Posted on 05/21/2015 6:04:09 AM PDT by kevkrom
EUROPEAN LEAGUE QUALIFYING AND RELEGATION
The top 3 teams in the Barclay's Premiere League (BPL) qualify directly to UEFA Champions League group play. The BPL champions will be a seeded team in EUFA.
The 4th place team qualifies for a UEFA play-in series against a club to be determined by draw among other qualifiers. The winner of the home-and-home series proceeds to UEFA group play.
The 5th place team qualifies for Europa League play, entering the competition at the play-off stage.
The Capital One Cup (League Cup) winner qualifies for Europa, entering at the third qualifying stage. Since the Capital One Cup was won be a team in the top 4 (Chelsea), this position will go instead to the team finishing in 6th place.
The FA Cup winner qualifies for Europa, entering at the group stage. If the FA cup winner is qualified for UEFA, the runner-up team will qualify instead. Since Arsenal will finish in the top 4, Hull City qualifies as either the Cup winner or runner-up.
A bonus Europa slot is available for the leader in the Fair Play table, as BPL as been declared one of the three top leagues in EUFA according to Fair Play rankings, entering the competition at the first qualification stage. Teams already qualified for UEFA or Europa will be passed over. (Fair Play score is determine by a combination of: taking minimal cards, “positive” play, respect for opponents, respect for officials, manager/staff behavior, and crowd behavior. Only the cards are objective, all others are at least partially subjective measures.) Note: this is the final year this bonus spot will be awarded.
BPL teams finishing between 18th and 20th are relegated to the Championship.
FINISHING SCENARIOS
Chelsea have won the BPL and the Capital One Cup.
Arsenal (72 points, +32 goal difference) and Manchester United (69 points, +25) will finish 3rd and 4th, but there’s still a long-shot chance Manchester United could overtake Arsenal for 3rd.
Hull City, despite being under threat of relegation, has qualified for Europa via the FA Cup.
5th and 6th place teams qualify for Europa; three teams are in the race to finish between 5th and 7th, and any of the teams can finish in any of the positions: Liverpool (62 points, +9), Tottenham Hotspur (61 points, +4), and Southampton (60 points, +23).
Omitting teams already qualified for European play, West Ham currently sits atop the Fair Play table, but Everton and Burnley are close enough that the final week’s play matters.
Queens Park Rangers and Burnley will both be relegated.
The final relegation spot (18th) will either be Hull City (34 points, -18) or Newcastle United (36 points, -25).
All other teams are, at best, just jockeying for a slightly better position in the final table. Only Chelsea, Manchester City, Swansea City, and Stoke City are locked into their current positions, at 1st, 2nd, 8th, and 9th, respectively.
MATCHES WITH POTENTIAL IMPACT ON QUALIFYING AND RELEGATION
Hull City / Manchester United (NBC) - Hull must win to have a chance at avoiding relegation. Manchester United is almost certainly in 4th, but a lopsided win coupled with an Arsenal loss that can flip a +7 difference would move them to 3rd.
Newcastle United / West Ham (USA) - If Hull does win, Newcastle must win to avoid being stuck in the 18th slot, as they lose tiebreakers to Hull. Note, Newcastle is 0-1-9 in their last 10. West Ham qualifies for Europa with a clean, positive game.
Stoke City / Liverpool (ScyFy) - If Liverpool wins, they’re in Europa, otherwise they’re at the mercy of the other results. They lose out on goal difference against Southampton do a Draw/Win combo there puts Southampton ahead. They beat Tottenham on goal difference, so Draw/Draw sees them in the top 6. Stoke has nothing to play for but pride.
Everton / Tottenham Hotspur (CNBC) - If Tottenham wins, they’re in Europa, otherwise they’re at the mercy of the other results. They lose out on goal difference to the other two. Everton can still qualify via Fair Play if West Ham stumbles.
Manchester City / Southampton (MSNBC) - Southampton needs help in any event to qualify for Europa, but a win puts the most pressure on the others and their chances are actually quite good. Manchester City has nothing to play for, but they have been dominating recently.
