The Premier League’s precious fourth place spot is one of the most coveted prizes for a lot teams not in the title race year in year out. While the big guns in recent years like Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea still see the championship trophy as the Holy Grail, others like Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, Tottenham and even Southampton, in recent years, see fourth spot as a success or something to aspire to.
But this precious spot may be lost to Italy’s Serie A if things don’t turn around for English clubs in European competition. Having slipped behind Germany in the UEFA club coefficient rankings, England are now looking to hold off Italy.
The UEFA coefficients are statistics used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. The coefficients are calculated by UEFA over a 5 year period. The club coefficient is used to rank individual clubs, for seeding in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League.
This coefficient is determined by the results of the clubs of the associations in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League games over the past five seasons. Two points are awarded for each win by a club, and one for a draw.
The problem for English clubs is that the calculation is over the last 5 years and the 2010/11 season, which was especially good for England and weak for fourth-placed Italy, now drops out of the reckoning, meaning Serie A began 2015/16 just three points behind England while the Bundesliga has already overtaken the Premier League.
The poor results of our clubs in Europe will be their own downfall. At the start of last season the Premier League was in front of the Bundesliga but the awful displays of Liverpool in the Champions League group stages cost us. Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea all dropped out of the competition in the second round.
Man City recently losing to Juventus gave more ground to the Italians. In fact in the first matchday of the Champions League three English teams lost, losing us vital points and giving Serie A fresh hope of ending a six-season exile from the top three in the coefficient.
Until Man City learn how to play and win in European matches and Arsenal buy decent strikers and midfielders then us poor English football fans will be on the edge of our seats and crossing our fingers that Juventus, Inter, Napoli and AC Milan don’t steal our fourth spot.
Source: DSG
