Bold Bayern and PSG leave Premier League elite looking more like lambs than lions | Jonathan Wilson

Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Molineux was seen as a bad result but Wolves rank as the 29th-richest football club in the world. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

When Michel Platini was president of Uefa, he spoke of English clubs as lions in winter but lambs in spring. It seems likely that over the past couple of seasons that has been enhanced: these are not just lambs, but exhausted lambs, physically, mentally and emotionally shattered by the constant strain of Premier League football, not gambolling but trudging.

But it’s not just about English exhaustion. PSG under Luis Enrique are a very different team to the celebrity-laden underperformers of before. Luis Enrique’s first great achievement was to break the club’s dependency on famous names and create a well-balanced side far removed from the top-heavy glitz of the Lionel Messi-Neymar-Kylian Mbappé era. His second was to create a team that peak in the key months of spring. In the group stage in each of the past two seasons, there has been little special about PSG. They finished 11th last season and 15th this campaign. Come the knockouts, though, it was a different story.

Ousmane Dembélé scored twice as Paris Saint-Germain won 2-0 at Anfield to clinch a 4-0 aggregate win against Liverpool in their quarter-final. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty Images

Luis Enrique’s intensity, his relentless drive and that capacity of his side to take off for the key months of the season seem sufficient to override the danger of softness implicit in a less challenging league. Perhaps they can’t be entirely trusted defensively – Liverpool caused them problems in the second leg of their quarter-final, as Chelsea and Monaco had at points in the previous two rounds – but, in the end, the pace and attacking verve of their forward line was more than good enough.

Ultimately 8-2 and 4-0 aggregate wins over Chelsea and Liverpool tell their own story. It may be true that the two goals in the second leg at Anfield came late as Liverpool were forced to overcommit, but equally they should have won the first leg far more comfortably given balance of play and chances created.

Which is to say that the suspicion of a soft underbelly, a slight unfamiliarity with pressure, has not entirely gone away but that other factors now take precedence. It’s a similar story with Bayern, who have not been tested by any Bundesliga opponents this season as PSG have been by Lens.

There is a fallibility about them that allowed Real Madrid an unlikely route back into the first leg of their quarter-final and made the second leg thrilling in a way it didn’t need to be and really should not have been. Even in the Bundesliga, Bayern are conceding almost a goal a game. Dayot Upamecano is the model of the modern super-club defender, far better on the ball, as he showed with his assist for Harry Kane in the second leg against Real Madrid, than he is at actually defending.

Like PSG, the German champions overwhelm sides with the quality of their attacking: with Kane scoring himself and creating space for the group of rapid and technically gifted forwards who play off him – perm three from Michael Olise, Luis Díaz, Jamal Musiala, Serge Gnabry (out injured now) and Lennart Karl – they’re averaging 3.5 goals per game in Bundesliga and Champions League this season, or 22% more than the average Premier League game (that is, both sides combined).

As English football responds to the end of the guardiolista tactical consensus by wandering uncertainly back towards defensiveness, Bayern and PSG are attacking their way through defensive frailty. It’s great to watch, and it seems to be working.