Premier League top-five race: Arsenal join the battle as Newcastle and Chelsea face off at St James’ Park

As the race to finish in the Premier League’s top five — and so qualify for next season’s Champions League — reaches its climax, we welcome a new team to the mix: Arsenal.

Yes, in the same week that Mikel Arteta’s side exited European football’s most prestigious competition at the semi-final stage, their recent domestic clump means they now have to contemplate fighting with domestic rivals to get back into the tournament next season, starting with Sunday’s trip to the one club who are guaranteed a 2025-26 Champions League berth with three games to go — title winners Liverpool.

Closing in fast on Arsenal are Manchester City, who have finished in the top two in each of the past seven seasons. They’re experts at this part of a campaign, you might say.

Elsewhere in matchday 36, Newcastle will host Chelsea, which is good news for Nottingham Forest, who can close the gap on one or possibly both of them. Aston Villa are still just about in the frame too, even with a difficult trip to eighth-placed Bournemouth on Saturday evening.

Opta’s supercomputer, a machine so notable it was name-checked by Arsenal manager Arteta himself last week, still has them with a 79 per cent chance of finishing second, with City favourites to come third, Newcastle for fourth and barely anything to choose between Chelsea and Forest over who’ll complete the top five.

The fixture difficulty grid, meanwhile, shows City and Forest with theoretically easier ends to the season, though Chelsea’s trip to the City Ground on that final Sunday looks increasingly like it may be pivotal. Newcastle’s next two games, at home against Chelsea and away to Arsenal, will also have a major say in how the final table looks.

But what is the mood at each club as these final three games loom into view?

To shed some light, here’s The Athletic’s weekly vibe check with club writers at each of the top-five contenders, plus a reminder of why reaching the Champions League remains so important.

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Why the Champions League is so much more lucrative than its siblings

In terms of domestic prize money, finishing sixth instead of fifth in the Premier League isn’t too much to cry over. Merit payments make up little over one-fifth of the annual prize money handed out by the league, and while that’s gone up over the last decade (from 16 per cent of central distributions in 2015-16 to 21 per cent last season), it still only translates to around £2.8million ($3.7m) per league position.

Every little helps, obviously, but in the grand scheme of things, slipping down a spot on the final day won’t hurt too much in domestic terms. Instead, the impact on club pockets of this year’s battle for the top five will come primarily from overseas, such is the gulf in prize money between the Champions League and UEFA’s other two competitions.

When UEFA introduced the Conference League ahead of the 2021-22 season, it naturally had to develop a prize pot to go with its new third-tier competition. Conference League participants now share around €240million (£203m/$270m) a season, but despite UEFA’s overall prize pot going up by around €300m that year, it didn’t just use the increase to fund this additional tournament. Instead, UEFA ensured the Champions League bounty continued to swell, pushing prize money there over the €2bn per season mark. In doing so, it reduced the prize money on offer in the Europa League. Clubs in UEFA’s second-tier club competition shared €476m last season, against €541m three seasons earlier.

With the Champions League offering so much more financially than its smaller siblings, it’s little wonder Premier League clubs so desire a spot in this season’s final top five.

Even ultimate glory in one of the other two competitions offers nowhere near the riches of participating in the big one; West Ham United’s victorious Conference League campaign in 2023 earned them just €22.1million, and that’s with them benefitting from English clubs generally enjoying a greater share of the spoils due to how UEFA links prize money to individual nations’ own TV deals.

Curiously enough, €22million is roughly what Chelsea can expect to earn if they replicate West Ham’s success in three weeks’ time.

That, to firmly underline the point, is less than they would get just by virtue of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

Chris Weatherspoon

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How are the contenders feeling?

Arsenal

Arsenal should be perfectly fine for Champions League qualification… shouldn’t they?!

Their season does appear to be petering out. With the Champions League drawing most of their focus of late, Premier League form has suffered. They’ve won just one of their past five domestic games, and if you factor in the two legs of their semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain are on a run of three consecutive defeats in all competitions.

Arsenal have three league games remaining in which to try to stop the rot, secure Champions League qualification and, ideally, confirm second place for a third season running. Their final league positioning may not matter too much in the grand scheme of things, but finishing below Manchester City again — especially after the now-deposed champions’ disastrous first half of the season — would surely be a psychological blow.

They start with a trip to Liverpool on Sunday. Arsenal don’t have the best record at Anfield, but will be hoping to bounce back from their midweek Champions League elimination in Paris against a side who’ve lost the only game they have played since securing the title. Then they host Newcastle, one of the teams pursuing them. Arteta might have an extra incentive in that game: were Newcastle to qualify for next season’s Champions League, it might well confirm that summer transfer target Alexander Isak is definitively beyond Arsenal’s reach.

Arteta’s team then finish away to already-relegated Southampton. A final day fixture against the league’s bottom club should offer some reassurance.

Arsenal’s goal difference advantage over Forest means that confirming their place in the top five will probably only require three points from the nine available. Their fans will be desperately hoping they’re not waiting until that trip to St. Mary’s to get them.

James McNicholas

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Manchester City

It really does seem like the hard work has been done now that City have beaten Everton, Aston Villa and Wolves, with Championship-bound Southampton to come on Saturday.

With Arsenal slipping up recently and now facing two tough fixtures, and Newcastle and Chelsea playing each other this weekend, it feels like an anticipated victory over a side with just two league wins all season will be enough to see City finish in the top five, even if they will need another result or two to go their way in the next round of fixtures.

