Why Brentford may want to lose their final Premier League game of the season | OneFootball

A bizarre quirk of the UEFA competition rules has resulted in a possible situation playing out that has Brentford going into their final game of the season hoping to lose.

The situation was first spotted by Peripheral and it’s to do with how UEFA dishes out Champions League spots.

As has been the case for a number of years, the top four in the Premier League get a Champions League spot but since the competition’s expansion in 2024, a country’s coefficient is also important.

UEFA gives one extra ‘bonus’ spot, officially called the European Performance Spot, to the country that has the most coefficient points and for this year, that has already been confirmed to be England.

As well as that, the winner of the Europa League is given a spot in the following season’s Champions League – which is how Tottenham played Champions League football this year – and that is what makes Aston Villa an interesting club for Brentford.

Villa are currently fifth in the Premier League table and are in the semi-final of the Europa League, where they will face Nottingham Forest.

UEFA has a hierarchy of how Champions League spots are given out and it goes: League position, then trophy wins, then the European Performance Spot.

What this means in practice is that if Aston Villa finish fourth and win the Europa League, they will qualify for the next season’s Champions League due to their league position rather than the trophy and the ‘bonus’ spot will be null and void and so returned to UEFA.

However if they finish fifth, their league position is not good enough to qualify and so they will do so as trophy winners. In that scenario, the bonus spot moves down one spot to the sixth-placed team in the league.

Teams like Brighton, Bournemouth and Chelsea then will all be hoping Villa finish fifth and win the trophy, for that gives them an extra chance at reaching the Champions League.

But the reason why Brentford is an interesting case is because of their fixtures. On the final day of the season, Brentford play Liverpool, the team currently in fourth.

Arne Slot’s side are level with Villa on points currently and if there is a scenario where Villa could overtake them on the final day, it would be in Brentford’s best interest to lose the final game so that the extra Champions League spot gets pushed down to sixth.

It is an unlikely scenario with Brentford down in ninth and without a win in their last six league games but not entirely impossible and could bring an unusual end to an excellent debut season for Keith Andrews.