Amid the exhausted apathy induced by Manchester City‘s relentless success, Crystal Palace are the people’s princesses of the upcoming FA Cup final.
Without a major trophy in their history and without any silverware since winning the second tier in 1993-94, a Palace win would be a welcome diversification to the increasingly closed pool at the top of English football.
Yet a host of clubs will be praying that City add an eighth FA Cup trophy on Saturday afternoon.
European qualification has long been the only interesting area of this Premier League season, with runaway champions and the bottom three resigned to their fate for months.
And with two league games remaining apiece, only Liverpool are sure of which European competition they will play in next season.
We know this will be the first Premier League campaign to award Champions League places to the top five, while one of Tottenham and Manchester United will earn a sixth spot by winning the Europa League.
There are six teams capable of earning the four remaining places – Arsenal, Newcastle, City, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest – all separated by five points. With Arsenal hosting Newcastle on Sunday and Chelsea visiting the City Ground on the final day of the season, there is still plenty of potential movement here.
But similarly interesting is the potential race for the continent’s lesser competitions.
Whichever club finishes sixth will certainly be playing in the Europa League next season, but seventh and eighth are less certain.
The winners of the Carabao Cup get first refusal on England’s Conference League spot, but it seems unlikely Newcastle will need to take this up given their current position.
So seventh should earn Conference League qualification at least, but this is where Palace come into the equation.
The FA Cup winners get an automatic Europa League place, which is how Manchester United qualified for this year’s competition in 2023-24.
If City win on Saturday, there would be a second Europa League position available through the Premier League – seventh – meaning the team in eighth would reach the Conference League.
But if Palace win, they would take that Europa League spot, meaning the European places available through the league only go to seventh.
This directly impacts five teams, including – at a stretch – Palace. While the seven-point gap between Forest in seventh and Brentford in eighth is insurmountable, the race for eighth is wide open.
Brentford and Brighton are level on 55 points, although Thomas Frank’s side have a significantly stronger goal different (10 to two).
In Fulham and Wolves, Brentford also have slightly kinder fixtures to close out the season, with Brighton hosting Liverpool on Sunday and visiting Tottenham on the final day of the season.
Brentford are also among the form teams in the top flight, with their 13 points from the past five games only matched by Man City – and much stronger than Brighton’s eight.
Two points behind the leading pair, Bournemouth have the best goal difference of the lot (12), but a mixed bag of fixtures in City and Leicester and mixed form as injuries and reality caught up with Andoni Iraola.
In 11th, Fulham’s 51 points means they are relying on relative collapses from the teams above, but stranger things have happened – even if they’ve won just one of their past five and collapsed at home to Everton last weekend. Their match at the Gtech Community Stadium on Sunday might well decide whether they remain in contention.
And then there’s Palace – six points behind Brentford and Brighton but still technically able to finish eighth if everything were to go their way.
But they will know their best chance of playing European football for the first time since 1999 will come by lifting the Football Association Challenge Cup at Wembley. Better not to leave anything to chance.