Alan Shearer summed it up perfectly at the weekend when he said the current race for Champions League football was impossible to predict.

And now the Premier League has collected its top pundits to tell fans who they think will qualify for next season’s competition out of us, Nottingham Forest, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Chelsea.

The pundits are all in agreement on one thing however, check out what they’ve voted below:

City and Newcastle locks for Champions League?

According to ten of the Premier League’s top broadcast pundits, in a post released on the Premier League’s official website, both us and Manchester City will firmly be in the top five places in the Premier League come the end of the season.

Former Toon and City goalkeeper Shay Given fancies us to finish 4th this season, with City in 3rd and Aston Villa in 5th.

Even former Sunderland striker Jermaine Defoe fancies our chances, tipping us to finish in 5th behind Liverpool, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, and Manchester City respectively.

BT Sport’s Steve McManaman believes we will again leapfrog Nottingham Forest, though both of us non-Big Six sides will do just enough to make the top five.

Interestingly, each of Shaun Wright-Phillips, Leon Osman, Matt Holland Don Hutchinson and Leroy Rosenior have backed us to finish in 3rd place behind Liverpool and Arsenal, who have their places in the final league table almost certainly locked down.

Chelsea’s form factors into thinking

Despite winning their first league away game in 2025 just this past weekend, Chelsea head into the run in the least-favoured out of all the teams.

In fact, only Tim Sherwood backed them to finish within the top five, finishing in fifth place behind Man City and ourselves.

Barring any unforeseen injuries or dramatic swings in form, we should head into our clash against the Blues on the 11th of May as the favourites for all three points.

And having already beaten them at St James’ Park this season in the Carabao Cup, we enter the league game a much-improved side compared to where we were back in October.