How massive an advantage do Chelsea & Liverpool have in the EPL as they aren't playing CHL?

I feel the effect is massive. CHL are mostly high profile games. Those require travel, preparation & cause injuries & fatigue. It is not possible to replace De Bruyne or Ozil or Sanchez or Aguero with similar level players for a PL game.. You can't play 2 games a week at the same level. Arsenal & City have to adjust to Gladbach or Barca or PSG's different style.

Let us look @ Chelsea's squad? They have only Fab for Matic/Kante & Willian for Pedro/Hazard & no similar level player for Alonso/Moses. What would this team do in EPL while playing CHL?

Liverpool has no similar level replacement for Mane (Fast pacy creative winger), Clyne & the the performances of Mane/Coutinho/Firmino will fall if they had to play CHL.

It is also a drag on the coach tactically. Conte could train his team for 1 week & prepare for City. Pep gets barely 1 day as the players are insanely tired after a high profile CHL game. Conte could shift formations & tactics - That is very difficult for Wenger or Pep as you don't get enough time to train! The fatigue catches up by mid-season.

IMO Dortmund for one would be running neck to neck with Bayern if they didn't have to top CHL group over Real. They had 7-8 new young players who have to gel & they have 7-8 injuries & they just can't manage both BL & CHL. This is also the reason why Leverkusen & Gladbach are performing below their team's level.

What do you folks think about the massive advantage in the league of not being in CHL?

Its a huge advantage, But let's not assume these squads won't strengthen once they make it to the CL. Obviously they will. PL is not about quality as much as it is about consistency. Leicester beat Spurs and Arsenal based on this fact.

But this advantage is only limited to the squads that can challenge.

Is there enough here to start a new thread, thought it was pretty obvious.
Flashback to the beginning of the season I had predicted Chelsea as the champions and Liverpool in the top3 in the predictions thread when others were busy naming City and ourselves(United) to secure those positions instead.
The advantage is so much so that if you miss out on top 4 spots you have to deliberately try your best to fall out of the European spots entirely.
Its so much worthwhile having only one competition to focus in in a week.

But then again as Nish said in the post above you should also got to have a strong (first)team to do it. United in the 2014/15 season had no European football at all. But even then we only barely managed 4th spot.

There have been countless teams in the past who couldn't capitalize on this "advantage" simply because they weren't good enough to do so.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that this advantage is a myth, but I don't think things would've been drastically different with Chelsea playing European football.

The Blues have been by far the best team in England in the first half of the season and you can't take that away from them just because they're not playing as much as their rivals. And let's not act as if those guys are wasting their time with useless friendlies, some of them are competing for the most prestigious club competition in Europe; the CL.

Now, I don't know about you, but I would choose playing in the CL while competing in the league over solely competing domestically any day of the week.

The advantage exists, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse. If you're good enough, you should be able to compete on all fronts.

Yea, it is massive. It's the biggest reason why we got our shit together months before United did, and have a comfortable 13 points lead before they enter PL contender form.

Because it's not only more rest, it really is about having 1 entire week to train, and in Conte's and Klopp's case, two managers that are new (well, Klopp never had a full season) it's a massive advantage to give them additional time to mold the players and the team according to their intricate tactical mechanisms. That's why Chelsea and Pool are doing better than everyone even now that everybody has the same schedule and european games interference. They actually had an higher squad+coach potential out of anybody and the midweek rest eased their rise to become that.

That's why avoiding EL is probably better in the case you're missing out on CL. Sometimes it's impossible because the fifth and fourth are neck to neck till the last matchday and one is bound to get to EL. But if you're a CL accustomed team and you find yourself in the EL, the only competition in football that accepts you only if you're second tier, I see it more as an obstruction than anything.
That's why I'm thankful to good old Gus that jeopardized any chances we had to get an EL spot . That's why I didn't care as much about our '13 EL win; I thought it was an obstruction towards our PL campaign more than anything.

And I don't see the point of you mentioning the thinness of our squad. I mean you're right, it's something that we addressed many times in the Chelsea section, but obviously Conte had a preaseason, he evaluated every single player and the bulk of our depth that he required necessary to compete at a not european level. He actually has made his career out of taking former league giants that had a midtable finish and have no european competition, and winning immediately the league breaking records in an astonishing way (he spent the whole 38 matchdays of the 11-12 season without a loss).
Rest assured that next year when we'll be in the CL, we'll have a more apt squad depth for it.