Graphic: Qualified success - who's hot and who's not on the road to Rome

Last week Alastair Campbell said that he now cared more about football than politics. I am not quite there yet. But I’m not far away.

I know this because of my reaction to political figures I used to have a serious problem with. John Prescott? Don’t like him much, but can’t get too excited. Paddy Ashdown? I can actually see some good points. Norman Tebbit? It all seems like a long, long time ago.

But Michel Platini? Aaaaaaagh.

The Uefa president’s eccentric campaign to see whether he can find the best football clubs in Europe and make them less good has really begun to get on my nerves. Nothing in politics gets to me quite like that does.

Anyway. Let’s take a look at the figures.

Dr Henry Stott, Dr Ian Graham and Dr Mark Latham have been using our computer model to calculate the chances of each of the remaining teams winning the Champions League. Two years of results from across Europe and from European competitions have produced the outcome you can see on the graphic below.

Manchester United are now clear favourites. They have almost a 26 per cent chance of retaining the trophy that they won on penalties against Chelsea in Moscow last season. Arsenal have done well out of the draw. They have a healthy 18 per cent chance of winning the cup that has eluded Arsène Wenger. For Chelsea and Liverpool the draw has been bad news, bringing them down to 13 and 14 per cent respectively.

In the Chelsea versus Liverpool tie, the latter are slight favourites (52.3 per cent plays 47.7 per cent). Chelsea fans will take heart from being at home in the second leg, but our work on this suggests that it makes almost no difference. It just feels better.

All this means that there is a 70.8 per cent chance of a Barclays Premier League club winning the Champions League. Barcelona are extremely competitive (with a 65 per cent chance of reaching the semi-finals), but Bayern Munich and Porto, both previous winners, along with Villarreal, are very much the underdogs.

Doesn’t this rather make Platini’s point? We took a second look at the tournament. This time we took the last 16 in the tournament and turned it into a league. We imagined each of the teams playing each other twice, once at home and once away, and getting three points for a win and one for a draw. Then we simulated the tournament over and over again. Our aim was to see how much of the domination by the Premier League clubs was cup luck and how much was down to innate superiority.

A league table would look rather different. First of all, Barcelona would be clear favourites to win. They would have a 27.7 per cent chance of winning the Fink Tank “Champions League League”. United would be pushing them with a 25.9 per cent chance. Then come Chelsea (15.3 per cent), Liverpool (11.6 per cent), Arsenal (6.7 per cent) and Atlético Madrid (5.9 per cent). The rest were also-rans.

Two points were worth noting. When knockout luck was removed, in other words, the Premier League was not so dominant, the favourites were Spanish and the total chance of a Premier League team winning had gone down to 58.5 per cent.

Now take a third look at the figures. When the tournament began, the chance of one of the four English clubs winning was 53.6 per cent, with the Spaniards on 29.4 per cent.

If that still bothers you, Mr Platini, then here’s a plan. Instead of trying to make the English teams worse, why not try to make Real Madrid better? They’ve got enough money, after all.