Aston Villa\u2019s 3\u20130 Europa League final win over Freiburg in Istanbul on Wednesday night has ripple effects beyond the club and its supporters. It wasn\u2019t just Aston Villa supporters who celebrated, with fans of several other Premier League sides cheering on “Unai Emery\u2019s men”.<\/p>\n
As the Premier League season reaches its final round on Sunday, Villa\u2019s triumph creates a scenario in which the team finishing sixth could qualify for next season\u2019s Champions League. Under the current arrangement, England\u2019s top five will enter Europe\u2019s premier competition next season, but Villa\u2019s Europa League success alters how the available berths would be allocated.<\/p>\n
Four of those five places are already confirmed. Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Villa have all booked their spot. They will be joined by either Liverpool or Bournemouth, almost certainly the former. England\u2019s UEFA coefficient has earned the country an extra Champions League slot for 2026\u201327, and that additional place is currently being taken up by Liverpool in fifth.<\/p>\n
The Europa League winner is also guaranteed a Champions League berth. That means if Villa finish fifth in the Premier League, the extra place tied to their continental victory would cascade down and be taken up by the team that finishes sixth, because Villa have already secured an extra performance slot through winning the Europa League.<\/p>\n
For Villa to end the campaign fifth they must lose their final match away at Man City, while Liverpool would need to beat Brentford at Anfield. The Reds\u2019 superior goal difference would see them leapfrog Villa into fourth in that scenario. If that sequence happens, the team who finishes sixth, currently Bournemouth, would qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n
Bournemouth know a draw away at Nottingham Forest would be enough to clinch sixth. There is also a very slight chance of them finishing fifth with victory at the City Ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Villa’s Europa League win could hand a Champions League place to the Premier League’s sixth by Sunday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,739,1647,172],"tags":[1162,1691],"class_list":["post-13962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-bournemouth","category-champions-league","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-bournemouth-form"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}