Does the Premier League's 5th place team also qualify for the Champions League? Or does the PL only get 4 teams.
Asking for a Red Scouse fan at the bottle factory.
They said they don't get 5 teams - they still only get 4. They could be wrong, though.
I've thought that the only way for the EPL to get five teams into the next year's Champions League would be for two EPL teams to win the Champions League and Europa Leage and have neither team finish in the top 3 of the EPL.
Otherwise, if ManU won the Europa League and finished 4th in the EPL, the 5th team would head to the Europa League.
Corrections welcome.
Generally England gets 4 (with the fourth place team going through qualification).
A Europa OR CL champion (not in top 4) would give them a 5th.
A Europa AND CL champion (not in top 4) still gives them 5, but the 4th place in the league would go to Europa next year.
EDIT: I read the original post wrong. A team could never make it into CL by simply placing 5th in the league. Most people usually ask what happens when a team outside of the league qualifiers wins a championship. And that's what I thought the question was. Because it's a relatively new rule that allows for the 5th team. We'll call it the Spuds Exception.
I know it's been a few years, but when Chelsea won the UCL in 2012, Tottenham was 4th and Chelsea was 6th in the League table that year.
Tottenham got bumped down to the Europa League for 2012-2013, they didn't become the 5th PL team in the UCL.
EDIT - just saw your edit about the Spuds rule. Did they change this after 2012?
I can't say that I know all of the dynamics of the situation, but the Tottenham situation likely played a part. I think the bigger factor was trying to make Europa more appealing. So the deal was to allow the Europa Champions to qualify for the Champions league and allow domestic leagues up to 5 spots in Champions. It was previously no more than 4, which is why Spuds got the shaft.
So even though their situation had nothing to do with the 2012 Europa Champions, the max of 4 was what got them into Europa not CL. It was definitely a good change - especially in light of the competition this year!
winner passage into the Champions League the following season. It made the Europa League much more interesting. I don't know how they freed up that slot.
The top 4 is so competitive, that getting into Europa is almost like kicking them while they are down.