Villa boost their chances - how race for Europe stands

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

Early goals from Morgan Rogers and Donyell Malen gave Unai Emery's team a two-goal cushion before Jota Silva pulled one back for Forest - but the hosts held on for all three points.

The win lifted Villa into sixth place, level on points with Manchester City and one behind fourth-placed Chelsea, but having played a game more.

Carabao Cup winners Newcastle, who have two games in hand on Villa, will climb to fourth if they beat struggling Leicester City on Monday evening.

The Midlands club have now won their last 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.

Data analysts Opta now give Forest a 71.1% chance of qualifying for Europe's premier club competition for the first time since the 1980-81 season.

Elsewhere, 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 last six games after drawing 2-2 at West Ham.

Pep Guardiola's City, who travel to Old Trafford for the Manchester derby on Sunday, will miss out on a fifth successive Premier League title, but Opta still gives them a 56.3% chance of getting into the Champions League.

Chelsea, who visit west London rivals Brentford on Sunday, have been given a 29.1% chance, while there's a 34.4% chance for Newcastle, who are two points and three 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.