How Man Utd can qualify for Champions League without a top four finish - and it’s not by winning Europa League

Manchester United are likely to have a new route to the Champions League amid a disappointing start to the season. Erik ten Hag’s men secured a top four spot pretty comfortably last season, but they haven’t looked like serious top four contenders so far this term.

Fortunately, fifth place may well be enough to secure Champions League qualification this season, and United may well need it based on what we have seen from them in the Premier League and Champions League so far this term. Naturally, winning the Premier League or Europa League gets you into the following season’s Champions League, but the Red Devils have lost both of their first two Champions League games, and should they fall into the Europa League through finishing third in their group, they would face stern competition from the likes of Liverpool.

Here’s what you need to know about the new Champions League qualification rules.

The extra spot

The Champions League will get bigger next season, with four more teams involved as part of fresh changes. With those changes come new qualification changes, and the Premier League could be one of the biggest beneficiaries.

That’s because two new qualification spots will be made available to the biggest and best leagues in Europe. While there will be one more spot for those who enter into the playoff system, and another for the third-placed team in the nation fifth in the country coefficient rankings, two other spaces will be made available to leagues that perform best in European competition.

The two leagues who have the most teams at final stages of the three European competitions will get one extra qualification spot each. If and when the Premier League qualifies for that extra spot, the team that finishes fifth place in that season will reach the Champions League.

For extra context, in the seasons where the Premier League gets an extra qualification spot, the qualification places will shift. That means the Europa League spaces will be sixth and seventh, with the Conference League spot going to eighth place or a cup winner in the case the cups are not one by one of the clubs that do not finish in the top seven.

What does history say?

The historical records show England have been one of the best two performing leagues in Europe in six of the last seven seasons. That suggests England will be the home of one of those extra spots more often than not barring a big change in the pecking order.

• 2016/17: Spain and England
• 2017/18: England and Spain
• 2018/19: England and Spain
• 2019/20: Spain and Germany
• 2020/21: England and Spain
• 2021/22: England and the Netherlands
• 2022/23: England and Italy

When will we know if fifth place qualifies?

This all depends on how heavily tilted the European competitions are in the direction of the leading nations. It’s likely we will get a good idea of where the extra spots are going from the quarter-finals stages of the three European competitions, though we are unlikely to find out for certain until the semi-finals at the earliest.

Last season, Italy would have wrapped up a spot by the semi-finals, with five of the 12 semi-finalists across all of the competitions Italian clubs. Two were Spanish and as many were English, with Manchester City winning the Champions League and West Ham winning the Conference League, while Sevilla won the Europa League. The eventual winners sealed it for England over Spain in a closely-run race.