Chelsea take big step in fight for Champions League spot

Chelsea boosted their hopes of Champions League football next season as they moved back into the top four with victory over Tottenham Hotspur.

Enzo Fernandez scored the only goal at Stamford Bridge on Thursday, but the Blues dominated against a struggling Spurs side.

The win lifted Chelsea above Manchester City into fourth place and makes the race for Europe all the more exciting, with a fifth Champions League spot for English clubs all but guaranteed.

Manchester City, Aston Villa and Carabao Cup winners Newcastle were all victorious on Wednesday, while Brighton and Bournemouth suffered what could prove to be costly home defeats.

Nottingham Forest also strengthened their bid to qualify for Europe's elite club competition with a 1-0 victory over Manchester United at the City Ground on Tuesday.

With most sides having eight league games left to play, there are just eight points separating Chelsea in fourth and 10th-placed Bournemouth.

Data analysts Opta now give Forest a 79% chance of finishing in the top four and rate them as 92.3% prospects for a top-five position through its prediction models.

Pep Guardiola's City will miss out on a fifth successive Premier League title, but Opta gives them a 54.3% chance of finishing a testing campaign in the top four.

Chelsea, though, have been given just a 28.3% chance of reaching the Champions League, while there's a 32.2% chance for Newcastle, who are two points and two places below the Londoners.

Newcastle's Carabao Cup win has secured them at least a Conference League play-off spot - which would be bumped down to the next highest-ranked team in the Premier League who have not already qualified for Europe, if the Magpies qualify for the Europa League or Champions League.

That has started a conversation about how European spots could, in theory, reach as far down as 11th in the table.

In the fairly unlikely chance that that happens, this is how it could work:

Each country's league earns a coefficient ranking based on how their teams perform in Uefa's three men's European club competitions: the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.

Coefficient points are earned through match results - two for a win and one for a draw.

The points earned by clubs from the same domestic league are added up and divided by the number of clubs the league has in Europe.

For example, if the Premier League had 100 points, that would be split by the number of teams playing in Europe (seven), giving England a coefficient of 14.28.

This season, bonus points are available to clubs playing in the Champions League, which is advantageous to leagues with more clubs competing in it, such as Germany and Italy.

Countries that finish in the coefficient table's top two places earn an additional Champions League spot for the following season.

Those spots are awarded to the teams who finish in the first position below the standard Champions League allocation in those leagues.

In the Premier League, the top four clubs automatically qualify for the Champions League via league position, so any additional place would go to the team in fifth.

Additional spots for the 2024-25 Champions League were given to Bologna and Borussia Dortmund, who finished fifth in Serie A and the Bundesliga respectively.