Gunners boss Arsene Wenger spoke at a news conference on Monday ahead of the north London side’s game against Olympiacos and explained how he believes Premier League clubs find it harder in Europe’s elite competition.
Arsenal face their second game this Champions League campaign on Tuesday evening , after losing 2-1 on matchday one, away to Dinamo Zagreb.
The Gunners weren’t the only English club to lose their first game in the competition, both Manchester Clubs also lost on day one of the competition.
That’s the problem – when you go to Leicester and see who sits on the bench, that has changed in England, it makes every game very difficult and demands a lot of mental concentration to get it right as well.
Wenger then went on to explain how tough the Premier League is.
We want to do well in the Champions League and when you’re a big club you have to face that and deal with it. I don’t know if other teams look at [English clubs] with more or less fear.
I believe that the Premier League is very, very tough. Is that an influence or not? I don’t know but it’s a bit early to come to any conclusions.
We have to wait a little bit longer. A second year without [English clubs] being successful and you could come to a conclusion of, ‘Yes, there’s something we have to analyse deeply’, but I don’t believe so at the moment.
You cannot say [English clubs] are at that level [of the past] now because in the last two years Barcelona and Real Madrid have won the Champions League. We have to say they were the better teams. Are we far away? I don’t think so but we have to show that with our performance.
With the Premier League being one of, if not the toughest league’s in the world, for clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United etc. having to face tough opponents week in week out, as well as playing against some of the top teams in Europe, can create some really tough periods throughout the season.
This may affect a team’s performance, which as Wenger believes, makes it more challenging for the English clubs in the Champions League after hard games in the league at weekends, which all big clubs have so set as their main aim, to do well in the Premier League.
