Do Premier League sides suffer a European hangover? How teams struggle domestically following Champions League and Europa League games
European hangovers are not just something felt by English fans who enjoy a midweek trip to the continent.
Many Premier League sides find to tough to cope with their European commitments and then return to league action just a few days later.
Away matches can be thousands of miles and then leaving little time to prepare.
A new study has found that English teams drop points in nearly half of their fixtures following a European game over the last decade.
After the last round of Champions League and Europa League matches, Manchester City, Tottenham and Manchester United all lost.
Betting-Directory.com conducted a study that found Premier League sides dropped points in 47.3 per cent of league fixtures after a European match since the start of the 2009/10 season.
Premier League's big six points dropped since 2009/10
The percentage of games sides did not win following Champions League or Europa League games
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- Arsenal – 39.7 per cent (98 games)
- Manchester City – 39.7 per cent (85 games)
- Manchester United – 41.6 per cent (91 games)
- Liverpool – 44.3 per cent (83 games)
- Chelsea – 45.3 per cent (94 games)
- Tottenham – 48.2 per cent (89 games)
Some teams are able to cope with others with Manchester City and Arsenal faring the best as they only drop points in 39.7 per cent of their games.
Out of the ‘big six’, Tottenham have struggled the most as they either lost or drew in 48.2 per cent of their post-European fixtures.
Most of the top clubs who are regularly in seem to have found a way to cope with the fixture pile-up. Those teams who unexpectedly make it into Europe seem to struggle the next season.
Burnley dropped points in all of their games after Europa League matches while Swansea rate was 81.9 per cent.
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Newcastle (75 per cent), Hull (66.7 per cent), Everton (65.9 per cent) and Fulham (64.6 per cent) all struggled.
Some managers also coped far better with getting their teams ready for Premier League games after European games.
Sir Alex Ferguson dropped points in just 25.7 per cent of his games in the final few seasons at Old Trafford and he is closely followed by Pep Guardiola (30 per cent) and Jurgen Klopp (32.7 per cent).
Unai Emery has one of the best records with a defeat or draw coming in just 19.2 per cent of games.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has dropped points in 87.5 per cent of his matches after European ties, albeit from a small amount of games.
English sides do lag behind their European rivals, though, as Paris Saint-Germain (25.7 per cent), Barcelona (26.3 per cent), Real Madrid (26.8 per cent), Juventus (26.9 per cent) and Bayern Munich (30.7 per cent) all fared better than the top English sides.