What the Premier League's disastrous week in Europe means for fifth Champions League place
The two best-performing countries in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League get a coveted fifth Champions League spot
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This week was a bit of a kick in the knickers for English clubs in European competition.
Aston Villa were the only one of the Premier League's nine representatives across UEFA's three competitions who actually won their round of 16 first leg in their respective competitions, with Unai Emery's side claiming a 1-0 win away to Lille in the Europa League.
Arsenal and Newcastle drew in the Champions League, as did Crystal Palace in the Conference League, while there were chastening defeats for Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham in the Champions League and Nottingham Forest in the Europa League.
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Those results are bad news when it comes to the Premier League's hopes of having five Champions League places again next year.
The English top flight gets four qualification spots, but the two best-performing countries in UEFA tournaments also get handed an extra place, with the calculation based on the competing clubs' average coefficient.
So just how big a blow were those results to the Premier League's chances?
Actually...not that bad, largely thanks to the fact that England are the only country not to have a single one of their clubs eliminated from their respective competitions, despite their total of nine being the most of anybody.
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England got plenty of bonus points based on their league phase placements. Having five clubs in the top eight of the Champions League was particularly valuable to the English coefficient.
That means that England remain some way clear at the top of the coefficient table having gone into the round of 16 in a position of real strength.
- England: 22.847
- Spain: 18.406
- Germany: 18.142
- Italy: 17.928
- Portugal: 17.000
Meanwhile, if we take Italy as an example: Atalanta are their only side left in the Champions League after Napoli were eliminated in the league phase and Juventus and Inter both went out in the knockout phase. Bologna and Roma drew with each other in the Europa League, which naturally meant a bit of points cannibalisation; while Fiorentina beat Rakow Czestochowa in the Conference League.
With two coefficient points for a win and one for a draw at this stage of the competition, that means Italy gained just four coefficient points from the midweek games.
England meanwhile got five from the results registered by Villa, Arsenal, Newcastle and Palace, despite the other five English clubs all losing.
A fifth Champions League place for Premier League clubs is at threat now, but it would take a pretty calamitous collapse for them to be caught by Spain or Germany at this point.
Given the first-leg results, it would be daft to take that totally off the table: Real Betis were the only one of the six remaining La Liga sides to lose across the three competitions, while Freiburg and Stuttgart were the only two of the five remaining German sides to lose.
But the hopes of Barcelona, Real Betis, Celta Vigo, Bayer Leverkusen, Freiburg and Mainz all still hang in the balance going into the second legs, just like most of the English sides'...even if it would take something remarkable for Chelsea, Manchester City and Spurs to overturn their three-goal deficits at this point.
That means we might expect pretty even quarter-final representation between the three countries across the three competitions: one or two each in the Champions League, and maybe one or none each in the Europa League and Conference League.
That would probably be enough for England to be relatively assured of strong enough coefficient to get one of the extra Champions League places.
As Dale Johnson notes for BBC Sport, Germany and Spain are effectively 17-18 wins behind England at this stage of the competition.
We would add to that: even if the English clubs all went out at this stage of the competition, we think the way the draw pans out means most wins Spanish clubs could get across the three competitions is 26, and the most German sides could get is 28.
Now, those numbers are mutually exclusive to one another - that is to say, Spain and Germany can't both get the maximum, because even in this absolute worst-case scenario for the Premier League, Bayern Munich would meet Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, while Bayer Leverkusen would face either Barcelona or Atletico in the semi-finals.
The Europa League would meanwhile feature Freiburg vs Celta Vigo in the quarter-finals, with Real Betis waiting in the semis and Stuttgart to play in the final; while in the Europa League, Mainz and Rayo Vallecano would meet in the semi-finals.
Keep in mind that two nations would need to overtake England for the Premier League to miss out on the fifth Champions League place, and it feels pretty unlikely.
Steven Chicken has been working as a football writer since 2009, taking in stints with Football365 and the Huddersfield Examiner. Steven still covers Huddersfield Town home and away for his own publication, WeAreTerriers.com. Steven is a two-time nominee for Regional Journalist of the Year at the prestigious British Sports Journalism Awards, making the shortlist in 2020 and 2023.
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