And experience tells us that a horse with this kind of profile is almost guaranteed to progress again at Epsom, in the care of Aidan O'Brien.
One team from League C and one from League D will also be guaranteed to progress to Euro 2020 via the play-off system.
It is a predicament well-known to Premiership and Top 14 sides, who have long had to juggle domestic, European and Test requirements, while Ireland's big three have been all but guaranteed to progress.
Wasps are not yet guaranteed to progress from the supposedly deathly Pool 5 but they now have a wonderful cushion to take into their home and away games with Bath next month.
Despite losing for the second time in this year's competition to Basel thanks to Mohamed Salah's late strike, Chelsea are guaranteed to progress.
Moroccan Nader Belhanbel and Colombia's Rafith Rodriguez also have faster lifetime bests that English with only the top three guaranteed to progress.
Everton and Tottenham are also guaranteed to progress, while Manchester City could join Liverpool if they fail to finish second in Champions League Group E. "Obviously we watched last night and Liverpool dropped down into the Europa League, so that's great," said Collins.
They travelled to Roma for the final group game, in which both teams were already guaranteed to progress; it finished as a 1 1 draw, with Gerard Piqué scoring his first goal for the club before Mancini's equaliser.
The clustering is guaranteed to progress well in this metric setting, so that the tree is complete within only very few rounds.
Monaco, with eight points (and seven goals) from four Group E matches, need only to draw against Spurs to guarantee progress to the knockout round but will certainly seek opportunities to attack and stay on course to top the group.
The narrow victory nevertheless left England needing only a point to guarantee progress to the tournament in Poland and Ukraine, and the immediate priority remains avoiding defeat in next month's final fixture against Montenegro in Podgorica.
