Six teams in rotation for four places in the Champions League, two wins combined for the top seven over the weekend, and ten Premier League matches spread across the final ten days of the season to decide who gets into Europe and what competition they play in.
In the heat of battle there is scarcely time to take a breath and ask what it all means.
We just about find the headspace to dissect the Premier League table and think about permutations, the conclusion of which today is that Newcastle might pip Arsenal for second and Aston Villa are likeliest to squeeze into the final spot at the expense of Chelsea and Nottingham Forest.
But what’s getting lost in the analysis of the top-five race is the monumental importance of qualification for three of these sides - and the potential disaster careering into view.
Normally by the final couple of rounds the teams who demand and depend upon Champions League qualification are already safe. We aren’t used to pouring over the intricacies of a tight contest while at the same time considering the weight of the final outcome.
Yet one of Arsenal, Man City or Chelsea will likely to miss out. For all three, that doesn’t bare thinking about.
Arsenal have won just one of their last six Premier League games and could easily lose to a resurgent Newcastle on Sunday, piling pressure onto a game at St. Mary’s that no longer looks so easy after Manchester City’s 0-0 draw on Saturday.
If Arsenal finished sixth it could trigger a full meltdown at the Emirates.
Mikel Arteta is already under growing pressure after five years without a trophy and the counter-factual – progress in the Champions League – would be radically undermined by such a domestic failure.
His long-term future at the club would be in doubt; Arsenal’s transfer plans in ruins.
It’s the least likely scenario of the three we paint here, but worth keeping in mind if Newcastle race out of the blocks and bite chunks out of them at the Emirates.
Man City might need another two points yet they play Bournemouth (who beat Arsenal away from home recently) just four days after their FA Cup final.
A trip to Craven Cottage on the final day isn’t easy either, especially with Erling Haaland back to disrupt the rhythm that Pep Guardiola had been carefully rebuilding.
After such a catastrophic autumn and winter things have quietened down for Man City, their off-season almost completely forgotten. But finishing sixth would see all the old wounds reopened, creating fresh doubt about Pep Guardiola’s ability to start a new chapter.
But of the three, City could best survive a year out of the Champions League.
They wouldn’t lose any power in the transfer market, and if Guardiola decided to rest his first team in the Europa League their title challenge could even be strengthened by freed-up midweeks.
The same cannot be said of Chelsea, who need six points from two tough games.
Manchester United are newly-motivated after Ruben Amorim’s furious post-match comments and will sit back and counter-attack at Stamford Bridge, a job they tend to do well, while Nottingham Forest at the City Ground will be very difficult to win without the suspended Nicolas Jackson.
They are the most likely team to miss out, and the most damaged by doing so.
For starters, Enzo Maresca would almost certainly be sacked, possibly even before the Europa Conference League final, and with that Chelsea’s wild transfer business would reset again.
There is very little chance the next manager would continue with Maresca’s slow and uninspiring possession football, meaning a move back to square one.
At that juncture, the entire BlueCo model will be called into question, and rightly so.
Three years under these owners would have produced zero major trophies and zero top four/five finishes; an extraordinary decline from being Champions League winners 12 months previously under Thomas Tuchel.
Chelsea’s owners are running out of levers to pull – of hotels or women’s teams to sell to themselves – to offset the billion pounds spent on transfers, which has so far brought no progress whatsoever.
Fail to qualify for the Champions League this year and the entire project will start to come apart at the seams.
That’s how much is riding on the next two weekends.
For Villa, Newcastle, and Forest, it is effectively a bit of fun; a low-stakes adventure they will relish. For the rest, catastrophe beckons, and it’s Chelsea – the likeliest to miss out - who stand to lose the most.
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