With just about three-quarters of the Premier League season done and dusted, there's little drama on either extreme of the table. At the bottom, barring a collapse from one of the not-quite-relegation-fodder teams, the recently promoted trio of Ipswich Town, Leicester City, and Southampton will be yo-yoing back down to the Championship. Meanwhile, at the top, Arsenal's 1-1 draw against Manchester United on Sunday means Liverpool now sits on a surely insurmountable 15-point lead in what can't even really be called a title "race" anymore.
This doesn't mean the Premier League is devoid of drama, though, and in fact there is one fight in the standings that looks certain to go to the very last round. I'm referring here to the race for the third, fourth, and fifth spots on the table, all of which should give Champions League qualification for next season. A quick explanation for why there will likely be five rather than the usual four continental places for the Prem: the Champions League's new format grants an additional entry spot to the league with the highest coefficient on an annual basis, and this year the top dogs are practically a lock to be the English.
Almost everyone currently in the top 10 of the EPL table is still in the hunt for one of these extremely valuable UCL spots. The margins are razor thin. A mere five points separate fifth-place Manchester City from 10th-place Fulham. With that in mind, let's break down each team's best case for why it will finish in the top five, as well as why it won't.
Fulham
Case for top 5: I have to admit, I'm being generous by including Fulham here. Heading into this past weekend's games, the Cottagers were still kicking in this race, but Saturday's 2-1 loss to Brighton might have been the reality check that, let's be honest, everyone expected. Still, though, there's plenty to like about even a high-mid-table version of Fulham. Raúl Jiménez isn't all the way back to his Wolves prime, but he hit double digits with his goal on Saturday for the first time since the 2019-20 season, and with a beautiful goal at that. American full back Antonee Robinson has been one of the best at his position this season, notching 10 assists so far, and the ghosts of wingers past (Alex Iwobi and Adama Traoré) have been serviceable. There might not be a lot of youth here, so I wouldn't expect a leap into serious Champions League consideration next season and beyond, but Fulham is a solid club in a tough league, and that's worth at least nodding a head towards.
Case against top 5: That being said, yeah, the most likely scenario here is a finish somewhere around Fulham's current 10th place. For a club without expectations for anything higher, this would be a totally admirable landing spot. There's just not enough talent in this side to hope for more than maybe a run at one of the lesser continental tournament spots. This is an average team by most metrics—12th in goals scored with 41, eighth in goals allowed with 38—and though advanced stats hint that Fulham should be a bit better on those goal statistics, I don't see how it has enough depth and firepower to turn things around in time to make any kind of serious push into the top five.
Newcastle United
Case for top 5: After Monday afterevening's (damn you, continental differences in re: the Daylight Savings Time changeover!) 1-0 away victory over West Ham, Newcastle now sits in sixth place on the table, tied on points with Man City but below them on goal difference. That sounds right for Newcastle, a side with plenty of talent and a true star in striker Alexander Isak. A goalscorer of Isak's caliber can paper over a lot of cracks, and though Newcastle has been inconsistent, it has shown that it can beat anyone. Anthony Gordon has been as good as hoped for on the left wing, and both fullbacks (Jacob Murphy and Lewis Hall) get involved plenty in the attack, giving Newcastle different looks at goal. In midfield, Monday's goalscorer Bruno Guimarães has been worth every bit of his €42 million transfer fee, providing playmaking and defense in the center of the park.
Case against top 5: The problem for Newcastle is that it can also lose to anyone on any given matchday. The Magpies are maddeningly erratic, capable of glorious highs and confounding lows. There's no area of the field that stands out as a particular weakness—if I had to chose, the defense isn't quite as stout as Newcastle might hope for—but at times, the whole lineup seems to forget how to win matches. If Isak isn't scoring, the goals become much harder to come by, opening the team up to upsets against sides who can mark the Swede out of the game. And while Newcastle plays as if it were a top team—particularly on defense, where it has the seventh-highest defensive line in the league—it can't control matches as well as some of the other contenders, tallying up roughly 50 percent possession across all matches and not really taking the ball from opponents in dangerous spaces to make up for the lack of the ball. Every Newcastle match is a wild ride, essentially, and that opens up the Magpies for some dropped points that could keep it out of the top five.
