Why Premier League position is a focus for only eight teams right now

As Eddie Howe delivered his post-match press conference after Newcastle’s draw against Brighton on Sunday, Chelsea, his club’s rivals for Champions League qualification, took an early lead against Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. Howe gave a wry smile and was immediately asked whether it annoyed him that Liverpool had made six changes to their lineup from the side that had sealed the league title against Tottenham last week. Being Howe, and therefore both unflappable and impossibly earnest, he replied that team selection was their business: “Liverpool have got to do what Liverpool have got to do for them. I’m not involved in their football club, so I’ve got no opinion on that.”

And of course he was right to say so, partly because it’s true and partly because criticising other managers’ team selections is a slippery slope. All clubs have their own priorities and their job is to do what is right for them, with all due nods to the integrity of the league and satisfying those who have paid for tickets or broadcast rights. Liverpool have won the title early: giving fringe players a run out is a prerogative they have earned, and it’s not their concern how that affects other sides. But at the same time, Chelsea were given an easier game than they probably would have been had they met Liverpool a week or two earlier before the league title was wrapped up.

That’s the nature of the season and it happens at this stage every year. Clubs have different incentives and motivations.

It’s not even as straightforward as saying that a team with nothing to play for will prove easier opposition. While some sides, with their targets met, assuredly are on the beach, others improve when the pressure is removed. But this season, the final weeks have felt unusually fractured. Liverpool have achieved all they need to achieve and have nothing more to prove. And Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich are already down, playing only for pride, with diminishing supplies even of that.

Chelsea may have benefited from playing a demotivated Liverpool, but they must face two of their direct opponents for Champions League qualification in their final three games: Newcastle away next Sunday, which is perhaps the most important league game remaining this season, and Nottingham Forest away on the final day. Those games at least promise combustion.

In between, they host Manchester United, whose league form, never good this season, has plummeted as their focus has switched entirely to the Europa League, which offers the possibility of an unlikely qualification for the Champions League if United win it. United, who play Villa on the final day, haven’t won any of their last six league games and were characteristically shambolic in losing 4-3 to Brentford on Sunday.

Tottenham, similarly, have capitulated domestically as the Europa League has come to dominate their thoughts. Their only victory in the league in their last nine games was the home win over a Southampton side who are battling desperately to avoid matching the lowest points tally in Premier League history. They travel to Aston Villa the weekend after next and then play Brighton, who still have hopes for eighth place and probable Europa League qualification on the final day. That’s been an added complication this season: two big sides in the lower half of the table whose focus is absolutely not on the league.

For Arsenal as well, with title chances gone Europe is the obvious priority. Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final second leg against Paris Saint-Germain will effectively define their season. If they can become just the seventh side this century to overturn a first-leg Champions League semi-final deficit, they’d be one game from one of the greatest seasons in their history. If they do not, it will all seem deeply anti-climactic. Although they have Liverpool and Newcastle still to play, a home game against Southampton on the final day means their qualification for the Champions League is as good as secure.

Nottingham Forest, as so often happens to unexpected challengers for Champions League qualification, have found form deserting them. Perhaps it’s fatigue, perhaps it’s regression to the mean, but they’ve lost four of their last five. A win over Crystal Palace in their game in hand on Monday would pull them level with Newcastle and Chelsea and their two games after that are also against sides with nothing to play for, before that final-day meeting with Chelsea.

Of those gunning for the Champions League places, Villa seemingly have the easiest run-in, playing the Europa League pair, plus Bournemouth, who are eighth and probably locked in a battle with Brighton, Brentford and Fulham for Conference League qualification. The performances of those four sides this weekend – two wins, a hard-fought draw and a battling defeat – at least suggests they are taking that opportunity seriously, meaning there are effectively eight Premier League sides still focused on league position.

But that is fewer than half the clubs in the division.

It’s freakish and understandable, and nobody is really to blame, but this final month of the season has been unsettlingly dominated by games that matter very little.

On this day …

Dixie Dean during the 1925-26 season, during which he set the scoring record that still stands today. Photograph: Colorsport/Shutterstock

In 1926-27, the Middlesbrough centre-forward George Camsell set a new record, scoring 59 goals as his side won the Second Division title. Even in the rush of goalscoring that followed the 1925 change in the offside law, that seemed extraordinary, the sort of record that may stand for ever. Yet it lasted only a year before being beaten by Everton’s Bill Dean, better known by his nickname, Dixie.

Dean joined Everton from Tranmere in 1925 and scored 32 goals in his first season as Everton finished 11th. The following season he missed four months after being seriously injured in a motorcycle crash but returned in 1927-28 fully recovered. When Everton won the league with a game to spare, Dean had 57 goals. That meant the focus as they met Arsenal on 5 May 1928 was on whether he could score a hat-trick and claim the record for himself. He headed one in from a corner and converted a penalty before half-time. Only eight minutes remained when he powered in another trademark header to score his 60th of the season. The game finished 3-3 but, far more significantly, Dean had taken the record, which stands to this day.

• This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.