The UEFA co-efficient ranking has seen the Premier League sink, and we are in danger of losing our fourth Champions League place.

Poor performances in the Europe recently has seen the Premier League overtaken by the Bundesliga in the UEFA rankings, and Serie A isn’t too far behind after Juventus made the Champions League final last season.

The co-efficient is decided according to how well clubs from each league do in European competition, so it hasn’t helped the Premier League clubs in the Europa League have not taken the competition seriously.

Tottenham narrowly beat Qarabag of Azerbaijan 3-1 on Thursday despite resting a number of players, while a weakened Liverpool side drew 1-1 at Bordeaux.

“It is a possibility that we will have to repair in the coming months. It’s not only the Champions League teams who are involved in that, it’s Europa League teams as well,” Wenger explained at Friday’s press conference.

“We have suffered from the Europa League teams not having taken the competition seriously recently as well.”

The irony is, of course, that either winning the Europa League or finishing in fourth place in the Premier League offers Tottenham and Liverpool their only hope of Champions League football. By performing badly in the Europa League they are only shooting their own chances of Champions League football in the foot.

Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United all lost in the Champions League this week but the Premier League needs sides to at least make it out of the group stage to keep the co-efficient high. There’s plenty of time to make up for defeats but, with Spanish and Italian clubs taking the Europa League seriously, English football is in danger of having just three teams in the Champions League in the near future.