Manchester United and Chelsea fans can now breathe a collective sigh of relief as both teams secured a spot in the next season of Champion’s League after a chaotic finish to the EPL season. Manchester United and Chelsea both have 66 points, finishing on the third and fourth spots respectively.
Manchester United won 2-0 in a match against Leicester City through goals by Bruno Fernandes and Jesse Lingard, cementing their third-place finish in the league. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes his team needs to get “stronger, fitter, and more robust” for the challenges of the Champions League next season.
In the meantime, Chelsea secured a comfortable 2-0 win over Wolverhampton. This resulted in a fourth-place finish above Leicester City and bagging the final Champions League spot.
Good news for Leicester as they will go on to play in the Europa League next season alongside Tottenham Hotspurs, who drew 1-1 at Crystal Palace. This earned them a spot in the sixth place — above Wolves on goal difference.
Widely considered as one of the most decorated managers — Jose Mourinho, who now manages Leicester City took over the reins when the club was lagging behind in 14th place. Nonetheless, he remained optimistic in making a return to the Europa League one year after Spurs were in a Champions League final.
“Of course everybody that one day plays Champions League doesn’t want to go back and play Europa League but that was the only thing possible after such a difficult season for the club, for the players and also for myself,” Mourinho told the Associated Press.
“But arriving 14th and handling things is not bad at all. I am quite happy next season we play in Europa League. It’s just a question to motivate ourselves for that competition and try to motivate the fans to support us to do something beautiful.”
On relegation news, Aston Villa survived to fight for another day as they held on for an exciting 1-1 draw at West Hams. They scored in the 84th minute only to let in an easy goal a minute later. Fortunately, they managed to hold on to the draw till the last whistle. In a bittersweet moment, Captain Jack Grealish scored Villa’s goal in what could be his last goal for the club.
Bournemouth, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Even though they had an arguably good match as they beat Everton, 3-1, it was not enough as they ended up one point behind Villa. Watford was also relegated after losing 3-2 at Arsenal.
Not only did Manchester City scored an impressive 100 goals this season, they also had a convincing win, beating an already demoted Norwich 5-0 win over last-place and already-demoted Norwich. This game also marked what will be the last in the Premier League for David Silva after playing 10 years with City.
This season’s champions Liverpool ended their impressive run on a high note with a 3-1 win at Newcastle and as if that’s not enough, the team finished on a club-record 99 points.
On other EPL match news, Southampton won over Sheffield United 3-1, with Danny Ings scoring his 22nd goal of the season. In a battle over the season’s Golden Boot, he was one behind Leicester’s Jamie Vardy.
Burnley’s unfortunate losing streak since their first home defeat since New Year’s Day continued after losing 2-1 to Brighton and Hove Albion. Burnley ended the season in 10th place on 54 points while Brighton, who was almost on the brink of relegation, finished the season in 15th place.
Any hopes of Brentford’s returning to English Premiership for the first time in more than 70 years were dashed when Andre Ayew’s well-executed goal got Swansea City a 1-0 win in their Championship play-off semi-final first leg at their Liberty Stadium.
