Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has claimed it has become tougher for clubs outside of the game's limited elite to win the Champions League, after hinting Europe's chosen few now have a stranglehold on the biggest prize in European football.
The Champions League is the only competition missing from Wenger's lengthy list of achievements, yet he admits it will be more difficult than ever to seal victory with Arsenal after suggesting they are not among the favourites to lift the trophy in Berlin next May.
"Maybe it was more open 15 years ago than it is today," Wenger told reporters when asked about the evolution of the Champions League. "The concentration of the big players in a short number of clubs is much more than it was before.
"The Champions League is much predictable today. It's harder to win it. If you make a poll tomorrow and say to people; Give me four clubs who will win the Champions League? Then 80 or 90 percent will say these four clubs [Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Chelsea].
"I don't think that we are one of the four who will be favourites to win it, but football is strange, and not always predictable. Let's first qualify from the group stage and see.
"I would say this season is that this team has huge potential and it has to come out. At the moment I am more worried about that."
Wenger went on to suggest full-back Kieran Gibbs is emerging as a key figure in Arsenal's future, as he suggested there are similarities in the career of this latest Gunners graduate and the club's former full-back Ashley Cole.
"It looks to me that he's going into second gear now and he realises that he can trust his body, he can trust his talent," stated Wenger when quizzed about a full-back who has suffered with injury problems time and again over the last couple of seasons.
"He was a bit inhibited [by injuries] for a period. What doesn't help is when you're in and out because of injury. You need a consistent presence in the team.
"If you don't have a consistent presence at the top level, you do not have the confidence that makes you feel you belong to this world.
"I have talked to him many times. We try always to show him confidence and, look, I let Gael Clichy go [to Manchester City] because Gibbs was a young English left-back. That's the main reason I let Clichy go. I wanted to give him [Gibbs] a chance.
"He's such a great potential because he can dribble as well. When he arrived at the club he was 16 and he was a winger, midfielder, and I saw that potential didn't really come out. I saw he was intelligent and maybe I could transform him into a defender. It was a bit similar to Ashley Cole.
"It's a good example for him to follow Ashley because he is top quality. You see [negative newspaper] stories about Ashley Cole but on the day of a game, when it mattered and when you had to be there, he was always there. You have to respect that."