I'd imagine most seasons now we'll have at least 8 in Europe every year.
I think it was you who made the point that having 8 lessens your chance of getting the coefficient high enough.
Well, the coefficient is divided by the number of teams you have playing in Europe, so as long as those 8 do okay, the coefficient does okay. The difficulty will come if a team has a shocker in Europe, and goes out early, hardly winning a game. That drags everyone else down with them. But the strength of the Premier League is such that you'd imagine any side capable of qualifying for Europe is going to be good enough to give a decent account of themselves in Europe. Look at West Ham winning the Conference while being decidedly mediocre in the league that year.
Having five teams left in it at the quarter-final stages of all competitions is pretty good going, I don't see us being able to do that every year (not everyone can be Aston Villa), but as long as we have teams getting to knockout rounds, and a few making semis and finals, we should keep our extra Champions League place.
Yeah, the "divided by eight" thing definitely has an impact, but in most cases that should be trumped by the added wealth and quality of the English teams.
Assuming the eight teams are the current top eight:
Liverpool
Arsenal
Forest
Chelsea
Newcastle
Us
Man City
Fulham
Then Fulham will almost certainly be the strongest team in the Conference League, pick any two of the other seven and are they going to be any worse than
this Man Utd and
this Spurs, both of whom have coasted to the quarter finals in the Europa League more or less in their sleep.
Then the other five, are they going to finish outside the top 24 in the Champions League, with a couple of them going a bit further?
Obviously Forest are the wild-card in all that, but it feels like it'll be top five = Champions League more often than not.
