{"id":647408,"date":"2026-05-03T18:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T18:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647408\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T18:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T18:21:09","slug":"premier-league-european-race-the-battle-for-sixth-and-why-teams-might-need-to-lose-on-final-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647408\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League European race: The battle for sixth – and why teams might need to lose on final day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both elements needed for sixth place to be a Champions League spot seem quite plausible.<\/p>\n

Aston Villa<\/a> would need to finish in fifth spot exactly (where they currently reside) and win the Europa League.<\/p>\n

They trail Nottingham Forest 1-0<\/a> after the semi-final first leg, but are at home for Thursday’s return leg.<\/p>\n

This scenario will only play out if Villa finish fifth – and not in the top four (or below fifth) – because of a quirk in Uefa’s rules.<\/p>\n

The Premier League landed a fifth Champions League place because of English teams’ performances in Europe – something called the European Performance Spot (EPS).<\/a><\/p>\n

In short, when it comes to dishing out European spots, Uefa goes by domestic positions and who won the European trophies first, before factoring in the EPS.<\/p>\n

So if Villa win the Europa League and finish fifth, that EPS spot would be passed down to the team in sixth – who would qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n

However, if Villa finish in the top four then winning the Europa League would make no difference to any other English teams. In this situation the sixth-placed finisher would qualify for the Europa League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both elements needed for sixth place to be a Champions League spot seem quite plausible. Aston Villa would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-647408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}