There is a post-mortem currently taking place in the Premier League. For the first time in 17 seasons, not a single team from the English top flight will be involved in the Champions League quarter-finals. This, just a few years on from the all-conquering 'EPL' breaking new ground by becoming the first league to see all four of its representatives reach the last eight, an event that happened back-to-back in 07-08 and 08-09.

The league had a major wake-up call last year, when only Chelsea made the quarters, albeit the Blues went on to lift the title in Munich. However, this year the league has gone one worse, with Manchester United and Arsenal's defeats to Real Madrid and Bayern respectively capping a disastrous English campaign in Europe's premier club competition. Chelsea and Manchester City had earlier failed to make it out of the group stage, meaning PSG's David Beckham is the last man left flying the St George's Cross.

The Champions League has existed under this name since 92-93, when the erstwhile European Cup was rebranded. The English teams took to the new competition like fish out of water, floundering as they failed to qualify for the last eight in any of the first four editions (it is, however, worth noting that there were no quarter-final knockout ties in the first two seasons – 92-93 and 93-94 – as a second group stage was instead contested by two four-team groups).

Manchester United was the first English club to break the last eight, in the 96-97 season. Since then, the Premier League's representatives have reached the quarter-finals on 33 occasions, a figure bettered only by Spain's 'La Liga' (34), with Málaga, Real Madrid and Barça all in the pot for this year's last-eight draw. Serie A comes in third, with 26 quarter-final appearances, followed by the Bundesliga, with 22.