Arsenal / West Bromich Albion (Bravo) - Unlikely to matter, but if Manchester United is winning big and Arsenal is struggling, this can become interesting.
Aston Villa / Burnley (Esquire) - Mostly an after-thought, but Burnley can still squeak into Europe via Fair Play if they can nip ahead of West Ham and Everton.
Odds are this will be Brendan Rodgers’ final game for Liverpool. Not as much drama this season as a few years’ ago when City won it in injury time, just as United thought they had it sewn up.
Europa League is kind of like the NIT of European Soccer.
Funny, that’s exactly the analogy I use when explaining Europa to the casual fan.
Thanks for the ping.
I know...it’s like the 3rd place game at the World Cup...totally worthless.
Messi!!!!! Goooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!
I don't understand why Suarez didn't get an endorsement deal from a dental benefits plan or a network of dentists.
Yep, Europa League definitely didn’t help Everton in the league this year, they’ll be lucky to finish in the upper half.
He’s been behaving at Barcelona, and I hope for his sake and their sake this continues. He seems to have matured.
What a talent! As long as he can keep his teeth to himself.
Barcelona and Real Madrid too, always get the best talent. That part I don’t like and yes, Barca has Suarez.
Thanks for the ping, everyone enjoy the games.
If not said, Hull need to defeat Man Utd. and Newcastle needs to draw or lose and then, Newcastle goes down, a lot of people want that.
Jake Livermore, Hull player, has played for the U teams of England tested positive for cocaine.
Injuries can pull a team down, also something like this. I also wonder if maybe other Hull players could be using, those kinds of things have happened. I think the NO Saints years ago with one of their sorry teams was thought to have had a lot of players using drugs.
I’m happy if a Seville, a Fulham, etc. can have a chance at silverware myself meaning the Europa.
Barcelona, Real Madrid, onto AC Milan and other teams, too many trophies, has not Real won the CL 10 times.
Except that it also places a severe drain on your following season, as opposed to being a bone thrown to the not-quite-good-enoughs for the current season.
IMHO FIFA (& UEFA especially) allows way too many unnecessary tournaments/cups. Europa, Gold Cup, the now defunct Cup Winners Cup, Confederations Cup...
How many tournaments do we really have to have to prove something?
Tottenham if they win this week will be in the Europa Cup for the 5th or 6th year in a row. Pochettino even said it may be better that they don’t qualify for that competition so they can focus more on the domestic league.
RM has 10 CL trophies.
IIRC it used to be that nobody cared about the Euro tournaments. If you were an English team, you probably wanted to win The FA Cup, even more than the League, and Europe was more of a novelty.
Now it’s all about Europe, and the good clubs pretty much now blow off the FA Cup, and care more about being Top Four than necessarily winning the League.
On the other hand, though I wouldn’t agree with the analogy myself, one could also say Continental Cups like the Gold Cup and Euro Cup pale compared to the World Cup, why hold those?
Real Madrid especially has always been able to get the best players, Di Stefano, Puskas up to Zidane. Barcelona in the last 20 years moreso with Ronaldinho and Messi. I’d say too, both teams have had a number of stars from their own country of Spain.
So, it may be a good argument if one says Liverpool doesn’t need to fool around with a Europa League schedule.
So, I definitely think it is a mix of good and bad.
Makes sense, Juve big underdogs vs. Barcelona. The Catalans.
Also, they just make it so these clubs play as many games as possible to make money for UEFA and FIFA.
They should play less games in the Champions League, that’s another problem with the schedule of games. Same for the Europa.
Newcastle stays up, Hull down,
Spurs take 5th and in the Europa League, Liverpool blown out.
http://us.soccerway.com/national/england/premier-league/20142015/regular-season/r25191/
I do admit, with the Europa league, some of the early matches midweek have dreadful attendances especially if it is playing against some relatively obscure team.
Man Utd. might have taken it easy on Hull I heard someone say, Bruce played for them.
I still think the players let Bruce and Hull City down, Bruce did kind of okay.
6-1?!?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?!?!
No way Rodgers is back now.
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