5 players who have embarrassed the Premier League in this Champions League season

The Premier League’s reputation has taken a few hits during the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League, and while talk of a full-scale demise is premature, a handful of English-based players have delivered performances that bordered on the unwatchable. Four of the five names below are already packing their bags for the Europa League sidelines; one still has time to salvage his continental image, though the clock is ticking.

Jacob Ramsey, Newcastle United Ramsey’s campaign will forever be bookmarked by the 7-2 capitulation at Spotify Camp Nou, yet the numbers were alarming long before the final whistle in Barcelona. Tasked with adding thrust from midfield, the 24-year-old instead finished among the competition’s least effective distributors, misplacing passes under the faintest hint of pressure and recording negligible progression stats. His back-pass that teed up Raphinha for the hosts’ fourth was the snapshot of a wider, season-long malaise.

Trevoh Chalobah, Chelsea Enzo Maresca reportedly sounded internal warnings about Chelsea’s defensive depth, and Chalobah’s six Champions League starts underlined every one of them. The centre-back failed to register a single tackle success of note against PSG’s front line, was repeatedly caught flat-footed on the turn, and looked a yard short of the speed of thought required at Europe’s top table. The eye test matched the analytics: Chelsea shipped goals whenever he was on the pitch.

Filip Jorgensen, Chelsea If Chalobah eroded belief from the back four, Jorgensen nuked it from between the posts. Handed the gloves for the first-leg Round-of-16 duel with holders PSG, the Danish keeper produced a horror show of parried crosses, mistimed charges and, most damagingly, two reckless passes that led directly to concessions. A save rate of roughly 37 percent and an average of 2.40 goals against per appearance are figures that belong in a training-ground blooper reel, not a knockout bracket.

Jeremie Frimpong, Liverpool Still alive thanks to Liverpool’s aggregate edge over Inter, Frimpong nonetheless carries the weakest individual résumé of any surviving Premier League player. Once lauded for buccaneering overlaps at Bayer Leverkusen, the Dutch wing-back has mustered a paltry 0.4 key passes per European start this term, leaving Mohamed Salah to forage alone on the right. Defensively, his positioning has been so erratic that Arne Slot has twice hooked him before the 60-minute mark.

Bernardo Silva, Manchester City Silva’s campaign ended in infamy when he leapt to block a late Real Madrid shot, deflecting it past his own keeper with an ill-judged flailing arm. The hand-ball felt like a fitting coda to a tournament in which the Portuguese playmaker looked a step slow, completed a meagre 0.1 dribbles per outing and was repeatedly targeted by quicker midfield runners. Pep Guardiola kept faith until the final whistle of the quarter-final, but by then the damage—to City’s tie and Silva’s elite-level credibility—was done.

For a league that markets itself as the planet’s most intense, these five have, through error-strewn nights and damning data lines, offered an unwelcome counter-narrative. Only Frimpong remains on the UCL stage; unless he flips the script in the semi-finals, the Premier League will be left to re-watch a season’s worth of lowlights rather than dream of an Istanbul finale.