Crystal Palace winning the Conference League has created an unprecedented scenario for eight English clubs

Crystal Palace's 1-0 win over Spanish side Rayo Vallecano in the Conference League final will have a huge knock on impact on eight English clubs.

On Thursday night, a goal from star striker Jean-Philippe Mateta handed Crystal Palace the UEFA Conference League title with a 1-0 win over Spanish side Rayo Vallecana in Leipzig.

In doing so the Eagles have qualified for next season's Europa League, meaning nine different Premier League teams are now in European competitions in the 2026/27 season.

They are Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool, who will play in the Champions League, with Bournemouth, Sunderland and Crystal Palace in the Europa League and Brighton and Hove Albion in the Conference League.

Although this is of course great news for all nine of these clubs, it creates a frustrating issue for eight other English clubs further down the football pyramid as they'll now have to play an extra match in the Carabao Cup next season.

That's because of a Carabao Cup rule that allows Premier League teams that are competing in Europe to skip the early rounds of the cup competition.

Palace's win means that nine Premier League sides will now get that bye, which in turn will force some lower-league clubs to play an extra preliminary round just to make the numbers work.

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The clubs affected are: Crawley, Rochdale, Tranmere, York, Barnet, Newport, Accrington, and Oldham.

And this is where things get really complicated as the preliminary round draw would typically take place at the same time as the round one draw, with the games expected to be played a week before.

Currently, it is believed that it wouldn't be operationally viable for the round one draw to take place afterwards, partly due to the headache that the draw could create due to the first round of the Carabao Cup is regionalised.

Typically, the EFL would split the teams taking by regions, with some playing in the north and others in the south.

Last year this wasn't an issue as two teams were in the southern half and two in the north, Barnet v Newport and Accrington v Oldham.

But with these eight sides there isn't a clear divide to split them into regional groups, meaning Tranmere, the furthest south of the northern clubs, may be made to play Crawley the furthest north of the southern ones, in what would be a massive away trip of over 250 miles.