Paul Parker: How the English teams will fare in the Champions League

Arsenal’s biggest problem is always that when it really starts to matter, in the knockout stages, they come up short – in the past six years they have gone out in the last-16. You can expect them to get out of the group again, probably in second to PSG, and then the real judgment comes when they face top-class opposition over two legs. That’s when we will really see what this Arsenal team are made of.

I’m not sure if Wenger was right to make the claim that he now has a team of “men”, but certainly they look stronger than they have for some time. Defensively they have got more experience with Shkodran Mustafi and that can only be an asset. Rob Holding had been playing quite well but a World Cup winner is another prospect entirely. In midfield, Granit Xhaka will pick up as many yellow cards as Francis Coquelin, but even if he won’t score or assist a lot he will add physicality to the Arsenal team.

You can’t be sure if Lucas Perez is going to work out just yet and he doesn’t exactly fill the brief of being a world-class centre-forward. He is an unknown quantity at the moment and we need to wait and see how the signing pans out. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to Arsenal.

City’s best performances have all come in the first half of their matches – they might have tailed off as games have gone on, but some of those first halves have contained some of the best football the Premier League has seen in a while. They’ve still got a lot of work to do but it is already apparent that they are a team which is going places. They will definitely compete for the Champions League – although of course there are no guarantees at this level.

They reached the semi-finals last season but weren’t a good team; that has changed under Pep Guardiola. Even if they don’t possess the superstar names that Barcelona and Real Madrid do, Guardiola’s meticulous preparation and tactical sophistication will give them an edge.

If they get to the semis, I think they very well may be the team to beat. I’m certainly going to enjoy watching them.

The one thing that does concern me is that I know Guardiola is unhappy with his full-back areas. Gael Clichy, Pablo Zabaleta and the rest are good professionals and good full-backs but Guardiola’s requirements are different than those of any other manager: you need to come forward and central and join up with the midfield. They can get by in most games, but just as Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann exploited space in behind to knock Bayern Munich out in the semi-finals last season, it could be a potential weakness for Guardiola.

Spurs have got a great chance of really doing something in the Champions League this season. Their group is eminently winnable and then if you get a good draw in the knockouts, the quarter-finals is far from impossible. Last season there were concerns over their squad depth but they have bought players like Vincent Janssen, Victor Wanyama and Moussa Sissoko in this summer and look stronger. Tottenham will be quite steady.

The one thing they really lack, though, is experience in the competition. They don’t have many players with Champions League know-how and that could be a big problem. You know, games can change so quickly at the top level: you could be winning 1-0 and within a minute you could be 2-1 down. Do they know when to sit back and kill a game off? I also worry about the disruption of playing games at Wembley – it just isn’t the same as playing at home.

Still, I think they have a mentally stronger squad than Liverpool’s when the Reds broke into the European elite under Brendan Rodgers, and I think they will cope better too. The group stage will ease them in – but Spurs must be careful that they don’t focus too much on the Champions League and let the ball drop domestically, where they have a huge challenge on their hands to qualify again.

Leicester are suddenly in the real world now – that 4-1 hammering at Liverpool pressed home what’s it’s like when everyone is gunning for you. It is also a huge step-up for the players they have. Signings like Islam Slimani have experience of European football but for the likes of Jamie Vardy it will be a whole new challenge. I think we’ve seen with Vardy for England that he lacks knowledge of how to play against European teams; how clever they are. Porto are a very good team and Brugge are dangerous, particularly at home, and for that reason I think Leicester will struggle.

I also have reservations over their tactics. Sir Alex Ferguson eventually realised that 4-4-2 would not work in Europe – you have to play one up front. It was a fundamental change for United but he had to change his system. The problem Leicester have is that they almost always play with two, and Vardy isn’t exactly what you want in a lone striker. He isn’t a hold-up kind of striker. So Leicester can either leave themselves outnumbered in midfield, or they can bulk up in the centre but then make Vardy less effective.