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This year is the first since 1992-93 without an English club representative in the last 8 of a Eropean competition

Scholes today: "If you put Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich in the PL, they would win it by 10-15 points."

agree or disagree?

what are the factors behind English clubs underperforming in Europe, not just this year but in recent years?

I don't have the stats but one of the biggest problems has always been ball retention.  The other obvious one is the depth of world class players in the English teams,you may have 1 or 2 world class players but the top teams in Europe have 3-5.

next..........opinion.

The problem is the depth of the PL.

I am (for the sake of argument) going to say England has six 'top teams'. Germany/Spain would have two or three.

So take Man Utd, Liverpool and Tottenham and disband them. Let Chelsea, Man City and Arsenal pick whichever players they want from the squads, and now stick those three teams up against Barca, Real and Bayern. I'd bet you English clubs suddenly have a stronger showing in Europe.

Quality of the premier league is overrated?

or not even rated (tough to argue its a great league when a humdrum man u side is top 4 imo)

but it has shed loads of tv money, and attracts leading players (though obviously mostly a step below messi, ronaldo, neymar) so it should be doing better...?

Perhaps not borne out entirely by performances but people like Fabregas, DiMaria, Ozil, Sanchez are potentially the best the PL has to offer. Rejected tho by the cream of Europe - the very top players don't play in our teams, isn't it quite simple to work out in a way

This pretty much sums it up. PL is competitive every week, whereas la liga and bludersliga are not. Barca and real literally hammer some teams week in week out and can rest players. In our league you need your best men playing every week, and 9/10 they get a tough 90 mins.

I really think this is a slight fallacy that we like to propagate to explain why our football (especially when stylistically transferred on to the international stage) is pretty crap

Spurs, Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal would all finish about where they do in the PL if they played in Germany or Spain. Chelsea/City might get the odd 2nd or3rd place

I don't care if we don't do well in Europe.  I like being able to watch Man City at home to Burnley and the visitors have a fighting chance.  The champions league is dull anyway until the knockouts, and even if we haven't done well this year we have shown we can win the tournament when the stars align.

Give me that anyday than the leagues Spain and especially Germany even though they'll always have Bayern/Barca/Madrid in the Champ League quarters.

Mind you, I would rather watch Berdych v Ferrer than watch Djokovic dismantle someone in a masterclass so maybe I'm Mr Mediocre.

They would win the league, but surely people underestimate the lesser teams we have in this league. I don't think these teams have really outclassed any of the Enlgish bigger teams and I am sure they might struggle against the long ball teams in the division also?

Regardless of how people see the gap between our teams and other European teams, it does become tedious to see people post on Facebook saying how can the EPL be the best league int he World? I think it's only the British that would say that and I think there is a lot more to our league than the bigger teams, offers so much.

Not saying it's the best league, but I certainly am not saying it isn't...

difficult for english teams to compete when the big names want to play for barca or real. suarez and bale examples of the lure of those teams. bayern get to cherry pick all the german talent and bought well which keeps them ticking over. angel di maria was a big name move for premiership, when in reality he was surplus to requirements at the bernabeau. that tells its own story. i'm not sure about 10-15 points mind, but they are all better than chelsea who now have a commanding lead, so its safe to say they'd win the league with a bit in hand, maybes 5-8 points.

reasons for being shit in europe, the well documented one that our league is more competitve, barca/real can rest players for home games against the vast majority of teams if they wanted, where in england teams like burnley and leicester can give you a bloody nose if you throw in too many fringe players. full season having to go full throttle for 38 games is so much more difficult than bayern having basically wrapped up the league and in cruise control by the xmas break. also ... the xmas break. it may have an impact. i know if we had it man city would just send their players to dubai to play friendlies etc and i love the fixtures around xmas from a fans point of view, but burnout may be costing us at club and international level

Defensively the premier league teams are the weakest across the top leagues. Chelsea you would say are the best defensive team in the league but then they concede 2 from set pieces.

One of the biggest fallacies that there is no depth in the other leagues

Just because bayern are brilliant does not mean the rest of the league are hopeless. Wolfsburg for example are showing there level in the Europe league.

