Guardiola (left), with Ilkay Gundogan, knows a win or draw will secure them Champions League football next season. — Reuters
WE are down to the last round of matches of the Premier League season and yet there is still so much at stake.
Indeed, there are three berths to be decided tomorrow for the lucrative Champions League, and depending on whether Chelsea win the UEFA Conference League in midweek, England could well have up to 10 teams engaged in continental football next season.
In essence, that would be half of the Premier League.
As things stand, seven clubs go into tomorrow’s league fixtures uncertain of which continental competition they will feature in next season, if indeed they do feature at all.
Unsurprisingly, the permutations on how things could all unravel are many, and it might well be easier to say that they are as complicated as trying to get into Europe itself.
The spotlight will surely fall on the top end of the table where Liverpool and Arsenal have confirmed their tickets.
And after Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester United in the Europa League final in Bilbao in midweek to earn a Champions League place of their own, there are three more places for qualification in Europe’s elite club competition.
England was awarded an “automatic” extra fifth Champions League place this campaign – secured by virtue of a “European Performance Spot”, based on the Premier League clubs’ impressive results across the continental competitions.
What this means is that three teams – from Manchester City, Newcastle United, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest – will join the three already qualified.
Should Pep Guardiola’s side, third in the standings, win or draw at Fulham, they’ll be back in the Champions League, where they feel they belong.
A home victory for fourth-place Newcastle over Everton would nail down their return to the Champions League, as would a win for fifth-place Chelsea at Nottingham Forest.
Anything less than that and a win for Aston Villa at Old Trafford where they clash with a wounded Man United side, and the Villans would climb into a Champions League slot themselves.
A victory for Forest could also have them back in among the elite, if a couple of other results go their way.
They’re seventh in the standings, just one point behind Newcastle, Chelsea and Villa, who all have 66 points.
Crystal Palace secured one of England’s two places in the Europa League after their FA Cup victory over Man City last weekend.
The sixth-place side gets the other ticket. And that could be Man City, Newcastle, Chelsea, Villa or Forest.
Newcastle won the Carabao League Cup and with it, a spot in the UEFA Conference League – Europe’s third-tier competition.
But if Chelsea win the Conference League, which comes with qualification for the Europa League, and finish in the top five in England, they will play in the Champions League and no other Premier League team would get that Europa League spot.
But if Chelsea win the Conference League and finish sixth, with Newcastle seventh, then England would get an extra Europa League berth.
That would then go to Newcastle, and the team finishing eighth would qualify to play in the Conference League.
That’s where Brighton, who clash with Tottenham, and Brentford, who make the trip to Wolves, come into the equation.
Presently eighth and ninth respectively, Brighton and Brentford could find themselves playing in Europe next season, albeit not alongside the likes of champions Liverpool in the Champions League.
