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Premier League: The press conferences from the Premier League managers are coming thick and fast. Before we get to those, here is what can be decided this weekend.
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European qualification: With Manchester United joining Arsenal and Manchester City in securing Champions League football next season after beating Liverpool last weekend, there are just two guaranteed spots left in Europe’s top-tier club competition. Liverpool and Aston Villa currently sit fourth and fifth respectively, with the Arne Slot’s side hosting Chelsea on Saturday and Villa travelling to Burnley on Sunday. Both sides will confirm Champions League qualification if they win and sixth-placed Bournemouth drop points away to Fulham on Saturday. A draw will also be enough for Liverpool and Villa if Bournemouth lose. However, sixth place could yet earn Champions League qualification. That will be the case if Villa finish fifth in the Premier League and go on to win the Europa League.
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Relegation: Leeds and Forest both moved a step closer to securing their Premier League status thanks to 3-1 wins last week, beating Burnley at home and Chelsea away respectively. Victory for Leeds at Tottenham on Monday will guarantee their top-flight status for next season regardless of results elsewhere – though they will be safe before a ball has been kicked in north London if West Ham lose at home to Arsenal on Sunday. If West Ham draw with Arsenal, Leeds will be safe with a draw against Spurs. Forest will also be safe if they win at home against Newcastle on Sunday and West Ham fail to do so later in the day against Arsenal. A draw will be enough for Forest if Arsenal go on to beat West Ham.
El Clásico: Clear skies and sunny days for Barcelona on the other hand. With the sting of Champions League disappointment fading but not forgotten, Barcelona are aiming to clinch back-to-back La Liga titles on Sunday when they host bitter rivals Real Madrid.
Leading by 11 points, Hansi Flick’s side only need a draw in el clásico to be crowned champions again, although a victory against a team in crisis would keep them on course to make history – and celebrate in style.
If Barcelona win their last four league games this season, starting with the battle against Alvaro Arbeloa’s fracturing Madrid, they will match the all-time league record of 100 points. That was first achieved by José Mourinho’s Real Madrid in 2011-12 and followed the season after by Tito Vilanova’s Barcelona. Barcelona’s 29 wins so far this season are the most of any side at this point, and if they win their last four games they will break the record of 32 victories in a season, shared by the Mourinho and Vilanova sides.
Should Barcelona beat Madrid and also Real Betis the following weekend, they will become the first team to win all their home matches in a 38-game La Liga season.
However, they are without Lamine Yamal, who is out for the next few weeks with a hamstring injury. The Brazilian winger Raphinha returned to the bench last weekend after injury but did not appear in the win at Osasuna which moved Barcelona to the brink of the title.
Only once before in clásico history has the title actually been decided by the result of the game, as could happen again this Sunday. Real Madrid won the first of their record 36 leagues by drawing 2-2 against Barcelona in the 1931-32 season to clinch the title.
El Clásico: Real Madrid’s Fede Valverde was taken to hospital to have stitches after a second confrontation with teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni in two days, as the club’s collapse into chaos continues.
Players held an emergency meeting and Real have opened disciplinary proceedings after a physical fight, with blood being spilled and Valverde being taken for treatment.
It is the latest episode in a catalogue of problems at the club; they will almost certainly end a second successive season without a trophy, Álvaro Arbeloa will not continue as coach, and the dressing room divide widens by the day. Real travel to Barcelona for the clásico on Sunday.
Valverde and Tchouaméni almost came to blows during an argument in training on Wednesday which continued into the dressing room, with teammates intervening to separate the pair as they pushed each other. Then, 24 hours later, the sports newspaper Marca revealed that on Thursday Tchouaméni and Valverde fought, resulting in Valverde falling and hitting his head, opening up a gash.
Valverde was taken to the medical department at Valdebebas and from there to the nearby Hospital Blua Sanitas Valdebebas, where he was given stitches. Cameras caught the 27-year-old’s car going back and forth from the training ground, although the Uruguay midfielder was not visible inside.
More from Sid Lowe below including Valverde’s statement and Real Madrid’s medical assessment on his injury.
Championship playoffs: Middlesbrough believe they caught a Southampton analyst hiding in the bushes and allegedly recording their training session on Thursday morning, in a remarkable repeat of the 2019 Marcelo Bielsa “spygate” affair.
Boro have reported the incident to the English Football League as spying on opposition training is in breach of their regulations. The EFL is investigating the alleged misconduct and have requested Southampton’s observations regarding the matter.
The individual, thought to be part of Tonda Eckert’s backroom team, was spotted by a member of Middlesbrough staff at the beginning of their session at Rockliffe Park, 48 hours before their Championship playoff semi-final first leg.
Boro are aware of the details of the Southampton employee allegedly involved. It is thought the individual in question logged video and photographs on his phone, potentially focusing on Boro’s set pieces, but refused to identify himself after being confronted.
Read Ben Fisher’s full story below.
Championship playoffs: Four decades on from the birth of playoffs, Millwall, Hull City, Middlesbrough or Southampton are fighting to join Coventry and Ipswich in the top flight. Matt Furniss at Opta has crunched the numbers to see who is most likely to go up.
Football League: Forty years ago, the playoffs did not exist and fascinating archives reveal how a format that even one winning manager wanted abolished came to be.
Despite the complaints – and an initially indifferent reaction from the media – the end-of-season drama quickly took hold. In 1986-87, promoted Charlton had battled to stay in the First Division and were forced to fight for their lives again after finishing fourth-bottom.
Charlton beat Ipswich 2-1 on aggregate in the semi-final, then faced Leeds in a final that could not be separated over two legs, each winning 1-0 at home. The competition was proving popular, with crowds of about 30,000 packing Elland Road for both Leeds home games. A replay at Birmingham’s St Andrew’s followed – a playoff to decide the playoffs, if you will.
