through to the round of 16, whether we need a draw or if we cannot afford to lose, stuffs like that, it’s always a sad tale for the English teams in the champions league nowadays, gone are the days of the golden era in the champions league for English clubs, when Chelsea and Manchester united would meet in the finals( even though it was only once), you get the feeling that it could never happen again, if you do, I’m sad to say I totally agree with you…

But why is it so?

Speaking to a friend recently, one of the reasons I got was that the English premier league have very tight fixtures especially during the December period, so the players don’t get enough time to recuperate, hence undermining their performance in the champions league, they play matches even on boxing day, a day after Christmas, while other leagues would probably be on a mini holiday, but it has always been like that, it has suddenly become an issue, in truth, the tight fixtures do play a major role in determining these things, e.g. Chelsea have had to travel almost 12000 miles across Europe to play away champions league games.

In my opinion, I feel it could be that we do not just have the quality to complete at the highest level of club football, or we are simply not evolving fast enough, the last English team to win the champions league was Chelsea fc in 2012, and I dare say they didn’t really cruise to the trophy, let me just say they were destined to win it that year, nobody can stop your destiny!

Another was like ‘shey they’ve increased the money in premier league (talking about the new TV rights deal), they are probably not too bothered’.

But really, why do we find it hard to qualify easily from the group stage in recent years, only man city has qualified, Arsene Wenger needs a calculator, Jose Mourinho has it all to do against Porto and Van Gaal, well, he just can’t seem to get the best out of his lads.

It’s quite simple, the premier league clubs simply need to look for more quality or get the best out of their current crop of players, if we are ever going to qualify out of the group stage, let alone win the champions league AGAIN.

                                                                                                        ...for the love of sports.