Getting into Europe is the aim for most teams at the beginning of the season, but recent evidence suggests some may thrive having failed to qualify last time around.
For the second season running, nine Premier League teams will compete in Europe.
Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool will play in the Champions League; Bournemouth, Sunderland and Crystal Palace will compete in the Europa League, and Brighton will play in the Conference League, provided they make it past Tromsø in their two-legged play-off. They drew the first leg 0-0 in Norway last week.
Playing in the Champions League brings with it eight glamourous and lucrative midweek fixtures, the chance to win football’s biggest prize and the possibility of vast income to boot. Arsenal, for example, earned well over £100 million from their run to last season’s final.
Meanwhile, the new and expanded formats of the Europa League and Conference League – notably in the fact that no Champions League teams drop down a competition midway through the season – have made European titles much more winnable, as Tottenham, Villa, West Ham and Palace have all discovered in the last few years.
Each of those nine teams will be eagerly anticipating the draws for the league phase of their respective competitions, with every participant this week discovering their eight opponents. For many teams, not least Bournemouth, who are set to play their first ever European campaign, and Sunderland and Brighton, who are playing in major continental competition for just the second time, the draw will be an incredibly exciting event.
None of those teams have any reason to be disappointed about playing in Europe, or to consider it an unwanted distraction and unnecessary effort.
But that said, there may be some teams who can find reasons to be pleased not to be in Europe. There are some upsides to being able to solely concentrate on Premier League action.
Chelsea, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest and Tottenham, for example, each endured tough domestic seasons in 2025-26 while playing in Europe. The first three in that list respectively saw their league position drop by six, seven and nine positions compared to the season before. While Spurs’ position didn’t worsen, they were more than a little dismayed with a second successive 17th-place finish.
Chelsea finished way down in 10th; Newcastle placed in the bottom half for the first time since 2021-22, and Forest flirted with relegation just a year after coming seventh and storming into the Europa League.
Red lines indicate the team was in Europe in 205-26 – five teams saw big drops in their league positionIthiel Piñero / Data AnalystMeanwhile, the two teams who saw the biggest improvement in their league position compared to 2024-25 were Manchester United (12 places) and Bournemouth (three), neither of whom were in Europe. Both clearly benefitted from having the time to prepare for and focus on league games.
However, while there appears to be a correlation for many teams between not playing in Europe and performing well domestically, it is by no means a hard-and-fast rule. Squads equipped to deal with the demands of a European campaign often thrive with the rhythm and consistency of playing (and usually winning) midweek and at the weekend each week.
Arsenal won the title last season while also progressing to the final of the Champions League; Manchester City went up a position and put up a good battle in the title race while playing in Europe; Villa improved from sixth to fourth while also winning the Europa League.
And on the flip side, West Ham and Wolves each dropped four places and were relegated despite being able to focus solely on the Premier League.
The evidence of last season, however, appears to suggest a link between domestic performance and both the amount of rest teams have between games and the total miles travelled for matches.
After Arsenal and City, who, as already discussed, have the resources to cope with fixture pile-up – and are actually so strong they could rest players in the Champions League – it was Palace, Newcastle, Forest, Villa, Liverpool and Chelsea who had the shortest average time between their competitive matches last season. Of those, only Villa’s league position improved. Next for time between games came Spurs, whose league position didn’t change, but they came dangerously close to being relegated.
Ithiel Piñero / Data AnalystAt the other end of the list, it was Bournemouth and Manchester United who had the longest between their games. They each played a Premier League low of just 40 matches in all competitions last season and, as we’ve seen, both did very well in the league.
Distance travelled appears to be an even better measure of how a team will perform domestically. The top four teams for miles covered travelling to matches in 2025-26 – both in total and on a per-game basis – all saw their league position worsen. United, meanwhile, were among the teams to travel the shortest distances.
On top of this, there is the added challenge of facing a greater variety of teams in terms of playing styles and with little time to adjust between competitions and type of opponent.
Yash Thakur / Data AnalystPlaying in Europe means very little time to prepare for very different matches to those teams who only face Premier League opposition, and naturally requires more rotation. The clubs who played in Europe averaged 93.7 starting XI changes over the course of the season, or 2.5 per matchday; the clubs who weren’t in Europe averaged 70.9 changes, or 1.9 per matchday.
Looking back over the past decade, there are several other examples of big teams thriving when not in Europe. Chelsea won the title in 2016-17 when they could focus on domestic competitions, while that same season Liverpool secured only their second top-four finish in eight years as Jürgen Klopp put together the building blocks for future success without the distraction of Europe. Similarly, Arsenal were either out of Europe or in the Europa League for the early years of Mikel Arteta’s reign, which may have helped them produce the unexpected title challenge and second-place finish in 2022-23 that preceded their more recent success.
Meanwhile, Newcastle have finished fourth and fifth in the only two of their last four seasons in which they weren’t in Europe, and came seventh and 12th when they were in Europe. And Tottenham’s best season in the last four years came in the only one of those campaigns when they weren’t in Europe (fifth in 2023-24).
Nonetheless, in spite of all of this, in spite of the fact Chelsea, Spurs and Newcastle may all have a more successful season because they don’t have the distraction and demands of European fixtures, they will all be aiming to get back into Europe next term. There’s no question that is what every team wants.
The ambition for every Premier League side is to become one who can sustain their position in Europe while remaining a threat at the top of the table – and to build a squad capable of doing that, you need European football.
Playing on the biggest stage allows you to attract better players, because of the kudos of playing in Europe but, perhaps more importantly, the prize money.
Some clubs, like Spurs, have shown this summer that they have spending power even when they haven’t got into Europe, but the kind of sustained and sustainable success they crave relies on the income and clout that comes with European football. Chelsea, similarly, won’t want to have more than a single season outside the Champions League.
History suggests there is reason to believe that missing out on Europe can be beneficial, but nobody wants to be left out of the elite group of teams for any kind of lengthy period.
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How Does Getting Into Europe Affect Premier League Form? Opta Analyst.
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