Sun Jihai will get his first shot at European competition after Manchester City was awarded a place in the UEFA Cup's qualifying round - just one season after gaining promotion to the Premier League.

　　Although Kevin Keegan's men placed ninth in the Premier league standings, England finished top of UEFA's Fair Play ranking and that meant the Premier League gained an extra spot.

　　Sun has sealed a regular starting spot with City which bought him from Dalian Shide for 2 million pounds (US.26 million) in February, 2002.

　　City finished fifth in England's Fair Play standings but Manchester United, Newcastle, Chelsea and Liverpool had already taken spots in either the Champ-ions League or UEFA Cup.

　　That opened the door for City, the 1970 Cup Winners Cup champion whose last appearance in a European competition was in 1979 when it lost to Borussia Moenchengladbach in the UEFA Cup fourth round.

　　Nine other associations finished the season with a high Fair Play rating and will go into a draw to decide two more places in the qualifying round. They are Sweden, Finland, France, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Norway and Ireland.

　　Meanwhile, Everton has proposed a new system of transfers in the Premier League, aiding the poorer clubs by spreading payments over the length of a player's contract rather than in the first 12 months.

　　The present system involves a 50 percent up front payment with the balance paid over a year.

　　Everton's proposal will go before a meeting of the Premier League later this week. It will help clubs who can't afford to splash out a big amount of cash in the short term but can spread the payments over three or four years. The Toffees will also back a move by Birmingham City to allow loan deals between Premier League clubs. At present, clubs can only borrow players from Football League clubs.

　　"The feeling is that the current system places clubs at a disadvantage, particularly when dealing with transfers from abroad," said Everton chief executive Mike Dunford.

　　"Our proposals mirror those already in operation in the (Football) League where clubs can pay for players over the period of the players' initial contract.

　　"There seems to be a groundswell of support for this but we won't know until later this week whether our resolution has been accepted."