The score was level after 90 minutes and Charlton looked doomed when John Sheridan scored in extra time. But Shirtliff struck twice in four delirious minutes. It remains the only playoff final to go to a replay, after that idea was dropped.
On the journey home, the Charlton coach hurtled down the M6 until the players, starving, demanded to stop. They pulled into a service station and tucked into cheap fast food. “I’m thinking: ‘We’ve just managed to stay in the First Division and we’re all eating chips and god knows what in a services,’” Shirtliff, now 65, says, chuckling. “Every time I think about it, I think: ‘What would they be doing now?’ They’d probably be in five-star restaurants or in a hotel with their own chef cooking for them.”
Read more from Sam Cunningham below.
Europa Conference League: Crystal Palace followed Arsenal and Aston Villa to become the third English team to make a men’s European final this season. Here is Ed Aarons’ verdict from Selhurst Park.
There were ecstatic celebrations as Palace’s players completed a lap of honour in front of their adoring supporters who are still having to pinch themselves over the events of the past 12 months. Glasner may be set to leave after what will be the 60th game of a marathon season but whatever happens after this, he will always have a special place in the club’s history. One of the loudest cheers of the night came when the stadium announcer confirmed that Nottingham Forest – who controversially replaced Palace in the Europa League – had been thrashed 4-0 by Aston Villa in their semi-final.
The captain Dean Henderson, admitted that the sense of injustice has been driving the FA Cup winners. “It’s pretty incredible really to even get into a European competition with Crystal Palace, let alone reach the final,” he said. “We’ve got to deliver something special. We’ve got to get back what we deserve.”
Europa League: John McGinn has warned that the job is not done yet and that Villa are not ‘nearly men’ in Istanbul.
We didn’t want to leave these games with any regrets, and I think we’ve done ourselves massive justice. We’ve had low moments. It’s a demanding club to play for but what we’ve done in the last few years is exceptional. The margins are so slim. If we lost, we’re the nearly men.
When we go to Istanbul, we need to make sure we’re not the nearly men. I’m normally quite calm before games, but today I was nervous. Tonight was up with one of the best performances I’ve seen from a Villa team for a long time.
I wasn’t nervous in terms of the team turning up. We’ve turned up in big games, maybe just not in big semi-finals. The injuries Forest have had may have helped decide it, but we needed to capitalise – and we did. The club’s been through some massive lows, but such a massive group deserves success. Hopefully we’ll bring it.
Europa League: In the end, it was a rout, Aston Villa sailing into their first European final since 1982. There were fist pumps from Prince William high in the Trinity Road Stand after Emiliano Buendía’s penalty approaching the hour put Villa in command of the tie and then pure delirium as John McGinn buried two near-identical first-time finishes inside three minutes to kill the game.
In between serenading Unai Emery, who is hunting a record fifth Europa League title, and drinking in the celebrations, Villa supporters could think about booking flights to Istanbul, where Villa will face Freiburg in search of their first trophy since lifting the League Cup in 1996.
Villa had the “benefit of Buendía’s ice-cold mind,” wrote Will Unwin, who was at Villa Park to watch as the Argentinian kept his head as tempers raged around him.
Aston Villa settled sooner and an integral element of that was Buendía, a classy No 10 unfazed by swimming in a cauldron. He knows if he plays his own game, then good things will follow. Forest may have hoped to intimidate him but he was always eager to take the ball to feet, even with Elliot Anderson and others snapping at his heels.
Buendía encouraged the vociferous Villa fans to make more noise by throwing his arms up in the air during the first half, knowing the part they could play. It worked as the decibels grew, but creating the opener was a more successful method of testing the 129-year-old foundations. Receiving the ball on the edge of the box, Buendía weighed up his options and took the most difficult route, dazzling through two defenders before calmly slipping a pass to give Watkins the easiest of finishes.
Read the full analysis below.
Preamble
The 2025-26 season may be ticking towards its end but there is still a whole lot to be decided. Championship playoffs begin with Hull v Millwall tonight before Middlesbrough take on Southampton in tomorrow’s lunchtime kick-off. The latter may be extra spicy given Boro made a formal complaint to the EFL alleging a man they believe to be a Southampton member of staff was spying on their training session yesterday.
In the Premier League, Manchester City hope to bounce back from their draw at Everton against Brentford. Arsenal will be keen for their title rivals to slip up before they face West Ham, who are facing the drop, on Sunday. There is also Women’s FA Cup action with Liverpool taking on Brighton before Chelsea host the newly crowned WSL champions, Manchester City. Plus some big rivalries ignite with the Old Firm derby at Celtic Park and el clásico returns at Camp Nou but Barcelona will be the least of Madrid fans’ worries, with a teammate rift causing spilled blood in the dressing room. More on that later.
There was plenty to chew on last night too. Vibrant and victorious Villa demolished Nottingham Forest’s hopes of charging into the Europa League final and edging closer to ending a 30-year major trophy drought. They will face Freiburg in the final in Istanbul on 20 May.
In the Conference League, Oliver Glasner’s chances of bowing out at Crystal Palace with a second trophy in two years were substantially enhanced with a 5-2 aggregate semi-final win. The Europa League place denied them last year is now in sight, with Rayo Vallecano as their opponents in the final in Leipzig on 27 May.
So much reaction to get to, so much buildup to be across. To get you in the mood, here are our 10 Premier League things to look out for.
As always, if you have any thoughts, questions, predictions, complaints or anything else you want to share, then send them my way via email which you can find at the top of this blog. How do you expect your club to fare this weekend? And has the season gone as expected? I want to know.
