Chelsea are running out of time to salvage anything from this nightmare season, but Aston Villa may be about to offer the Blues one last chance for some form of salvation.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s run of one win in 10 Premier League matches did an efficient job of ensuring their Champions League aspirations were ripped away from them. It feels like every result has gone against Chelsea in 2026, but the reality is one team has been quietly doing their best to help. Aston Villa were third as recently as February but their own run of just five league victories so far this calendar year, including handing out Chelsea\u2019s only league victory in the last three months, has seen them tumble to fifth.<\/p>\n
This season, fifth will be enough to qualify for the Champions League thanks to the strong performance of English teams in Europe seeing the Premier League top UEFA\u2019s coefficient rankings, but everything could change if that spot goes to Aston Villa. If Emery\u2019s side win the Europa League\u2014only Freiburg stand between them and the trophy\u2014they will earn their own spot in the Champions League as a reward. That fifth spot given to English teams for the coefficient score would then be handed to the team that finishes sixth in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
Getting up to fifth is numerically impossible for Chelsea, who sit 10 points behind Villa with three games left to play. Sixth, however, remains in play. Bournemouth head into the final three games of the season with their fingers crossed hardest, but there is set to be an almighty scramble for sixth place. The Cherries are one point ahead of Brentford, themselves only one point above Brighton & Hove Albion. Just four points separates Bournemouth in sixth and Fulham in 11th.<\/p>\n
Chelsea are at the bottom of that chasing pack, the full four points behind and in the top half of the table only due to their positive goal difference. There is still plenty of work to do, but four points from nine games is by no means impossible. The Europa League final is slated for May 20, four days before the final round of Premier League fixtures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea\u2019s season could hinge on Aston Villa winning the Europa League final on May 20 in late May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,190,969],"tags":[1505,1162],"class_list":["post-13684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-accountability","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13684","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=13684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}