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Premier League clubs doomed in Europe, until next time - DES KELLY

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English football is in crisis. Just look at the failure of this nation’s clubs in the Champions League. The statistics are damning. They show that no Premier League side has won the competition in a dismal run of failure stretching back to… er, what is it now? Oh, yes — 10 whole months.

No club from this country has been crowned champions of Europe since last May. What a shocking indictment that is. Some will try to gloss over this demise by pointing out there hasn’t been a final since last May. But failure is failure.

We can only shake our heads and wonder where that long-lost golden age of 43 weeks ago has gone to. Those heady days when we were still unable to leave the front door unlocked, a pint of beer was about the same price as it is now and we had complete faith in our game. When did it all change?

Not so bad: It is just 10 months since Chelsea were crowned kings of Europe

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The fact that no English side was involved in the Champions League quarter-final draw for the first time since 1996 provided the cue for a Dad’s Army of Private Frazers to run around impersonating the wild-eyed undertaker crying ‘We’re Doomed!’

Suddenly, the Premier League was washed up, those pesky continentals playing over here were less technically proficient than those pesky continentals playing over there and the world order had changed for ever.

But if the presence of Galatasaray or Paris Saint-Germain in the last eight ahead of an English club leads you to believe the Premier League is worse than Turkey’s Super Lig, or that our clubs need to take their lead from France’s underwhelming Ligue 1, then I suspect you might also assume I’m not the sort to employ sarcasm in an argument.

The most shameless prophet of doom was Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, who announced that the exit of his side from Europe was the sign of a wider malaise.

‘It’s a massive wake-up call for us to have Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal all out before the quarter-finals,’ said Wenger. ‘The rest of European football has caught up with us and we have to take that into consideration about the way we think about the future of the Premier League.’

Of course, the absence of a club in the latter stages is disappointing. But when it comes to ‘massive wake-up calls’ there is no manager more in need of a bucket of cold water over the head than the Gunners boss.

Wenger is sleepwalking if he thinks Arsenal are merely the victims of some domestic decline. If so, he should have taken advantage of it with a trophy or two over the past eight years.

Are you sure, Arsene? Wenger deflected the attention away from his side's woeful defending at the Emirates

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The more sensible among us know he was craftily deflecting attention away from his own failings. There was nothing collective about the exits of the English clubs. The Gunners proved they were quite capable of making a mess of their European campaign all by themselves.

Wenger’s team failed because they betrayed their familiar flaws. The defensive performance in the first leg against Bayern Munich was so woeful they looked like the sort of team that could not form a pre-match huddle without being overpowered.

When the pressure was off in the return they showed they can perform on their day. Unfortunately, that day is often a day too late.

Put it this way, I didn’t hear Sir Alex Ferguson or Roberto Mancini making excuses about everything being worse.

There was nothing to separate Manchester United and Real Madrid until the Nani red card; Manchester City could console themselves with the theory that they landed in one of the most formidable groups for years, even if they didn’t rise to the challenge and played as if they’ve never been abroad before. While Chelsea are an ongoing implosion that nobody can predict.

But who does Wenger believe the Premier League should learn lessons from in the future? Is it France, where Qatar’s billions bought a place at Europe’s top table for Paris Saint-Germain and Zlatan  Ibrahimovic is on a salary of £250,000 a week?

Or maybe Turkey, where Galatasaray bust the bank to recruit veteran Didier Drogba and the wandering mercenary Wesley Sneijder?

Turkish delight: Didier Drogba has helped Galatasaray reach the last eight

It can’t be Spain, where two clubs rake in practically all of the television cash. Or is he thinking of following the example of their surprise quarter-finalists, Malaga, currently banned from European football next season after defaulting on their debts?

The truth is this season is an aberration. The more significant statistic is the fact that there has been an English club in seven of the last eight Champions League finals.

That dominance will not continue. It never does and new powerhouses are springing up in Europe. But the Premier League will continue to punch its weight in the future. One way to help ensure it happens would be for Wenger to get his own house in order, rather than complain about the rest of the street.

  Afraid to say, Sepp's right

Wash your hands after reading this item. If you look at it online, use eyedrops.* For I am about to confess something quite repulsive and I don’t wish to be responsible for unwittingly passing on any contagion.

