MANCHESTER – The Premier League season reaches its crescendo on Sunday with all 10 matches kicking off simultaneously in a final act packed with jeopardy at the bottom end of the table and nearer the top in a European race tangled in permutations.
The title has already been decided and four Champions League places have gone to league winners Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Aston Villa.
So attention now shifts to the final European berths – and a relegation scrap few would have predicted when the season kicked off involving Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United.
“When you fight for the relegation, you have to stay inside of the league until the last minute of the last game of the season,” Spurs manager Roberto de Zerbi said. “We have to stay alive. It is a big day for us.
“The most important is to keep the dignity, to keep the pride, to go on holiday like this (head up) and not like this (head down).”
Victory for West Ham is essential and even that may not suffice, with their inferior goal difference leaving them reliant on help from Everton in north London.
The other major storyline is the battle for the final one or two Champions League places.
Liverpool hold pole position as they host Brentford, knowing a point will be enough to secure fifth.
Bournemouth, who clinched some form of European qualification with their 1-1 draw against Man City on Tuesday, sit three points back, but well behind Liverpool in goal difference.
Bournemouth’s surge has been one of the stories of the season. They arrive at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground on a 17‑game unbeaten run, their consistency propelling them into sixth and firmly into the European picture.
The stakes may extend beyond a single Champions League slot. Aston Villa’s Europa League triumph on Wednesday has created the possibility of a sixth English entrant into next season’s competition, but only if Villa finish fifth in the league.
That would require a Liverpool win in what will be talisman Mohamed Salah’s final appearance as a Red at Anfield, and a Villa loss at City, which is expected to be an emotional farewell to manager Pep Guardiola after a trophy-laden decade with the club.
If Villa finish fourth, the extended route closes and sixth drops into the Europa League, the continent’s second-most prestigious club competition.
Brighton & Hove Albion, who host Manchester United, remain the most realistic side capable of breaking into sixth – they are three points behind Bournemouth in seventh – while a broader group, including Chelsea, Brentford and Sunderland, are chasing Europa League and Conference League spots in a congested mid-table fight.
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