‘Like watching League One’

THE Champions League is meant to be the pinnacle of club football but there wasn’t much evidence of that at the Etihad Stadium last night. Manchester City and Dynamo Kiev played out one of the most uneventful and uninspiring Champions League ties in recent memory. Robbie Savage, who was co-commentating for BT Sport, slammed the quality on show. ‘If you didn’t know this was the Champions League you’d think it was League One,’ said the former Leicester midfielder. With Arsenal facing mission impossible against Barcelona in the Nou Camp tonight after their 2-0 defeat at home in the first leg, City look likely to be the Premier League’s only representative in Friday’s quarter-final draw. Savage’s fellow BT Sport pundit Rio Ferdinand, who won the Champions League with Manchester United in 2008, questioned the strength of the Premier League before the game. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the most entertaining league in the world,’ said Ferdinand. ‘This season teams that you wouldn’t recognise in the top part of the league, with Leicester probably going to win it. But in those days we had teams who went deep into tournaments. ‘The mentality was just about getting through the first period of the tournaments and taking each game as it comes. ‘Within the leagues they play in they can go 20 games on a winning streak, drawing a couple and maybe losing one. ‘I think back then some of the best players in the world were in this country. At the moment there aren’t any.’ English clubs reached the Champions League final every year bar one between 2005 and 2012 but since Chelsea’s triumph in Munich four years ago just three clubs — Chelsea and United in 2014 and City this season — have got as far as the quarter-finals.