After steamrolling through the league phase of the Champions League, English club football felt like an unstoppable juggernaut. This week in the opening round of the last-16 stage, it was emphatically brought back down to earth.
None of the six English sides won their tie’s first leg across Tuesday and Wednesday. Liverpool lost 1-0 away to Galatasaray, Manchester City were beaten 3-0 in Spain by Real Madrid, while Chelsea and Tottenham lost 5-2 at Paris Saint-Germain and Atletico Madrid respectively. Only Newcastle United and Arsenal avoided defeat, drawing 1-1 at home to Barcelona and at Bayer Leverkusen respectively.
The Premier League contingent did not fare much better at the same stage in Europe’s second- and third-tier competitions either. Aston Villa beat Lille 1-0 away in the Europa League, but Nottingham Forest lost by the same scoreline to Danish visitors Midtjylland, while Crystal Palace were held 0-0 at home by AEK Larnaca of Cyprus in the Conference League.
When the Champions League expanded from 32 to 36 teams for last season, two of the four extra places were awarded based on the UEFA season coefficient, a convoluted system that measures each country’s collective performance across the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. Last season, England topped the list ahead of Spain, granting Champions League berths to the fifth-placed sides in both leagues: Newcastle and Villarreal.
England leads the coefficient standings once again this campaign, but could this week’s slip-up damage their chances of holding onto that extra place?
The good news for Premier League teams is it’s highly unlikely.
Despite the midweek wobble, Opta projects England still has a 99.9 per cent chance of finishing in the all-important top two of the season coefficient rankings. Its model forecasts the likelihood of each side progressing through the knockout rounds and the points they collect along the way.
So how are those UEFA season coefficient points calculated, you ask, shaking with unbridled excitement? Let’s quickly run through the maths. Wins in each competition are worth two points, with draws worth one (these figures are halved in the qualifying and play-off rounds).
Bonus points are then awarded based on league-phase standings and progression through the knockout rounds. Arsenal, for example, were awarded 12 points for finishing top of the league phase, part of a sliding scale in which the bottom side receives six. A further 1.5 points are available for each step through the knockout stage. These bonus points are halved in the Europa League and reduced to a third in the Conference League.
Finally, each country’s total is calculated by adding together the points earned by its clubs and dividing by the number of teams it had competing in Europe that season. England has nine teams across all competitions — more than any other nation — meaning each individual win is worth slightly less as it gets divided by a larger number.
Even with this disadvantage, they have built a sizeable lead with 22.8 points, 4.4 more than Spain in second place. English clubs have won 61.9 per cent of their 87 European matches so far, the highest rate of any country. Rival nations are simply running out of road halfway through the round of 16: almost 90 per cent of matches across the three competitions have already been played.
Opta projects that, even if English sides lose every remaining game, no other country is projected to surpass their current average coefficient.
Key to the Premier League’s strong standing is that all nine of its qualified clubs remain in Europe, even if some of their hopes are now hanging by a thread. Once eliminated, a team can obviously add no further points and only serves to drag down the average. Closest challengers Spain and Germany, meanwhile, have already had two sides each knocked out. Spain started with eight teams in Europe and, ignoring bonus points, La Liga’s clubs would need to record four more wins than English sides to gain even a single point on England’s coefficient lead.
At an individual club level, Arsenal lead the way for coefficient points this season with 30.5, while seven of the nine Premier League teams sit inside the top 20. Tottenham may be in the relegation zone at home and on the brink of Champions League elimination after that demolition in Madrid, but they have still pulled their weight in the coefficient stakes, accumulating 24.75 points thanks to their fourth-place finish in the league phase.
Coefficient permutations can sometimes leave fans of fifth-placed Premier League sides in the unedifying position of needing a rival club to succeed in Europe. Thankfully, England’s coefficient looks so rock-solid that they are unlikely to have to stomach that indignity this time.
The Premier League’s fifth Champions League spot is safe, but it is worth questioning whether this system of allocating places is fit for purpose.
Last season, 46 per cent of England’s coefficient points came from the secondary competitions, with Manchester United and Tottenham reaching the Europa League final and Chelsea winning the Conference League.
Even with the extra bonus points on offer in the Champions League, Chelsea earned more coefficient points for their Conference League triumph than Aston Villa did for reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Those achievements hardly feel comparable, given the gulf in difficulty between the competitions.
Europe’s elite can financially compete with the Premier League’s top clubs, but English sides in the Europa and Conference Leagues usually dwarf the rest of the competition, particularly in the respective league phases, which decide the majority of coefficient points.
If the current system remains unchanged, fifth place in the Premier League could become a permanent Champions League spot in all but name.