Race for Top 5 finish - Possible 5 teams in CL next season

I don’t defend, I contextualise.

Think about it are we ready for CL football?

Will the squad have the wide changes needed to compete across that many competitions?

It would give us a chance to blood in new players in a low stakes environment.

Could be the making of some of our youngsters though. Perfect development opportunity as they won’t get the minutes in the PL.
Once we sack Ten Hag and appoint Tuchel we will be.
 
We are not making fifth anyway. Even sixth is in danger. Our best bet of getting european football is through FA cup.

Beat Conventry first, then anything can happen in a final.
 
I don’t defend, I contextualise.

Think about it are we ready for CL football?

Will the squad have the wide changes needed to compete across that many competitions?

It would give us a chance to blood in new players in a low stakes environment.

Could be the making of some of our youngsters though. Perfect development opportunity as they won’t get the minutes in the PL.

Ten Hag is just going to play our strongest lineup in Conference League though as he pretty much always does. We played our best team at home to Forest, having won 3-0 at their ground a week earlier, and played virtually our strongest team at Newport.
 
We are not making fifth anyway. Even sixth is in danger. Our best bet of getting european football is through FA cup.

Beat Conventry first, then anything can happen in a final.
Sixth looks Newcastle's given their remaining fixtures. 7th is in danger with Chelsea's rise in form.
 
Doubt that 5th would get a spot now.

Don't think it is relevant to us as 4th place went at home to Fulham,5th probably when we failed to beat Brentford,scousers and Chelsea when leading.
 
Last edited:
Conference league could be perfect for us.

I'd take a berth in the Conference League. If that's where we currently are as a club, then so be it.
We might actually win it..!!
 
I'd take a berth in the Conference League. If that's where we currently are as a club, then so be it.
We might actually win it..!!
Me too. Again it’s nowhere near where I want us to be but it also gives us a bit of breathing room and takes some pressure off so we can make more sensible long term decisions and maybe introduce some younger players with potential into a less cut throat environment that the conference league would offer.

I am not happy about it. But I can see where it may be of benefit.
 
The conference league wouldn’t be a ride in the park and I don’t fancy us making it to the final. We certainly won’t be bossing proceedings that’s for sure unless we get an upturn in fortunes and a new manager.
 


Germany is .768 points ahead now.

Times 8 that's 6.114 points English teams have to make up now.

I can't be bothered looking at this in detail, so I may be wrong here:

Villa can only earn ten points, even if they win all their four remaining games within 90 minutes.

Let's assume tomorrow Liverpool win, but don't progress and Leverkusen win too, earning them an extra point.

Then it would take like 3 more points between Bayern, Dortmund and Leverkusen to beat Villa acing their competition.


This scenario gives England 18,4 and Germany 18,5...

Someone needs to put more effort into this, since Germany's points are worth a little more than England's in the ranking - but I think it's pretty safe to say that at least one of the EL teams needs to progress for the PL.

Normally yes, but if both EL teams go out tonight with a win each and Villa aces its competition, England will reach 18,6 points.

Germany would only add 1/7 tonight and would then need to get 6 points from the next rounds. With 6 points from the semifinals (Leverkusen qualifying with 4 points, a win and a draw + 2 pts between Bayern and BVB) Germany gets 18,64. But anything less than that could keep England in play, assuming Villa keeps winning...
 
Calculated myself, hope I made no mistake...
BL now at 17.928
PL at 17.375

That's a lead of 0.553. Villa can get 0.875 points if they win all remaining matches. So it's still possible for the PL to catch Germany, but will be very hard.

Germany needs only one win and one draw to secure 5th spot and has six matches at least to get those two results. Which is saying in numbers what @Pintu said.

Liverpool winning and West Ham getting a draw kept it alive for the PL (because they won exactly the 3 club points Germany now has to score to ensure the spot).
 
Perfect for the Kids maybe. I wouldn't even let our first team players travel.
Difficult juggling act that though- you know if we got knocked out that vital bit of context would be omitted and the headline would be ‘Man Utd knocked out of Europe by lowly FC Happy Meal from Luxembourg - aren’t they shite?!’
I think it’s best we avoid the ECL, we need Europa football - it’s our level, it’s not too shoddy and we can win it. We are not West Ham or Villa.
 
We're clearly not making 4th or 5th and I really doubt we finish 6th. We simply have to win the FA Cup to avoid the ECL.
 
Calculated myself, hope I made no mistake...
BL now at 17.928
PL at 17.375

That's a lead of 0.553. Villa can get 0.875 points if they win all remaining matches. So it's still possible for the PL to catch Germany, but will be very hard.

Germany needs only one win and one draw to secure 5th spot and has six matches at least to get those two results. Which is saying in numbers what @Pintu said.

Liverpool winning and West Ham getting a draw kept it alive for the PL (because they won exactly the 3 club points Germany now has to score to ensure the spot).

This is all correct as per https://www.fotcalc.com/country-coefficients
 
Calculated myself, hope I made no mistake...
BL now at 17.928
PL at 17.375

That's a lead of 0.553. Villa can get 0.875 points if they win all remaining matches. So it's still possible for the PL to catch Germany, but will be very hard.

Germany needs only one win and one draw to secure 5th spot and has six matches at least to get those two results. Which is saying in numbers what @Pintu said.

Liverpool winning and West Ham getting a draw kept it alive for the PL (because they won exactly the 3 club points Germany now has to score to ensure the spot).

