Newcastle lay down marker - how race for Europe stands

Newcastle capitalised on the Premier League's top five teams failing to win at the weekend as the race for European football intensifies.

Only six points separate Chelsea in fourth and ninth-placed Brighton, while Nottingham Forest in third are only four points ahead of the Blues.

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

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

On Saturday Aston Villa beat Forest to move one point behind City and two behind Chelsea.

Carabao Cup winners Newcastle, who have a game in hand on Chelsea, City and Villa, climbed to fifth and went level on points with Chelsea with victory over struggling Leicester City on Monday.

Eddie Howe's side have won 11 of their past 15 league games, with only Liverpool (38) picking up more points in that time than the Magpies' 33.

Villa have won their past seven matches in all competitions - for the first time 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.

Forest remain on the brink of a first European campaign since 1995-96 despite suffering an eighth league defeat of the campaign at Villa Park.

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

Newcastle's EFL Cup win secured at least a Conference League play-off spot , although 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 as 11th in the table.

This is how that would work:

English clubs can this week seal an additional Champions League spot for next season.

England currently leads the coefficient table, which gives each league a ranking based on how its teams perform in Uefa's three competitions: the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.

England has a healthy lead over Italy and Spain and needs only one English club to win to confirm one of the two available additional Champions League slots.

Arsenal host Real Madrid on Tuesday and Villa travel to PSG on Wednesday in the Champions League quarter-finals.

On Thursday Tottenham and Manchester United are in action in the Europa League and Chelsea in the Conference League.

Italy can surpass England's total but it requires its three remaining clubs in European competitions to win every game, including the finals.

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.

The top four in the Premier League 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.