The rubbish sides in the premiership (and there are plenty) may well give there all in every game were as in Spain for example sides in a relegation fight often play weakened sides against the big two/three.

That does not make a league better more competitive In every game maybe. You could argue that giving your all and playing your best players away to Chelsea and still losing is not the best way to prepare for a six pointer three days later.

Fair point.  But what is odd is that a middling team such as Spurs could probably go and buy any Wolfsburg player they wanted.  Yet even with that advantage something will go wrong in the Europa cup.

They could

But then wolfsburg know a English side will have to overpay to get anybody from them..

Looks like they will make double possibly treble on kvb this summer if they choose to and probably back to England.

Agree with this.  Couldn't imagine Stoke for example finishing 8th in Germany or Spain as a matter of course.  People talk like mid table sides in the EPL would just auto finish top 6 in other major leagues.

Agree and would go further. Mid table teams in other leagues would beat ours over large samples.

The whole depth argument doesn't wash. English football simply has inferior players then it did in the naughties when Henry, Ronaldo, Alonso, Tevez, Drogba, Makalele, Vidic etc played here.

Van gaal states winter break?

Is it that barc/madrid/Bayern are so far ahead of 95% of their leagues so are fresher coming into euro games?

Last 10 years

Spain 4
England 3 (3 different teams)
Italy 2
Germany 1

Is there really an issue?

How do you explain the performance of Ozil, Soldado, Mangala, di Maria, Cabella, Markovic, Marlet, Shevchenko, Forlan and many others? Henry wasn't THAT Henry in his first season either. It's a fast paced league, faster and more intense than the others, with the exception of the top few teams in each league. Consistently, when new players at interviewed, they comment on the pace of the game here.

The premier league this season is probably its weakest for a long time, but I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. Citeh are in dissaray. Chelsea lost one game in a daft way. Arsenal did what they always do and nearly went further.

The significant drop in the quality of the homegrown players can't be helping either.

It's all a bit of a nonsense anyway. Apart from where their stadium happens to be located, the top teams in the EPL are basically European clubs now anyway in terms of personnel.

All about the money. Give it 20 years and Man City or Chelsea will be based on the continent and renamed to Berlin Blues or something ;)

The top teams are buying up all the quality players from the other teams and sitting them on their bench making it less competitive throughout. Those players are generally getting only a short time to prove themselves before being dumped on the bench or in the reserves but by then they're on so much money that they'd rather sit out the contract than move on and earn less but play and none of the other teams can afford to match their wages. After a couple of years of barely playing by the time they do go to another club their skill level, enthusiasm and desire has dropped and they never comemclose to fulfilling their potential.  I think it ruins a lot of quality players with potential and limits the pool of players teams outside the top 4 can choose from with real quality.

Also I think English clubs are far too quick to sack managers not allowing them to build a team over time and then improve it. I think it leads to English teams being tactically outclassed when they play more settled sides.

Too many mediocre managers keep getting jobs via the merry-go-round and keeping clubs from improving themselves for pushes up the league over time, young English players being sold for stupid amounts of money to then sit in the reserves at bigger clubs etc

Generally I think there's so much money at stake in the league that teams refuse to take risks in terms of players, managers and tactics for fear of dropping out the league and losing money and it's costing them competitively in the long run, which in turn hurts the other teams playing against lesser competition every week etc, they take the quick and easy option.

A good example is athletico Madrid, I haven't followed the story closely so I will have missed loads but it seemed they scouted and bought pretty shrewdly, took a chance on an unproven manager with good ideas and gave him the freedom to implement those ideas and they ended up with a great team led by Diego Costa, won la liga and got to the champs league final. Another is Porto when Mourinho managed them, took a chance on a manager and developed their players over time, won the uefa cup then the champions league, sold all their players to all of the top teams for fortunes and the manager went on to win leagues and cup at several big clubs. It's hard to imagine a team out with Chelsea or the Manchester clubs winning the league without just ploughing £150 million into the squad and getting the best available manager.