PREMIER LEAGUE clubs have never seen a season like it.
And Thursday’s Champions League group-stage draw in Istanbul will only bring home to fans just how much a test of strength even only the FIRST half of the campaign is going to be.
Real Madrid won the Champions League last season after beating Liverpool
Tottenham’s return to the Euro elite will have a major knock-on effect for N17 finances while Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City have all been finalists over the past two years.
But with surprise Prem pace-setters Arsenal, as well as Manchester United, having to wait an extra 24 hours before discovering their Europa League schedule, all of England’s Big Six — plus potentially West Ham — will be plunged into a fixture list like they have never known.
The winter World Cup means that the domestic campaign will be split in two, with 16 Prem games by November 13 – a six-week break – and then 22 more matches from Boxing Day.
Yet it has also forced Uefa to redraw its normal timetable, meaning an unprecedented programme from the start of next month.
The six Champions League group games – starting on September 6 – will be compressed into just 57 days, six midweeks out of nine.
Two of the other midweek slots are taken up by the lone international break before the World Cup, when England must take a minimum of four points from matches with Italy and Germany to have any chance of avoiding Nations League relegation.
With boss Gareth Southgate looking to fine-tune his Qatar preparations, there is not much chance of players being rested.
And the ‘spare’ dates, October 18-20? A chance for respite, possibly?
Nope. That has a full Prem fixture programme, including Liverpool hosting West Ham, Manchester United against Spurs at Old Trafford and City’s visit to Arsenal.
And between the weekend before the start of Europe, when Arsenal travel to United, to the one after it is over – with Spurs playing Liverpool and Arsenal at Chelsea – there will be 12 Big Six Prem clashes.
It ensures that this will truly be a test of the resources and reserves of even England’s wealthiest clubs.
Perhaps opening the door for those outside the elite to think they can bring some of the big guns down a peg or two.
But for Chelsea, Liverpool, City and Spurs there will, rightly, be little sympathy – only expectations.
Financially, they can all anticipate huge windfalls.
City have banked £53m without kicking a ball, Spurs £37.5m, with a potential maximum for Pep Guardiola’s Prem champions of £125m if they win every game.
But for Guardiola, that lack of a Champions League crown on the Etihad sideboard is more than an itch for the Spaniard to scratch – it is a gaping wound.
It will have hurt him more to see arch pragmatist Carlo Ancelotti lift a record fourth title, even though it was against Jurgen Klopp and Co.
Ancelotti somehow found a way to beat Thomas Tuchel, Guardiola and Klopp, despite his side looking dead on their feet against all three.
Real Madrid’s 14th European crown was a dagger in the Prem’s belly, despite the fact England stands clear at the top of Uefa’s coefficient.
For all the talk of supremacy, English teams have won only two of the last ten Champions Leagues, three fewer than Real alone.
And both of those wins – Liverpool in 2019 and Chelsea two years later – also saw them beat English teams in the final. It is probably a good job Prem sides cannot meet a home rival until the last eight in the spring.
The last English side to beat a non-Prem one in the final was Chelsea against Bayern Munich in 2012.
Of course, an English team did beat a foreign one – indeed, a side coached by Ancelotti – the last time the final was played in Istanbul.
And Liverpool fans will certainly never forget that.
But as balls are drawn, it will be about the imminent future, the travel schedule and path for all four sides.
And despite their spats Guardiola, Tuchel, Klopp and Antonio Conte will find plenty in common.
None of them will have any excuses, either. Or, at least, none that anybody else will care about.
