Liverpool used Wednesday to narrow the gap on their top-five rivals, and Virgil van Dijk propelled the Reds back into the race for a top-five finish, almost certainly enough for entry into the Champions League next season. Manchester United and Chelsea still lead Liverpool by three and two points respectively, but the immediate run of matches could prove decisive.<\/p>\n
The coming five league games for each club read as follows. Liverpool: Nottingham Forest (A) \u2013 Feb. 22; West Ham (H) \u2013 Feb. 28; Wolves (A) \u2013 Mar. 3; Tottenham (H) \u2013 Mar. 15; Brighton (A) \u2013 Mar. 21. The Reds also face Brighton & Hove Albion this weekend in the FA Cup fourth round. On paper Liverpool should be capable of securing 15 points from these five Premier League fixtures, though their season has featured repeated slips against lesser opponents. After a humiliating 3\u20130 home defeat to Nottingham Forest in November, Slot\u2019s side will travel to Forest seeking revenge. Two more matches against relegation candidates follow as West Ham and last-placed Wolverhampton Wanderers provide winnable opportunities. A visit from currently managerless Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield precedes another trip to face Brighton.<\/p>\n
Manchester United have been markedly improved under Michael Carrick but the midweek draw to West Ham was a setback in their top-five push. United have just one more game in February and that sees them lock horns with Everton (A) \u2014 the 10-man Toffees won at Old Trafford fairly recently \u2014 after which they kick off March against Crystal Palace (H). Their fixtures then include Newcastle (A), Aston Villa (H) and Bournemouth (A) before the March international break.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s next five are Burnley (H), Arsenal (A), Aston Villa (A), Newcastle (H) and Everton (A). Three of Chelsea\u2019s opponents in that sequence also face United. In a two-week period during March the Blues meet Aston Villa (A), Newcastle (H) and Everton (A); the first two teams have both taken points off Chelsea this season, albeit during the Enzo Maresca era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liverpool’s next five Premier League fixtures read well on paper, but consistency is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,175,179,172],"tags":[1162,299,1047],"class_list":["post-6816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6816","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=6816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}