Has Premier League system-first approach turned them into spring lambs? | OneFootball

With six teams into the Champions League’s round of 16, the Premier League had a right to feel a little cocky.

English teams dominated the league phase with three clubs in the top four; the lowest English team was in 12th while the lowest La Liga representative was 35th, with a Serie A side in 30th, Ligue 1 in 25th and Bundesliga in 33rd.

And yet, when it has come to the business end of the tournament, English teams have largely been thumped.

Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham were all beaten by three-goal margins. Reigning champions Liverpool lost to the team 47th in UEFA’s club coefficient rankings. League leaders Arsenal needed a late penalty to rescue a draw at Leverkusen, who are sixth in the Bundesliga.

Newcastle’s 1-1 draw is the best result of the six fixtures but a win away at the Camp Nou seems unlikely at this stage.

All of this has prompted an existential look at the league often branded the best in the world.

In terms of coefficients, England is well out in front with nine out of nine clubs still in Europe and a coefficient 15 points higher than the next best. Despite some nonsense in the media, the Premier League is very, very likely to earn a fifth Champions League spot again.

On paper, the Premier League is in a very healthy spot, but events on the pitch this week paint a rather different picture. Only Liverpool and Arsenal have a realistic chance of making the quarter-finals, but that has often been where English teams run out of steam. In the past three years, the Premier League has had a maximum of one team in the semi-finals per season. In 2023/24, that number was zero.

So is this a freakishly bad year for English clubs or part of a wider trend?

When searching for reasons behind disappointing slumps in Europe, the fatigue issue is most often levelled at the Premier League. While other Champions League contenders have their feet up, Premier League teams are playing every two or three days during the festive period. There’s also an extra cup competition – dominated by teams in Europe – with two-legged semi-finals.

But more than just fatigue, which has been a concern long before this season, there has been a tactical shift throughout the league.

Anyone who has watched more than a handful of Premier League games will have noticed a distinct change in how the game is played. The Premier League used to be characterised by frantic, end-to-end, non-stop sprints that gave little care to tactics. That was often the explanation for English teams doing so poorly in Europe while also explaining why incoming foreign players took a while to bed in.

Our League is different, don’t you know?

But this season, you can’t move for systems. Long throws and set-pieces are the new ‘attack the wings and cross the ball’. A towering header from a centre-back from a corner has been replaced by a nod back across and attempts to force the ball over the goal-line like a rugby scrum.

The effect of this system-first approach has been two-fold. First, mid-table teams are better when competing against the top teams because they do not get blown away by superior talent and two, the superstar players have disappeared. As per Transfermarkt, just one of the top eight most valuable players in the world plies his trade in England: Erling Haaland. The uber-talented individuals who don’t want to play in a prescriptive system are largely at Real Madrid.

That approach comes with its own problems – as will probably be exposed later in the Champions League – but in an individual match, it means Madrid can blow opponents away with phenomenal footballers from back to front.

Last season, the system of Arsenal was strong enough to defeat an underwhelming Real Madrid but was then picked apart by PSG, who were inspired by the excellence of Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue.

There is also a perception difference in the Premier League compared to other top five nations; league organisers will move fixtures to enable their teams to have the best preparation for European fixtures. The Premier League will tell them they are playing at 12.30 on a Saturday.

For Premier League bosses, protecting their product is far more important than how English team fare in Europe. You don’t become the richest league in the world without the idea that winning the Premier League trumps all other competitions.

So while 2025/26 may see English teams knocked out particularly early, it is nothing too surprising given where the priorities of the league lie. As Michel Platini famously said: “The English are like lions in the autumn but like lambs in the spring.”