Premier League costing teams European survival – Wenger

(GSM) – Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has admitted that the pressures of the Premier League are taking it’s toll on English sides resulting in their failure to perform in this season’s Champions League.

Wenger’s admittance follows after Manchester United and Arsenal were knocked out of the competition leaving no English club in the last four of the Champions League, the first time in seven years.

Liverpool, who went out in the group stages, Chelsea, in the last 16, were the earlier casualties while and then both Arsenal and Manchester United bowed out at the quarter-final stage.

“The competition in the Premier League has become much harder and the big teams in the Premier League paid for that in the Champions League,” he said.

“You cannot afford any more, against anybody in England, to rest your players before a Champions League match. The physical demands in the Premier League are just so high that you go into the Champions League in March and April having lost your best players or already having exhausted them.

“The Premier League is too demanding. What other leagues can do, we cannot afford to do. I do not believe at all that the Premier League has become weaker.

“It was an exception from us because we played against a stronger team (Barcelona) and you have to accept that. They were better than us but under normal circumstances Manchester United would have gone through and Chelsea as well.”