A single point separates Manchester United and Chelsea after two underwhelming displays in Gameweek 26, leaving the race for fourth finely poised.<\/p>\n
Manchester United sit fourth on 45 points and were forced to settle for a draw at the London Stadium, where West Ham United looked set to win before Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko came off the bench and scored a 96th-minute equaliser. Chelsea are fifth on 44 points and also failed to take full advantage of the evening\u2019s results.<\/p>\n
Both clubs face a sequence of Premier League fixtures over the next five weeks that could reshape the battle for a Champions League place.<\/p>\n
Manchester United (4th, 45 points) travel to Everton (A) on Feb. 23, host Crystal Palace (H) on Mar. 1, visit Newcastle (A) on Mar. 4, welcome Aston Villa (H) on Mar. 15 and finish with Bournemouth (A) on Mar. 20. United have already navigated their toughest February run, and the side will take confidence from having beaten both Crystal Palace and Newcastle in 2025\u201326. Their clearest test in this sequence is Aston Villa. United benefit from Villa facing Chelsea immediately before the trip to Old Trafford. The final match before the international break is against Bournemouth, who shared the points with United in an eight-goal December draw and are described in the original report as stronger than two months ago.<\/p>\n
Chelsea (5th, 44 points) begin with Burnley (H) on Feb. 21 before a demanding spell of away fixtures: Arsenal (A) on Mar. 1 followed by Aston Villa (A) on Mar. 4. They return home to face Newcastle (H) on Mar. 14 and end the run away at Everton (A) on Mar. 21. Compared with United, Chelsea face a much tougher run. The Blues must negotiate back-to-back trips to league-leaders Arsenal and then third-place Aston Villa with only three days between those matches. Rosenior will have to demand a lot from his stars to secure positive results from that sequence.<\/p>\n
After Gameweek 26 neither team gained a clear advantage, and the coming fixtures may determine who reaches the Champions League next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A close race for fourth: Man Utd lead Chelsea by one point as both face tricky fixtures ahead. Read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1083,969],"tags":[317,1047,1089],"class_list":["post-6786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-champions-league","tag-chelsea-struggles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786","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=6786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}