Originally Posted by Jonny_Bentley1:
“Just on the point about Man U finishing fifth, how does the Europa League actually work. To my mind, it was 5th place, the winner of the Capital One Cup and the FA Cup winners. If the cup winners were already in the CL, I thought the place was given to the people who finish 6th and 7th in the league.”
As you might expect with UEFA, it's complicated but here goes ... England have 3 places in next season's Europa League and the UEFA guidelines for any country's entrants is as follows ...
The most important thing to remember (which may surprise you) is that UEFA regard any domestic cup winner as that country's top Europa League qualifier ... that's a throwback to the separate Cup Winners Cup competition that ended in the early-1990's once the Champions League format gave the top nations several teams in that competition instead of a maximum of two in the old European Cup (and that only happened if a country's previous champion was defending the European Cup itself alongside a new domestic champion).
UEFA also allow the domestic cup runner-up into the Europa League if the cup winner is going into the Champions League instead ... however, in this case, the domestic cup runner-up becomes its country's lowest Europa League qualifier instead of being the top qualifier.
If both domestic cup finalists are going into the Champions League, the domestic cup's Europa League ticket is added to the bottom of the domestic league's qualifiers ... it doesn't create an unusual playoff of the domestic cup's losing semi-finalists.
The rest of any country's Europa League qualifiers are usually a simple case of taking the clubs that just missed out on any sort of Champions League ticket ... however, as only England and France operate a League Cup competition as well as an FA Cup competition, they have a special rule that gives their lowest Europa League ticket to their League Cup winner (but that ticket moves up the order when the domestic cup runner-up goes below it).
Unlike every country's domestic cup, the runner-up in either the English or French League Cup doesn't squeeze into the Europa League if that League Cup winner's going to the Champions League ... the logic here is that these League Cups have done well to secure any sort of European link, never mind exactly the same link as everyone's FA Cup ... hence, it only takes these League Cup winners to be going to the Champions League to shift this Europa League ticket over to the domestic league instead ... that's why Sunderland had to win this season's Capital One Cup final to reach the Europa League even though it was very unlikely Manchester City would ever need this ticket.
Then, in England's case (reflecting Welsh involvement at various levels of the English club pyramid), there's the clause that any Welsh club capturing any English ticket into Europe is regarded as an English qualifier ... hence Swansea's Capital One Cup success last season put them into the Europa League on an English ticket (and the same would've applied to Cardiff if they'd beaten Portsmouth in the 2008 FA Cup Final) ... also, that means the points Swansea scored in UEFA's club statistics that decide each country's future allocation of Champions League and Europa League places will stay on England's record rather than giving a massive boost to Wales's record.
Once you've established England's 3 qualifiers, their high status among all the UEFA nations means their top-rated qualifier goes straight into the group stage, their 2nd-rated qualifier starts in the final qualifying round and their 3rd-rated qualifier starts a round earlier than that.
All of which meant that in the current Europa League season, Wigan (despite also being relegated) went straight into the group stage as England's FA Cup winner ... Tottenham (as the only qualifier on this occasion via the Premier League) began with what proved to be an easy final qualifying round against Dinamo Tbilisi of Georgia ... but Swansea (as the League Cup and, therefore, lowest-rated qualifier) had to begin in the 3rd qualifying round against Swedish side Malmo before also taking care of Romanian club Petrolul Ploiesti in the final qualifying round.
Had the Champions League-bound Manchester City beaten Wigan in last season's FA Cup Final, Wigan would still have been in the Europa League but would have then become England's lowest qualifier as a cup runner-up so they'd have gone into the 3rd qualifying round, Swansea would then have moved up to just the final qualifying round and Tottenham would have gone straight into the group stage.
Looking ahead to next season ... England's allocation is unchanged with 4 Champions League tickets (3 automatically into the group stage and the 4th starting in the final qualifying round) plus 3 Europa League tickets whose pecking-order again began as FA Cup winner, then 5th-placed Premier League team, then Capital One Cup winner.
But unless Manchester City suddenly collapse in the Premier League and miss out on the Champions League, their Capital One Cup success won't have any bearing on the Europa League so we can already safely assume on this occasion that it's "5th-&-6th" rather than "5th only" going to the Europa League.
Where it gets very tricky, in two different ways, is Arsenal's situation because they're on the borderline of making the Champions League and they're also the only remaining FA Cup team who might not need that FA Cup route into any sort of European football next season.
My post here is long enough already without trying to explain all the permutations going into the FA Cup semi-finals !! ... probably best to recommend you come back to this post once we know who's gone through in those semi-finals and also once it's clearer where Arsenal are going to finish in the Premier League.
The one thing to clarify for now is that if Arsenal end up as both the 5th-placed team and the FA Cup winner, they would take the FA Cup's ticket straight into the Europa League groups and that would send "6th-&-7th" instead of "5th-&-6th" into the Europa League qualifying rounds ... a lot of fans (and plenty of the media) may well be caught out if this scenario occurs because the FA Cup's historical position in the Europa League pecking-order isn't that well known