It is an argument that pops up every so often, particularly in England: When a club participating in the Europa League club does worse than expected domestically, the blame is placed squarely on European competition. On Sunday, former Manchester United defender Gary Neville was the latest to make the point:
That EL is a killer!! Always has been and always will... Twitter please educate me on a team that's excelled in the league and been in it.
- Gary Neville (@GNev2) November 27, 2016
The argument is usually based on the fact that the Europa League is a punishing competition in terms of travel and extra games and that the Thursday-Sunday pattern is disruptive, more so than the Champions League.
Why? Because while you may play Wednesday-Saturday in Europe's top competition and therefore have similar rest time as the Europa League -- two whole days off between games -- only half the Champions League games are on Wednesdays, whereas every Europa League match is on a Thursday.
What's more, it's not just the Thursday-Sunday pattern that wreaks havoc; it's the fact that, in England at least, the vast majority of games are on a Saturday. So it disrupts your training schedule and it's difficult to find a regular routine.
My colleague Raf Honigstein conducted a similar study last year, but Neville's question inspired me to dig into the numbers as well. I limited myself to the last five years and to the Premier League. Why? Mainly because I wanted to compare apples with apples. England has two cup competitions; Spain, Italy and Germany do not.
Moreover, Spain and Italy will, if a Europa League side has played away on a Thursday, move their next league game to a Monday, if the schedule permits. The Premier League will not. And in the Bundesliga, there is a monthlong winter break which -- you may have heard -- is unknown in the Premier League.
The criteria
I wanted to see which teams had improved their league position -- season-on-season -- while playing in the Europa League. English clubs qualified for the competition on 17 occasions between 2011-12 and 2015-16. Two of them -- West Ham and Southampton last season -- were knocked out in the preliminary rounds and so were ruled out, because the Europa League group stage had no bearing on whatever they did that year. That left 15 instances.
In that five-year period, Tottenham qualified for the Europa League in three straight seasons. I ruled out the final two, for the simple fact that the idea was to compare how they did in a Europa League-less season with one in which they spent plenty of Thursday nights on the pitch. That left me with 13 examples.
Birmingham City and Wigan Athletic both managed to qualify -- via the FA Cup -- while getting relegated in the same season. That made comparisons difficult, because the variable of being in the Championship is obviously far greater than playing Europa League football.
So much changes, in terms of opposition and budgets that you can't really compare. Both reached the Championship playoffs the season after relegation while playing in the Europa League, but you can't definitively say whether or not they would have been promoted without the Europa League. So I ruled them out as well. Which means I was left with 11 cases.
The results
In terms of league places, three improved and eight declined. In terms of points, four improved and seven declined. So does that automatically mean Neville is vindicated and the Europa League really is a scourge for league performance?
Not so fast. Take a closer look at the eight teams whose performances declined in terms of league places. Two of them suffered a vertical collapse, but the other six experienced only a slight dip.
That would be Stoke in 2011-12 (from 13th to 14th and from 46 points to 45), Swansea in 2013-14 (9th to 12th, 46 to 42), Tottenham in 2013-14 (5th to 6th, 72 to 69), Hull in 2014-15 (16th to 18th, 37 to 35) and Liverpool in 2015-16 (6th to 8th, 62 to 60). And then there's Fulham in 2011-12, whose points total actually increased from 49 to 52 but who fell a league position.
In other words, we're talking about six clubs who -- pretty much -- stayed the same, falling an average of two positions and just over two points. I'm not sure that's statistically significant in any way.
Two clubs did collapse year-on-year: Everton in 2014-15 (5th to 11th, 72 to 47) and Newcastle in 2012-13 (5th to 16th, 65 to 41). Perhaps that is where the perception comes from.
But three clubs improved: Tottenham in 2011-12 (5th to 4th, 62 to 69), Chelsea in 2012-13 (6th to 3rd, 64 to 75) and Liverpool in 2012-13 (8th to 7th, 52 to 61). The improvement in places was minimal at an average of 1.7, but the bump in points -- an average of nine -- was significant.
So where does all this leave us?
First and foremost, with a sense that you can't definitively say that the Europa League is a "killer" (sorry, Gary). There are far too many other factors at play here.
Not playing in European competition at all can be an advantage (witness Leicester City last season, Liverpool and Chelsea this year), because there are fewer opportunities to pick up injuries and fatigue and there is more time to train.
But we're talking specifically about the Europa League here, and the fact is that if you play in the Champions League or go deep in the League Cup or FA Cup, you will also have a congested fixture list with all the challenges that entails.
Squad investment also matters: If you add better players -- and more of them -- you're less likely to slide. Seven of the 11 teams in this study increased their net spend ahead of their Europa League season. Then again, of the four who did not, one improved and three slipped only slightly.
What does appear clear is that big teams with big squads do not, generally, pay the Europa League toll. That was the case for Tottenham in 2011-12 and Liverpool and Chelsea in 2012-13. And, assuming Manchester United were on Neville's mind, they offer the best parallel to the current situation at Old Trafford.
The Europa League is not to blame -- or, at least, is not the main reason -- for United's current league position, which is worse after 13 games than it was in the three seasons of David Moyes and Louis van Gaal.
There are plenty of other factors to explain this. If you're of an analytical bent, for example, it may be rather simple: They've actually been unlucky, scoring less and conceding more than they should have, based on the quality of chances created and conceded.
An expected goal model, based on Opta stats, reveals United have underperformed both at the attacking end -- they've scored 18, they should have had 21 -- and, especially, defensively --they've given up 15, it should have been 11.
They've also drawn their last four games at home, but expected goals models will tell you they did more than enough to win three of them: against Stoke City (2.94 to 1.24), Burnley (2.85 to 0.33) and West Ham (2.1 to 0.8).
You may not buy into analytics and you may not wish to consider what your eyes tell you -- that they comprehensively outplayed the opposition in those three home games -- and you may subscribe to the results-are-all-that-matter theory.
And that's fine. But the point is that with the six extra points they were expected to get, United would be sandwiched between Arsenal and Tottenham right now. And the fact that they are not has less to do with the Europa League than with other factors.