Funnily enough, given City’s form of late, finishing in the top five no longer seems lofty enough of a goal: there is a chance they could get second if Arsenal fold.

Even if that does not happen, third seems a realistic expectation at this point for a club who started the season chasing a fifth straight title, which not many would have banked on only a couple of weeks ago.

Sam Lee

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Newcastle United

Some Newcastle insiders are referring to Sunday as their “biggest league game of the season” and, on the face of it, that appears an obvious statement. Fourth-placed Newcastle host Chelsea, who are fifth and below them on goals scored alone, and a victory for either team could all but secure their place in next season’s Champions League.

In some ways, however, it feels like the pressure is on Chelsea. They may have the prospect of a Conference League final triumph ahead, but for a club who have hoovered up silverware at home and in Europe this century, that would be dwarfed in significance by Newcastle’s own trophy glory earlier this season. March’s Carabao Cup final win ended a 70-year domestic drought and, with a place in Europe’s third-tier competition for 2025-26 guaranteed as a result, their campaign’s objective has already been achieved.

To demonstrate progress, Chelsea require Champions League football. The same just is not true for Newcastle, even if returning to UEFA’s top table for a second campaign in the past three years would be transformative financially, give them a greater chance of retaining key players and ensure this really is the club’s most successful season in living memory.

While a 1-1 draw at Brighton & Hove Albion last weekend was far from ideal, the manner in which Newcastle fought back, failed to let two penalty awards being (correctly) overturned by VAR derail them and then secured a point with a late goal, felt significant. That result also ensured Chelsea did not leapfrog them in the table when they beat Liverpool later the same day.

Newcastle can still shape their own destiny and, although a noon Sunday kick-off time is far from ideal atmosphere-wise, St James’ Park will surely be rocking. Newcastle have yet to lose to a ‘Big Six’ side at home this season — including against Chelsea in October’s Carabao Cup quarter-finals — and they do not intend to let that record slip now.

Chris Waugh

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Chelsea

It has been clear for some time that Chelsea’s trip to St James’ Park to face Newcastle would be decisive for both clubs’ hopes of Champions League qualification. What has changed over the past three games is that Enzo Maresca’s team can now make the long journey north with serious confidence and momentum.

Victories over Fulham and Everton were the bare minimum required to keep Chelsea’s top-five hopes alive, but beating Liverpool — even a less-than-peak Liverpool so soon after securing the Premier League title — last Sunday was a bigger statement. Romeo Lavia is fit again and dictating in midfield, and Cole Palmer — at long last — looks like Cole Palmer again.

Chelsea will need that and more to sustain their winning run against Newcastle, who overwhelmed them with intensity at St James’ Park in the Carabao Cup earlier this season. But a match that until very recently seemed a must-win for Maresca now looks more of a must-not-lose.

Their path back to the Champions League remains a challenging one, but Chelsea appear to have roused themselves not a moment too soon.

Liam Twomey

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Nottingham Forest

Forest fans could be forgiven if they do not know quite how they should be feeling right now.

Can they realistically be asking themselves the question of whether qualifying for the Europa League or Conference League would, at this point, be a disappointment? In the broader scheme of things, of course it wouldn’t. But having been in third place for so long, there is also an understandable feeling of dismay at the prospect of Champions League qualification slipping out of their grasp.

The performance and result (a 1-1 draw) at Crystal Palace last time out provided reason for fresh optimism. Forest, for long spells, looked to be back to something like themselves, against quality opposition.

And, without taking anything for granted, a team with Forest’s aspirations should be hoping to beat an already-relegated Leicester City side when they come to the City Ground on Sunday. They should be confident about heading to an out-of-sorts West Ham a week later, too.

And if, back in August, anyone had told Forest fans that they might have the prospect of heading into a final-day home game with Chelsea, knowing that a Champions League place would go to the winners — which they will hope is the exact scenario when May 25 dawns — they would have been gleeful.

Barring a remarkable sequence of results, Forest will qualify to play European football of some sort next season. And, with Newcastle vs Chelsea likely to end shortly before they kick off against Leicester on Sunday, Forest’s Champions League fate could still be in their own hands.

If they can claim victory over their East Midlands rivals, how their fans can expect to be feeling come the end of the season should be slightly clearer.

Paul Taylor

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Aston Villa

Nerves were visible during the 1-0 home win against Fulham last week, with Villa and their fans knowing that any slip-up would shunt them further adrift of the top-five chasing pack. While the performance was somewhat dull and not pretty, it ticked the first box of Villa requiring a near faultless run to be in the Champions League for a second season running.

However, the general mood around the club is one of confidence. Having won only six of their 21 Premier League matches between September and February, it was always going to be a difficult task to make up the necessary ground, so the fact Villa now sit just three points off fifth place with three games to go offers hope.

They have won seven of nine league games and feel this weekend’s trip to Bournemouth may be the hardest fixture they have left, given the other two are against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, who both have their minds firmly focused on the Europa League final on May 21.

News of a muscle injury to ever-present Youri Tielemans may prove a significant blow, however, considering he has been Villa’s most important player this season. Still, his absence should lead to club-record signing Amadou Onana partnering Boubacar Kamara in midfield. Villa have in-form firepower off the bench and do look to be in a better physical state than those teams directly above them.

Jacob Tanswell

(Top photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

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