Gary Neville has said he is ‘99% certain’ that Liverpool will secure qualification for the Champions League in the coming weeks, with the Reds winning all three of their Premier League games in April.
Having spent much of the spring outside the top five and being in genuine danger of missing out on Europe’s top club competition for next season, Arne Slot’s side are now fourth and have an eight-point buffer to Brighton in sixth with just four matches to play.
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After the 3-1 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday, Opta projections rated LFC’s chances of a top-five finish at 96.92%, and it seems that only a monumental collapse would see the Merseysiders drop out of the Champions League places in May.
In the latest episode of The Gary Neville Podcast, the Sky Sports pundit claimed that Liverpool are all but assured of their Champions League status for 2026/27, with the chasing pack probably having too much to do at this stage.
He said: “Liverpool have got eight points [of a gap to sixth], haven’t they, with four games to go…Liverpool, to be fair, I’m 95%-99% certain that they’re gonna be in the Champions League.
“They won’t be thinking that, they’ll think they’ve got to do the job, but I don’t see the other teams winning the games they have to win, or Liverpool dropping all the points that they would need to drop.”
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The Reds will likely finish the job from hereon, but they’d be wise to remember the 2017/18 season as a warning against any complacency.
Eight years ago, they had a seven-point lead over fifth-placed Chelsea with four matches to play (only the top four qualified for the Champions League then), but a stuttering run-in to the campaign meant that it wasn’t until the final day that Liverpool secured qualification for a tournament they duly went on to win a year later.
Slot’s side still have some tough fixtures to come, too, so while they have the comfort blanket of a sizeable gap to Brighton, they need to be careful that their top-five status doesn’t become jeopardised by the final two weeks of the season.
A draw at Old Trafford on Sunday and a home win over Chelsea the following weekend should be enough for Liverpool to guarantee a Champions League berth, and as Neville said, the chasing pack would still need to capitalise on any slip-ups from the Merseysiders.
To be fair to the Sky Sports pundit, he backed the Reds to qualify for Europe’s top competition even when that status seemed in serious doubt a few weeks ago. So long as LFC take care of their own business from hereon, the job could even be done with matches to spare.