CONFIRMED: Premier League secures fifth Champions League spot for 2025/26

The fifth-placed team in this season’s Premier League is now guaranteed e a place in next season’s Champions League after Arsenal spanked Real Madrid silly in the first leg of their quarter-final.

It won’t perhaps take many of the headlines after Declan Rice’s big night out, and only confirms the long inevitable, but still nice to have it officially squared away.

There will once again be 36 rather than 32 teams in next season’s Champions League, and two of those extra places will once again be awarded to the leagues who have been deemed to have performed best in Europe this season.

In five of the last seven seasons, England would have claimed one of those two spots. Last season, when it mattered, they didn’t; England trailed in behind Germany and Italy, with Newcastle and Man United’s pre-Christmas exits from Europe a key early factor before a series of disappointments across all three competitions in the knockout stages.

The system for working out the co-efficient rating that decides which leagues come out on top is (relatively) simple.

Every win in Europe – whether Champions, Europa or Conference League – is worth two points to your country’s tally, and every draw one. There are then assorted bonus points to be awarded based on finishing positions in the bumper new league tables as well as further points for reaching different knockout rounds.

All teams competing in the Champions League phase are awarded six points just for being there. You get an additional 0.25 points for finishing 24th in the final table, with an extra 0.25 points on offer for each position from there up. So 23rd gets 0.5, 22nd gets 0.75 and so on all the way up to six points for the table-toppers. The Europa League has no bonus points for competing, but again offers 0.25 points to the team that ends 24th and six to the team finishing first on the same sliding scale as the Champions League.

Just to keep us all on our toes, it’s slightly different again in the Conference. Here you get 0.125 points for 24th, and an extra 0.125 points for each position up to ninth, and then 0.25 points for each extra position you can climb in the top eight.

Long story short, the table-toppers in the Champions League get 12 points altogether, Europa League toppers six points, and Conference League four.

Champions League teams will get an extra 1.5 points for each knockout round they participate in (last 16, quarter-final, semi-final, final), Europa League teams one point for each round, and Conference League teams 0.5 points. There are no bonus points on offer for reaching the playoff round that teams finishing between ninth and 24th in each competition have to deal with, but you do still get result points.

So if you qualify for, say, the Champions League quarter-final by winning both legs of your last-16 clash, you collect 5.5 points for your country’s tally: two for each win and a bonus 1.5 points for reaching the next stage. If you get through with a win and a defeat it’s 3.5 points (two for a win, plus the qualification bonus). And so on.

The total number of points accrued by all teams from a particular league are then divided by the total number of teams from that league who began the season in European competition to obtain an average rating that determines the all-important standings.

So taking last year’s table-toppers Italy as an example, their teams between them amassed 147 points across their European campaigns. They started the season with seven teams in Europe, so 147 divided by seven gives their final score of a nice neat 21.000.

This also therefore means individual match wins are worth more to the score for a country that had fewer teams involved to begin with; a win for any Dutch side this season, for instance, is worth 0.333pts to the final tally because it is two points divided by the six teams they had in contention when the season began, while for Italy or Germany a two-point win is worth only 0.250pts to the total after it has been divided by eight.

Who ends up benefitting from England’s extra place in next year’s competition is anyone’s guess, but Arsenal’s win over Real Madrid is good news for Nottingham Forest, Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Fulham and Brighton. And Arsenal, we suppose.

As well as England securing a top-two finish and extra spot, there are now only two teams in contention for the other: Spain and Italy. Spain have the edge, but Tuesday’s Champions League results have made it more interesting.

1) England – 24.535pts
Home and hosed and with power to add. The question for England now shifts to just how many teams they have in Europe next season, with the outlandish maximum of 11 still technically possible if Villa, Chelsea and Man United or Spurs sweep the European trophies while finishing outside the qualifying places via the league.

Total points: 171.750
Total teams: Seven
Teams still active: Five
Quarter-final: Arsenal (UCL), Aston Villa (UCL). Tottenham (UEL), Manchester United (UEL), Chelsea (UECL)
Eliminated: Manchester City (UCL), Liverpool (UCL)

2) Spain – 21.678pts
Even after Real Madrid’s Emirates humbling it will still take a significant collapse and something special from Italy’s three remaining teams for La Liga to lose a spot from here.

Total points: 151.750
Total teams: Seven
Teams still active: Four
Quarter-final: Barcelona (UCL), Real Madrid (UCL), Athletic Club (UEL), Real Betis (UECL)
Eliminated: Girona (UCL), Atletico Madrid (UCL), Real Sociedad (UEL),

3) Italy – 20.187pts
Inter’s win and Real Madrid’s defeat on Tuesday night keeps things interesting, especially as both Italy’s remaining Thursday night warriors have strong title hopes. But they will still need more of Spain’s remaining contenders to go the way of Real Madrid.

Total points: 161.500
Total teams: Eight
Teams still active: Three
Quarter-final: Inter (UCL), Lazio (UEL), Fiorentina (UECL)
Eliminated: Milan (UCL), Atalanta (UCL), Bologna (UCL), Juventus (UCL), Roma (UEL)

4) Germany – 17.921pts
Out of the frame following Bayern Munich’s first-leg defeat to Inter.

Total points: 143.375
Total teams: Eight
Teams still active: Three
Quarter-final: Bayern Munich (UCL), Borussia Dortmund (UCL), Eintracht Frankfurt (UEL)
Eliminated: Stuttgart (UCL), Bayer Leverkusen (UCL), RB Leipzig (UCL), Hoffenheim (UEL), Heidenheim (UECL)