Liverpool know that fifth place is already secured going into its final game. Man City may be able to win the Champions League, but the Premier League has specific rules.
Liverpool are aware that despite a strong finish to the season, they will finish the year in fifth place, outside the top four, regardless of the results on the season’s final day.
With outcomes like the losses to Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, or the lopsided away defeats at Brighton and Wolves, the damage was already done earlier in the year. The club’s recent performance has been solid but not quite sufficient.
Whatever transpires over the upcoming weeks, Liverpool will play in the Europa League the following year. Even if Pep Guardiola’s team win the Champions League in addition to the Premier League, there will not be any additional tickets made available for Europe’s top competition because Manchester City have already won the Premier League.
Manchester City appears poised to score the highly desired double and perhaps even a treble. If Guardiola is successful in pulling off such a remarkable feat, Manchester City will have a chance to win the coveted Champions League trophy and qualify for the competition the following year. However, Liverpool won’t be affected by this because the Etihad team will already have qualified thanks to its Premier League standing.
If a team won the European competition but finished outside of the top four, it would be possible for five Premier League clubs to qualify for the Champions League in specific situations. Liverpool won’t have a chance to compete in the best European competition until 2024, barring an unexpectedly dramatic last-minute point deduction.
The only chance was that either Manchester United or Newcastle United slipped up, opening up either a third or fourth place finish for grabs, but that has not happened. Those two sides had enough points on the board to cross the finish line, as was always likely.
The “extra” Champions League spot won’t be directly transferred to Liverpool, the team that narrowly misses a top-four finish. In this case, the winner of the highest-ranked national league within the UEFA bracket without such a privilege would receive automatic qualification.
With Shakhtar Donetsk currently leading the race, this team would be crowned the Ukrainian Premier League champions, skipping the qualifying rounds while leaving Liverpool unaffected.