Bournemouth
Case for top 5: If Nottingham Forest is the biggest surprise over-performer of the Premier League season, Bournemouth is a close second. The Cherries are a ton of fun to watch, with Justin Kluivert hitting his career peak form this season, Dango Ouattara providing goals and assists across the front line, and Antoine Semenyo solidifying himself as a star in his own right. This attacking talent has returned 47 goals, good enough for third in this group of eight Champions League contenders, behind only Chelsea and City. On the flip side, the defense has been shockingly formidable, giving up only 34 goals in 28 matches. This plus-13 goal difference is the league's fifth best, and Bournemouth has done well in matches against its closest competitors; the Cherries have a 5-0 win over Forest and a 4-1 victory over Newcastle on its resume (in back-to-back matches, no less!).
Case against top 5: This is a good side performing very well, but that might not be enough against the bigger and deeper teams it's up against. Thanks to perhaps too many dropped points early in the season, including a 1-0 loss to Leicester City in October, Bournemouth sits only in ninth, with 44 points. The club has a tricky schedule the rest of the way, with visits to Arsenal and Man City still on the docket. There's not really too much to nitpick here, but all of the little things that might keep Bournemouth out of the top five could come to pass at once—the blistering attack goes cold, or the defense stops its superhuman clean sheets run, or a few too many draws to teams Bournemouth needs to beat pop up—and for a side without much in the way of depth, it might be too much to bear.
Aston Villa
Case for top 5: It's safe to say that in European competition this season, Aston Villa has been a revelation. The Lions nabbed the final automatic qualification spot in the first stage of the Champions League, earning it a bye into the round of 16, where it defeated Club Brugge 3-1 in the first leg last week. In that league stage, Villa knocked off Bayern Munich, who looks as dangerous as ever after stumbling for a bit in the competition. While that run of form in Europe isn't relevant to the Premier League table, it does show just how good Villa can be at its best. Youri Tielemans is the star man for my money, finally delivering on the promise he had as a former wonderteen, while Marcus Rashford has settled in nicely (albeit goallessly) since his winter loan from Manchester United. Ollie Watkins has 13 goals, a great tally for a player who is cementing himself as a high-end striker in the Premier League. The defense has been less stellar, recently shipping four goals to Crystal Palace and two to Wolves. Still, though, Villa is in good form, winning four of five across all competitions, and 22-year-old Morgan Rogers, already with seven goals and four assists, could make one more late-season leap to help Villa outscore everyone en route to back-to-back Champions League qualifications.
Case against top 5: Villa's position on the table is a bit misleading, as the Lions have one more match played than everyone except Liverpool. Remove those three points, or add three points to the other teams, and Villa falls to 10th, thanks to a shoddy goal difference of minus-4, the seventh-worst GD in the league. That tracks with what has been a topsy turvy season for Villa. The team has soared in the Champions League, where it already has one foot into the quarterfinals, but the added matches, and perhaps the greater expectations, have weakened its domestic form. The sale of Jhon Durán might have brought in millions of Euros, but Villa was not able to replace his production and knack for well-timed goals, a big blow to an already thin bench. It's funny to say this, but Aston Villa might suffer from its own success during the final couple of months of the season, and a return trip to the Champions League next season might just be too much to hope for.
Brighton & Hove Albion
Case for top 5: Brighton has an attack by committee, to an extent that no other team in the Premier League can, or maybe wants to, match. No Brighton player has double-digit goals this season. João Pedro leads the way with eight strikes, and four others have at least five goals (Danny Welbeck, Kaoru Mitoma, Georginio Rutter, and Yankuba Minteh). This is actually why I think Brighton is in a better spot than most of its competitors; their spread of goals means an injury to any one player shouldn't kneecap the Seagulls. This is important as the season enters its final quarter, when one or two ill-timed injuries could spell doom. Brighton is peaking at the right time, following up an abysmal 7-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Feb. 1 with four straight Premier League wins, including the 2-1 victory over Fulham this past weekend that probably damned the Cottagers (see above).
