It could be a humbling week for the Premier League in Europe, as three sides stand on the brink of a group stage exit in the Champions League.
Both Manchester clubs and Chelsea are one bad result away from the Europa League, and while only City's fate is out of their hands it has certainly been a poor collective campaign for English sides.
Along with Arsenal, the endangered trio have won only nine of 20 games, including failures to beat the unheralded likes of Genk and Basel.
These struggles have been taken as evidence that the Premier League no longer dominates Europe - a recurring theme in the media this week.
However, there seems to be a large and unquestioned assumption in this - that the Premier League has ever dominated.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't seem to remember a never-ending procession of open-top bus parades and MBEs. And yet people speak as though England has enjoyed unbridled success on the continent.
Take Alan Hansen in Monday's Daily Telegraph: "The Premier League dominance of the Champions League is over, regardless of the outcome of this week's European fixtures.
"Three years ago, the group phase seemed little more than a formality for our strongest clubs. You could take it for granted we'd have four representatives in the last 16 and each of them was capable of winning it."
On the first point, Hansen is not far off. Premier League clubs have had amazing success getting out of the first group stage - only three teams out of 38 have fallen at that hurdle in the last 10 seasons.
And in December 2008, four English clubs booked their places in the last 16 for the third season in a row.
But each of them capable of winning it?
Plenty of English sides have gone close, but the bare fact is only two of them have lifted the big-eared cup in the last decade. In fact, you have to go back three decades to find an English European Cup winner other than Liverpool or Manchester United - Aston Villa in 1982.
Chelsea and Arsenal have certainly been capable of looking like they might win it - but that is very different from actually doing so.
Hansen continues: "The recent peak where three Premier League clubs reached the semi-finals, and United and Chelsea met in the final, reflected the fact they were the two best teams in Europe."
Really? That all-English encounter came smack in the middle of a run of three Barcelona titles in six seasons, and was Chelsea's only visit to the final.
At this point Chelsea fans are almost obliged to mention Tom Henning Ovrebo, whose lamentable refereeing display was blamed by many - including Didier 'F****** Disgrace' Drogba - for Barca's semi-final win over the Blues in 2009.
That the Norwegian had a hopeless game at Stamford Bridge is beyond doubt, but Barca were on the receiving end of a ludicrous red card for Eric Abidal.
In any case there is no chance Chelsea would have done to Manchester United what Barca did in the final. The Spanish side were the best in Europe that year.
Below is a spreadsheet looking at the seasonal Champions League performance of team's from Europe's four best leagues - the numbers represent teams eliminated at each stage.
I have rather arbitrarily awarded one point for a group stage exit, two for last 16, three for quarter-finals, four for semi-finals, five for beaten finalists and seven for winners.
You will see that, over the last 10 years, England does indeed have highest score - though not by a huge margin.
England posted the biggest single-season total (19 points) in 2007/08, when three sides reached the semi-finals and Manchester United played Chelsea in the final.
That was one of two campaigns when four Premier League sides reached the quarter-finals, but that 'dominance' has not translated into a golden era of English names engraved on the trophy - certainly nothing to rival the six in a row between 1977 and 1982.
And that has been the problem in the last decade - for all the Premier League's weight of numbers, we aren't actually very good at winning things.
England has provided five of the last six beaten finalists - (Manchester United twice, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal) but only two winners in the past decade.
In the same period Spanish teams have won four (Barcelona three, Real Madrid one) and Italians three (Milan two, Inter one).
We might get knocked out slightly later than teams from other countries, but when it comes to the crunch we need either a miracle or an English opponent (and, in both cases, penalties) to get over the line.
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Premier League's finest.
In order to have your dominance ended, you need to dominate first.
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