Football

Would increase the importance of doing well in the Europa League, if we do drop to 3 places.

We won't drop to 3 places (unless UEFA changes the rules again or France pull something out of the bag in the next 3 years).

For 17/18 we've already got our places (5 in CL, 2 in EL).

18/19 and onwards the top 4 countries (Spain, Germany, England and Italy) will get 4 CL group stage places straight away (no qualifying round for Arsenal 4th place, straight to the group stage).

Very little chance of France catching us in the UEFA country rankings to push us down to 5th (and therefore only 3 CL places - two group and one qualifying). No chance with their dire 13/14 european season's points in the mix (England got 16.785 and France got 8.5 that year). They'd need to make up 7 points on us once the 13/14 points drop off. The 5 years contributing to the points would then be 14/15, 15/16, 16/17, 17/18, 18/19 so even if they did manage to make up those 7 points in 17/18 and 18/19 it wouldn't take effect until the 20/21 season at the earliest. If that looked likely to happen then I'm sure UEFA would rejig the format/scoring/etc to keep 4 English clubs in (as they have done already in case Italy overtake us in the next year or so as they look likely to do).

But, if the Premiership does ignore the EL then it could make France's job easier.

But how does our co-efficient work now Utd have won the Europa?

Man U's Europa League win is already part of the numbers for the 16/17 season. The only thing that can change with the 16/17 season figures is that Italy will go up 2/6 points if Juve win the CL, or Spain will go up 2/7 points if Real win.

Having 5 clubs in the CL and only 2 in the EL doesn't really affect the number of points England are likely to get, it's mostly affected by the clubs performance which varies a huge amount. The extra effort that teams put in when part of the CL is offset by the fact that the competition is harder so they may win fewer games or not progress as far.