Case against top 5: That's the good news for Brighton, because the bad news is that this team just isn't anything special. The lack of a true star means there are often matches where no one catches a momentary spark and the side looks dead on its feet. More than the 7-0 defeat to Forest, I'd look to the 1-0 loss to Everton that preceded it as the reason for Brighton fans to be concerned. In that match, Brighton was able to conjure up 16 shots but only one on target, while Everton took its one chance (a penalty) and scored the winner. Brighton can do that to itself, its lack of a go-to goalscorer leaving it scrounging for shots from deep or from bad positions. And though its tally of 46 goals is healthy enough, its defensive frailty has resulted in a relatively poor count of 40 goals against. When Brighton's shots aren't going in, the club is not good enough to keep out opponents of similar quality.
Manchester City
Case for top 5: It's Manchester City.
Case against top 5: It's Manchester City without Rodri.
Chelsea
Case for top 5: Of all the clubs embroiled in this battle for the Champions League spots, none is more confusing than Chelsea. On paper, you'd think the Blues would be competing with Liverpool for the title, not 21 points back. The Chelsea attack, led by Cole Palmer, is a statistics darling, though the end product is nowhere near as dominant as Liverpool's. The midfield, anchored by Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández, has been stellar. The defense is sturdy, in particular when Wesley Fofana is healthy enough to partner Levi Colwell. After years of buying seemingly every U-23 player in the world, Chelsea has built a deep squad that can go toe-to-toe with anyone in England.
Case against top 5: And yet! Chelsea is in fourth place thanks to some lackluster performances that have led to three losses in its last six Premier League matches, and that's not even including a 2-0 thumping by 18th-place Ipswich Town back in December. Palmer has been ice cold in the bad way recently, failing to score since Jan. 14, a span of nine matches across all competitions. Even worse, Nicolas Jackson, the club's second-leading scorer, hasn't scored since December (due in part to injuries). The vaunted attack has fallen off a cliff, and Chelsea's performances have followed suit. A narrow 1-0 win against Leicester City this past weekend will likely not serve as a boosting pad, since the Foxes are a lock for relegation, but at least Chelsea looked mostly in control against much weaker opposition. The Blues will need to replicate that against better sides if it wants to hang onto one of the Champions League slots, especially with back-to-back matches against Arsenal and the always entertaining/frustrating Tottenham coming up over the next fortnight.
Nottingham Forest
Case for top 5: At some point, the Tricky Trees will fall back to Earth, but it might not be this season. Following its 4-3 loss to Newcastle with a 0-0 draw with Arsenal was a sign that the team might not fold in the run-in, but its 1-0 defeat of a hobbled Man City on Saturday was a klaxon. As Kim McCauley at Transfer Flow pointed out before the City match, Forest has been solidly average by most metrics, both in attack and in defense, and it just hasn't mattered. New Zealander striker Chris Wood has scored 18 (18!) goals at the ripe old age of 33 to lead the line, and Callum Hudson-Odoi now has two game-winners this season against top opposition (his goal on Saturday and the winner against Liverpool in September). The defense has shown that it can be excellent when it needs to be, though it is quite funny to see it shut out Arsenal and City in back-to-back matches after giving up four in 11 minutes to Newcastle. Forest might be hanging out in third place on a knife's edge, but this late in the season all that really matters are the points, and Forest just might have already grabbed enough of those to steal a Champions League spot even if the luck starts to run out.
Case against top 5: The thing about a club performing at average levels across the field is that it's difficult to keep the kind of success that Forest has had this season going. Forest has been fortunate to avoid any major injury crises, and a knock against Wood, for example, or Morgan Gibbs-White could be enough of a tilt in the wrong direction to drop Forest down the table. There would be nothing wrong with that, to be clear; Forest came into the season more likely to be relegated than to finish in the top five, after all. But it wouldn't be a shock if a team that isn't particularly excellent at any facet of the game slipped down a few slots. I don't know that I would bet on that, though, given how Forest has constantly shown up for big matches this season. With only 10 to go, every match is big in this tight of a race, and that might just play into the Trees' hands.