Since you get an extra point for advancing to the final even one win or two draws could suffice. In any case all three teams have tough but beatable opponents, so while it wouldn't be that crazy for any of them to even lose both their games I think between the three of them and Villa not being a top team (after all all these calculation with three points implies that they'll win all three games outright, every point they drop is also one point less requiered of the German clubs) things should work out somehow.
 
Last edited:
We missed a dark horse in this discussion.... France. As they have one club left in each competition they can reach a maximum coefficient of 18.583 this season, which is more than Englands possible 18.250. So to be safe German clubs need to get 5 points, not just 3, which would result in a coefficient of 18.642.

So actually the most important tie now has become Dortmund - PSG, because if they win just one match the maximum France can reach drops to England's level and 3 points would be enough in total for the German clubs.
 
We missed a dark horse in this discussion.... France. As they have one club left in each competition they can reach a maximum coefficient of 18.583 this season, which is more than Englands possible 18.250. So to be safe German clubs need to get 5 points, not just 3, which would result in a coefficient of 18.642.
Somehow Aston Villa winning the shootout against Lille turned out to be good news for Germany.
 
Safe to say English teams really underperformed in Europe this season.. For the money spent you'd expect much more.
 
Can someone explain how next season will work?

If you have more Italian and German teams in the CL, would they not have an advantage to get more points next season by default? It could then become a monopoly going forward?
 
Can someone explain how next season will work?

If you have more Italian and German teams in the CL, would they not have an advantage to get more points next season by default? It could then become a monopoly going forward?

No… because their total points will be divided by 8… When they inevitably lose teams after the group stage and are left with 4/5 teams their wins will bring less coefficient points than England who will divide the total by 7…
 
Link and points updated on OP now. Villa need to win all remaining 3 games as well as German teams getting beat so mission impossible at this stage but not as impossible as us actually finishing 5th
 
England's coefficient this season was basically butchered by United and Newcastle, who finished bottom of their groups. It was always an uphill battle from there, no matter what Opta's projections were saying. A couple of rounds in Europa League for either us or the Geordies would have helped a lot. It will be tough luck for Villa, who are doing their best battling in two fronts (especially since Olympiacos won't even play their league games and get a week's rest before each leg and Spurs having zero distractions) and may end up empty-handed.
 
England's coefficient this season was basically butchered by United and Newcastle, who finished bottom of their groups. It was always an uphill battle from there, no matter what Opta's projections were saying. A couple of rounds in Europa League for either us or the Geordies would have helped a lot. It will be tough luck for Villa, who are doing their best battling in two fronts (especially since Olympiacos won't even play their league games and get a week's rest before each leg and Spurs having zero distractions) and may end up empty-handed.

Projections are based on facts and solid statistics... Frankfurt and Union Berlin did flop as well but the top teams in Germany delivered.

With either of City or Liverpool through, this would still be on. This week changed everything.

 
Projections are based on facts and solid statistics... Frankfurt and Union Berlin did flop as well but the top teams in Germany delivered.

With either of City or Liverpool through, this would still be on. This week changed everything.



Very few people were expecting Union Berlin to be in Europe after December, and Eintracht Frankfurt won more points for Germany than Newcastle and United combined. There's a difference in expectations, which was reflected both in the early projections and in some posts on here claiming that it would be a walk in the park for the PL to get the extra spot. With the bigger devisor and with two teams out of Europe so early, the rest English teams needed to overperform. It didn't happen, and now we are where we are.
 
Very few people were expecting Union Berlin to be in Europe after December, and Eintracht Frankfurt won more points for Germany than Newcastle and United combined. There's a difference in expectations, which was reflected both in the early projections and in some posts on here claiming that it would be a walk in the park for the PL to get the extra spot. With the bigger devisor and with two teams out of Europe so early, the rest English teams needed to overperform. It didn't happen, and now we are where we are.

Not exactly, Germany also having lost 2 going into the Ro16, they had 5 teams left. That meant they could make 10/7 maximum per week... England could do 12/8. Losing one team hurts more when you have fewer teams...

The only country that had all its teams in the Ro16 was Italy, England was closest with 6 out of 8 teams.

This was last Tuseday as the PL still had more teams than any other league.

GLSIaypXoAA9b-h
 
Not exactly, Germany also having lost 2 going into the Ro16, they had 5 teams left. That meant they could make 10/7 maximum per week... England could do 12/8. Losing one team hurts more when you have fewer teams...

The only country that had all its teams in the Ro16 was Italy, England was closest with 6 out of 8 teams.

This was last Tuseday as the PL still had more teams than any other league.

GLSIaypXoAA9b-h

Fair enough. I still maintain that it shouldn't have come to that. United and Newcastle failing hard isn't the same as Union and Eintracht flopping in terms of expectations. BvB got the luck of the draw, and it helped Germany, but still.
 
In theory, yes. In reality no. Villa need 2 points in 4 games to be out of reach. If we presume that we win all 5 games (which we will not).

4th is certainly out of question. My thought was if EPL by miracle ends up with 5 spots in UCL and considering Tottenham upcoming games I guess we can pull up something.
 
4th is certainly out of question. My thought was if EPL by miracle ends up with 5 spots in UCL and considering Tottenham upcoming games I guess we can pull up something.
For both those things chances are only in theory. EL/Conf league is our reality.
 
There's essentially zero real-world chance (technically a 1.1% chance) that the EPL gets the extra CL spot at this point, so 5th place being of any use to us is a ship sailed.