Not wanting to get ahead of ourselves but somebody at work posed the following query: If Man U were to win the Champions League and Arsenal didn't finish in 3rd (or higher) so would be in the Europa League by virtue of their league position and they also won the cup who would get the extra Europa league spot - would the cup runners up get it or would it drop to the next team in the league? We googled it but the answers didn't seem very clear.
The highest route to the Europa League is the FA Cup, then the league, then the League Cup. So in your scenario, Arsenal would qualify for the Europa League as FA Cup winners ahead of finishing fourth in the league - and City would miss out in Europe if they were losing Cup finalists. Manchester United won't win the Champions League. So worry not.
Hmm ... My son and I were having a similar conversation the other night. We thought the rules had changed and that the top 4 in the premier league qualified for the Champions League regardless of another team outside those four actually winning the Champions League. Or is that wrong? If it's correct, then in the above scenario the runners-up in the FA Cup would still qualify for the Europa League.
If Arsenal finish fifth though and win the cup, then the third spot for Europa would go to 7th place in the league.
When Liverpool won it the other year they qualified for the CL but they only finished 5th in the PL, I think at that point UEFA changed the rules because it obviously meant 5 teams were entered from England. "Can't have that," said Mr UEFA!
That's not right at all. Each FA is given the number of teams it is permitted to enter. It then chooses the format for this ie top 4 or in that case top 3 plus the winners. UEFA were completely happy for it to still be the top 4 and Liverpool not defend their title. If our FA wanted it to be top 3 plus the FA cup winners every year they could.
