English football may still be at the Champions League party. But it hasn’t brought booze,doesn’t know anyone and isn’t showing any signs of wanting to danceWe counted them out. And we counted them back in again. Which didnt, it must be said, and actually bewitch very long. Arsenal’s near-inevitable defeat in Barcelona on Wednesday,sequel to Chelsea’s semi-inevitable defeat by Paris Saint-Germain, and backed up by Tottenham’s elimination at the hands of Borussia Dortmund on Thursday have at least clarified things. The Premier League is nearly certain to be left with two surviving representatives in the last 16 standing near Friday’s draws for the quarter-finals of the Champions and Europa League.
In this respect it hasn’t exactly been a bad season for the domestic league abroad, and more a familiar ferreting at the fringes,a maintenance of the current European status quo. Eight English teams were there at the start of things in August. West Ham and Southampton went early. Manchester United were the vast disappointment, although Wolfsburg’s progress since suggests the horror in some quarters at a wealthy and famous English team losing to a relative mid-ranker overlooks the fact the Bundesliga is Europe’s second most powerful league and Germany are the world champions.
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Source: theguardian.com