No wins for top five - how race for Europe stands

Manchester City and Chelsea both missed the chance to boost their hopes of Champions League qualification after being held to goalless draws.

City were unable to get past Manchester United at Old Trafford while Chelsea's poor away form continued against Brentford.

On Saturday, Aston Villa boosted their hopes of qualifying for the Champions League with a hard-fought victory over third-placed Nottingham Forest.

The win lifted Villa into sixth place, one point behind City and two behind fourth-placed Chelsea.

Carabao Cup winners Newcastle - who have two games in hand on Chelsea, City and Villa - could climb to fifth and go level on points with Chelsea if they beat struggling Leicester City on Monday.

Villa have now won their past seven matches in all competitions - the first time they have done so since 2019 - and head into Wednesday's Champions League quarter-final first leg against newly crowned Ligue 1 champions Paris St-Germain with the wind in their sails.

As for Forest, they remain on the brink of a first European campaign despite suffering an eighth league defeat of the campaign at Villa Park.

Elsewhere on Saturday, Brighton's hopes of securing continental football took a hit as they lost 2-1 at nine-man Crystal Palace, while Bournemouth are winless in their past six games after drawing 2-2 at West Ham.

Newcastle's Carabao Cup win has secured at least a Conference League play-off spot - though they could yet make the Champions League or Europa League. If they do, the Conference League play-off place will go to the next highest Premier League team not already qualified for Europe.

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.