Here's the Thing... About Champions League Qualification in the EPL

There will be an unprecedented six English Premier League teams qualifying to play in the 2025/26 Champions League. There have been five before - in 2005 Liverpool won the title, but finished fifth in the league the following season, and thus outside the automatic qualifying spots.

As reigning European Champions they were given entry the following season.

But ordinarily there have been, since the 2001/02 season, four automatic qualifiers. That some of these non-champion teams get to enter at a later stage than teams who did actually win their home league is somewhat of a bugbear to me, but this is not time for that rant.

What I wanted to look at was how easy it was for teams to break into the Champions League, mainly because I'm an Aston Villa fan and they qualified in fourth position last year and went on to play in the Quarter-Finals where they lost on goal difference to Paris St German.

With two games left in the season Aston Villa are 6th in the league and, currently, outside the qualifying positions.

You may wonder how, as I said six teams will qualify. Well, the top five in the league qualify automatically, and the other team comes from the winner of the Europa League Cup and this will be played by Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur - who are currently sixteenth and seventeenth in the league, the next two teams above those which are being relegated from the EPL.

As a further curlicue to the discussion, and definitely a side point, had an English team won the Champions League, and also finished in the top five (Arsenal losing to PSG in the semi-final means this can't happen) there was a route to there being SEVEN EPL teams in the Champions League - further stretching the definition of 'Champions'.

Anyway, back to the main discussion. In twenty-three years there have been ninety-two qualification spots for English Premier League teams in the Champions League, and an extra one for Liverpool after their amazing 2005 win - ninety-three in all.

So, from twenty teams a year, how many have qualified for the Champions League? And how often? Spreadsheet time!

So, I entered the data, learned how to use the COUNTIF function, and ended up with the table above.

As we see, ten teams have qualified. Three teams have qualified only once; Leicester (as Champions), Everton, and Aston Villa - both in fourth place.

Newcastle have qualified three times with two of those being the 2001/03 and 2002/03 season.

Tottenham Hotspur, a member of the so called 'Big Six' have managed six times - never as champions and only once in second position. Their best run of qualification is two consecutive seasons, and three in four.

Now we're up to the big dogs: Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City. These five teams have secured just under ninety percent of the available qualifying positions - and that excludes the freebie that Liverpool got as reigning champions.

Qualifying for the Champions League is not easy for teams outside of the very top of the EPL. Only Manchester City have broken in and become a regular member, and they are under investigation for many, many, many violations of Financial Fair Play rules.

In these twenty-three years English clubs have won the Champions league six times. Liverpool and Chelsea twice each, Manchester United and Manchester City once each. English teams have been in the final on nine occasions and that includes two occasions when both finalists where from the EPL. Non-winning finalists are Arsenal and Spurs.

Spain have won more Champions League in the same period, with Barca winning four times, and Real Madrid an incredible seven times. Atletico Madrid have been non-winning finalists twice, with one of those finals being an all Spain, indeed all Madrid, affair.

Six EPL teams have played in fifteen finals, while three La Ligua teams have played in thirteen finals.

But, back to the main focus of the discussion. EPL teams qualifying for the Champions League

Here's the thing, becoming serial Champions League participants, as part of the English Premier League, would seem to require that you were one of the four teams who were already regularly fighting for places when they were only two qualifying slots, or being massively bank-rolled by the wealth fund of a nation state.

The rest of us can dine from occasional slip-ups, and Arsenal's perennial underachievment.