The battle to qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League is hotting up, and the chance of an extra spot in the competition will give clubs even more hope. Can Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth spring a surprise? We look at the Opta supercomputer projections.
The race for Champions League qualification in the Premier League is hotter than ever, with seven clubs likely to be battling it out for a spot in the 2025-26 league phase.
It looks likely five English clubs, rather than four, will qualify for next season’s competition, as the strong form of Premier League sides in European competition this campaign is powering England towards a top-two finish in the seasonal UEFA coefficient rankings.
The first two of those spots look set to be locked up, as Liverpool and Arsenal begin to pull away from the pack.
Even if Manchester City and Newcastle United – who currently occupy fifth and sixth place in the table with 41 points apiece – win every one of their remaining 14 Premier League games this season, their highest possible points total would be 83 points. This means Liverpool only need to win 28 points in their final 15 matches to guarantee a top-four finish.
The Opta supercomputer only saw one scenario where Newcastle and Man City win all remaining matches and Liverpool fail to amass at least another 28 points.
In 9,999 of the latest 10,000 simulations of the remainder of the 2024-25 season, Liverpool finish inside the top four of the Premier League table; they came fifth in the other solitary simulation. In terms of finishing outside the top five positions, we’re not saying it’s mathematically impossible for Liverpool to collapse and drop below fifth, but it’s so unlikely that it didn’t occur in our 10,000 scenarios.
Arsenal are nearly certain of Champions League football next season too, according the supercomputer. The Gunners finished inside the top four places in 99.6% of the latest sims.
While it’s hardly a shock to see Liverpool and Arsenal basically guaranteed Champions League action next season, it’s the race for the other top-four (or five) spots that provides the most interesting story.
Manchester City may have suffered a pretty horrific run of form in recent months, including a 5-1 loss at Arsenal last weekend, but the Opta supercomputer still believes they can finish strongly and secure a top-four berth. After all, this is a City side managed by one of the most successful coaches in English top-flight history, Pep Guardiola, and despite a six-point gap between themselves and Nottingham Forest in the table, the projection model backs City to overcome that deficit and still finish third.
City finish inside the top four in two-thirds of the latest season simulations (66.6%), but if they want to increase their chances of UCL football next season even further, winning their Champions League knockout play-off tie against Real Madrid would help quite a bit.
A victory over Real Madrid would boost England’s yearly UEFA coefficient ranking and go some way to making sure the nation finish inside the top two for 2024-25.
Why is that important? Well, the top two nations in UEFA’s coefficients are awarded an extra spot in next season’s Champions League league phase – something that England missed out on last season – and it would mean fifth place in the Premier League secures UCL qualification for 2025-26.
As it stands, England’s chances of getting an extra spot in next season’s league phase are very strong. The Opta supercomputer projects a 99.5% likelihood of this happening, with all seven of the English teams still in Europe and three of them the favourites for European glory.
Liverpool are favourites for the Champions League with Arsenal third-likeliest winners; Chelsea win the Conference League most often in our projections; while Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United are among the four likeliest victors in the Europa League.
This is great news for the clubs currently in the top seven of the Premier League table, including two teams who have never played in the UEFA Champions League: Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth.
Yes, we know Forest have an illustrious history and won back-to-back European Cup titles in 1979 and 1980, but that victory 45 years ago was their last appearance in Europe’s premier cup competition.
Their unexpected success this season sees them sit third, with a five-point cushion over Chelsea in fourth place. The Opta supercomputer gives them a near 50-50 chance of finishing in the top four (48.4%), but should Champions League qualification be opened up to the top five teams in the Premier League, that chance of making the UCL increases by over 21 percentage points (69.7%). The success of English clubs in Europe this season could really be the difference between Forest making the Champions League or not.
Bournemouth have never played in European competition before, and just 15 years ago they were playing football in England’s fourth tier. Now, with Andoni Iraola at the helm, they have a serious chance of qualifying for Europe.
The Cherries finish inside the top five places in 33.8% of the latest supercomputer simulations, which is likely to mean Champions League football, but it also gives them a bigger chance of qualifying for the Europa League or the Conference League, as those qualification spots will move down to sixth and seventh in the table. Their chances of a top-six finish are at 57.0%, while they finish inside the top seven 79.9% of the time.
Those B&Bs on the Bournemouth coast could be about to get booked up with European visitors.
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