Premier League rules explained if Man City wins Champions League as Liverpool finishes fifth

Liverpool knows that no matter what the results are on the final day of the season, fifth place is where it will finish, outside of the top four despite a strong end to the campaign.

The damage was done earlier in the year with results like the defeats to Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, or heavy away losses at Brighton and Wolves. Its recent run has been good but not quite good enough.

That means that whatever happens over the next few weeks, Liverpool will be playing Europa League football next season. Even with Manchester City poised to win the Premier League, there will strictly be no extra ticket available at Europe’s most elite competition even if Pep Guardiola’s side goes on to win the Champions League as well.

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Manchester City looks set to claim a highly-desired double, and possibly a treble. If Guardiola can achieve such an impressive feat then Manchester City will be able to qualify for the Champions League next season by getting their hands on the famous trophy, but this will have no impact on Liverpool as the Etihad side will have already qualified due to their Premier League finish.

It is possible that there could be five Premier League clubs who qualify for the Champions League in certain circumstances, but that would only be possible if a team won the European competition but finished outside of the top four. Barring a dramatic last-minute points deduction out of nowhere, Liverpool has no way into the best European competition until 2024.

The only hope was that either Manchester United or Newcastle United slipped up, leaving either a third or fourth place finish up for grabs, but that has not unfolded. As was always likely, those two sides had enough points on the board to get over the line.

For Liverpool, who are the side that just misses out on a top-four finish, the ‘extra’ Champions League place will not be directly passed down. In this case, the automatic qualification would go to whoever wins the highest-ranked national league within the UEFA bracket without such a privilege.

At this current time, this would be the Ukrainian Premier League champions, with Shakhtar Donetsk currently leading the race, meaning it would not have to go through the qualifying rounds, and Liverpool would be unaffected.

An original version of this story was first published on May 13.