There’s no easy way to say this, but this week I’m afraid I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with FIFA president Sepp Blatter. It is a horrible burden for anyone to bear, like finding you are a distant relative of Jim Davidson, or that someone has posted a video of you drunkenly dancing to ‘Play That Funky Music, White Boy’ on YouTube.

At odds: Blatter (right) does not agree with Platini's restructuring of the European Championships

Sir Alex Ferguson was none too keen to discover his injury-prone defender Rio Ferdinand has been recalled to the England squad. Now we’ll find out how much Rio really wants to play for his country...  

But when Blatter laid into UEFA chief Michel Platini about the hideous plan to turn the 2020 European Championship into a multi-venue circus with no host nation, I could not quibble with a single thing the old codger said.

‘A tournament should be played in one country,’ protested Blatter. ‘That is how you create identity and euphoria. They have fragmented the 2020 tournament. So it is not a European Championship any more. It has to have a different name. Such a Euro lacks heart and soul.’

Sadly, there is said to be no known cure for Blatteritis. You can only clean the affected area with powerful antiseptic and hope for the best.

*To all those about to send an email or tweet saying: ‘I scrub after every item on this page’, save yourself the electricity. I’m ahead of you.

 

Paul Gascoigne is out of rehab and, predictably, has stepped right back on the path to self-destruction…I mean, ‘the path to recovery’.

In a series of unsettling interviews, Gazza revealed that he intends to enter the I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here camp to ‘keep his recovery on track’. He even wants to host his own chat show (one possible working title is Hic!).

Get me out of here: Gascoigne says he wants to appear on the ITV reality show

‘It’s about staying sensible,’ Gazza said, while sounding anything but.

Gascoigne then countered any comparison between his situation and George Best’s by saying: ‘I’m sitting here — and George has passed away, God bless him. That’s one comparison.’

Yes, but Best passed away aged 59 and Gascoigne is 45. Let us pray we never return to that quote again for at least 14 years.

 Rogue Moss is evergreen

There was an unseemly fuss over reports that motor-racing legend Sir Stirling Moss declared that he did not want a ‘poofter’ to play his character in any film of his life.

‘I’ve spent my whole life chasing crumpet. It wouldn’t obviously work if I was played by that lovely chap Kenneth Williams, who played upon being poofy,’ he said, missing the point about acting entirely. Moss added he’d prefer ‘the guy from Skyfall’ (wouldn’t we all, darling?)

People instantly queued up to be upset — since we live in an age where any opinion can provoke a froth of outrage.

Clanger: Moss

Lovely: Williams

I’ve met and interviewed Moss. He is a charming, debonair, old-school daredevil. In his heyday, he was the sort who could land a plane without spilling his martini, disappear into the team trailer with a pitlane groupie, jump behind a wheel, race at 180mph in a car with no seatbelts, and depart from the winners’ podium clutching a magnum of champagne and two more pitlane models.

Moss has never been ‘politically correct’, but he still picked up a knighthood and an OBE along the way.

He offended some people and what he said was downright daft.

But anyone who expects an 83-year-old ex-Formula One playboy rogue to act as a moral compass probably needs to take a look at themselves, too.

 

Wales winger George North says his countrymen ‘want a bloodbath’ in Saturday’s Six Nations decider against England. A physical scrap might actually play into English hands, but it’s the kind of trash talk that doesn’t bode well for the contest.

Bloodbath: North has stoked the fire ahead of the Six Nations decider

Too many matches in this Championship have been tedious wars of attrition settled by a referee awarding arbitrary penalties for offences in the scrum. During the Welsh victory over the Scots, I heard the official’s name mentioned more than any player involved as he blew his whistle every 30 seconds or so.

Whoever emerges triumphant from all the noise and fury in Cardiff, all I ask is the players forget about spilling blood and serve up something that stirs it instead.

  More... JEFF POWELL: This is no blip. English football's fall from power has been coming MARTIN SAMUEL: Rio's the right man for England... for right now Harry Redknapp - The Footballers' Football Column: Life as a football boss is scary... A few bad results, the chairman goes to his golf club, his mates tell him the team's rubbish and the manager's sacked It's Goldenballs v Golden Boot in the Champions League as PSG are handed daunting draw with giants Barcelona









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