Last season we lost Man City to Barcelona in the Round of 16, Chelsea to Paris, Arsenal to AS Monaco, and Liverpool to Basle at the Group Stage. This season we've seen Arsenal beaten by Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiakos, Liverpool have struggled against FC Sion and Bordeaux, City lost at home to Juventus, Chelsea went down to Porto, and Manchester United struggled against PSV. What's the common factor?
Well, There is One Obvious Thing
They're all from the Premier League. There must be something wrong with the Premier League! Or must there be...?
The Argument For...
The Argument For...
Well, the middle and bottom teams in the Premier League are a whole cut above the teams in the middle and bottom of Serie A and La Liga, that's certainly true. No team at the bottom end of La Liga has Cabaye or Payet or Shaqiri or M'Vila or Wijnaldum or Gokhan Inler. That makes the league campaigns tougher, and maybe it tires our players out relative to the freshness of Madrid and Barca. Maybe there's something to that. But maybe those leagues are more tactical and technical, and the EPL is a bit brutish and our teams don't adapt, but then again the EPL has always been like that, so why are we suddenly so much worse? Is the problem actually, perhaps, that the EPL isn't good enough, and that winning a game in the Champions League is harder? How do you possibly account for a squad of Sanchezs and Ozils being unable to overcome a squad of Cambiassos and Brown Ideyes on their home turf? Seriously, how do you?
The Argument Against...
Well, essentially, is Manchester City's suckiness actually related to Arsenal's? Well, actually, Arsenal in Europe suck the way they've been sucking for years. If it was something to do with the landscape of the EPL today, you'd expect a downward trend, but this Arsenal is the same as the old Arsenal. Remove them from the equation and you have a City side that's a bit of a mess, a United side who could not be more dull, and a Chelsea side that's falling apart.
Correlation & Causality
It's tempting to see a link and assume it has salience. In fact, it's totally natural, you do it without meaning to, but that doesn't mean there's any substance to it. Yes Arsenal and Man City and United and Liverpool and Chelsea all suck simultaneously, but that doesn't mean that there is a unifying cause. Arsenal don't necessarily suck for the same reason Chelsea suck, and Chelsea's sucking may have nothing to do with Liverpool's sucking. I'm not saying there's no correlation, but I'm also not claiming there is any.
It's tempting to see a link and assume it has salience. In fact, it's totally natural, you do it without meaning to, but that doesn't mean there's any substance to it. Yes Arsenal and Man City and United and Liverpool and Chelsea all suck simultaneously, but that doesn't mean that there is a unifying cause. Arsenal don't necessarily suck for the same reason Chelsea suck, and Chelsea's sucking may have nothing to do with Liverpool's sucking. I'm not saying there's no correlation, but I'm also not claiming there is any.
