Four Premier League fixtures remain and the battle for Champions League qualification is reaching its final phase. Manchester United sit closest following Monday night\u2019s victory over Brentford, which saw them move 11 points clear of sixth place. The points totals heading into the run-in read: Man Utd 61, Liverpool 58, Aston Villa 58 and Chelsea 48.<\/p>\n
Man Utd
\nLiverpool (H)
\nSunderland (A)
\nNott’m Forest (H)
\nBrighton (A)<\/p>\n
Liverpool
\nMan Utd (A)
\nChelsea (H)
\nAston Villa (A)
\nBrentford (H)<\/p>\n
Aston Villa
\nTottenham (H)
\nBurnley (A)
\nLiverpool (H)
\nMan City (A)<\/p>\n
Chelsea
\nNott’m Forest (H)
\nLiverpool (A)
\nTottenham (H)
\nSunderland (A)<\/p>\n
Chelsea have a significant deficit to overturn. In fact, given they\u2019re 10 points behind fifth-placed Villa, Opta\u2019s fabled supercomputer offers them just a 0.58% chance of qualifying for the Champions League. “Even victory in all their remaining matches is unlikely to be enough.” On paper the Blues have winnable fixtures, including a trip to Anfield and home matches against Nottingham Forest and Tottenham, but the numbers leave them dependent on others. “They would need Villa to come fifth in the Premier League and win the Europa League, while also finishing sixth themselves.”<\/p>\n
Liverpool should be comfortable but their schedule is testing: trips to Manchester United and Aston Villa sandwich a home meeting with Chelsea, and they finish at home to Brentford. The Reds are eight points clear of sixth currently. “The Reds need a maximum of five more points to ensure their qualification.”<\/p>\n
Aston Villa sit level on points with Liverpool but behind on goal difference and will aim to clinch qualification quickly, mindful of the Europa League semifinal first leg with Nottingham Forest on Thursday. Their next two fixtures, at home to Tottenham and away at Burnley, are opportunities to move closer to safety in the top five before tougher tests follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With four fixtures left, United, Liverpool and Villa hold the edge while Chelsea face long odds. yet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,190,175,1083,172],"tags":[1162],"class_list":["post-13247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-chelsea","category-liverpool","category-man-utd","category-epl","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}