Your wrong Spurf,Everton finished 4th and were dropped into the EL in 2006 because Uefa decreed that we should be allowed to defend our trophy.
Its a **** ruling but you can only blame the FA in Spurs case because it was them that decided the issue.
Spurf's right... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4171224.stm ... there would have been 5 English teams that season in the group stage had Everton qualified. Even I have to agree thats getting kind of ridiculous, so the rule isn't a surprise.
Our players knew all about this rule before the Villa game and could only come up with a draw. That, and many other games (without ref errors) are why we find ourselves out of it.

