Tottenham's North London Derby clash against Arsenal could have a huge bearing on whether or not Champions League football is to return to N17 next season. Currently fifth in the Premier League table with six games remaining, Spurs trail main rivals Aston Villa by six points with league fixtures starting to run out.

The Lilywhites do crucially have two games in hand to come between now and the final day., and that could potentially prove decisive. Amid the prospect of the Premier League obtaining an extra Champions League place for the 2024/25 campaign due to the expansion of Europe's premier competition, England's hopes are now hanging by a thread following a nightmare set of results in Europe one week ago.

Seeing Arsenal and Man City exit the Champions League at the quarter-final stage, Liverpool and West Ham were also eliminated in the Europa League. With England and Germany vying for one of the two extra Champions League places via the European Performance Spots, Arsenal's defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen knocking West Ham out has only strengthened Germany's chances of a fifth Bundesliga team entering next season's Champions League.

As Italy have already sewn up an extra place at Europe's top table, Germany now just need 0.488 coefficient points to triumph over England. As things stand at the semi-final stage of UEFA's three club competitions, England have Aston Villa in the Europa Conference League, whereas Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are representing Germany in the Champions League and Bayern Leverkusen are doing the same in the Europa League.

It does look very bleak in regards to the Premier League obtaining a fifth Champions League place for next campaign but it is still possible. So what would need to happen for England to get the better of Germany in the fight to join Italy in the top two of the European Performance Spots?

The European Performance Spots are calculated by UEFA adding up coefficient points based on the performances of clubs across UEFA's three club competitions. A win is worth two points, a draw gets one point and no points are awarded for a defeat.

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Teams are also awarded additional bonus points for how far they progress in a competition. Although the points did differ slightly in the group stage of the three competitions, reaching the semi-final of either of the three is worth a single point.

Once all the points are added up they are then divided by the number of clubs who started the season in UEFA's competitions to calculate the coefficient average. As England started with eight teams in Europe compared to Germany's seven, each win is worth slightly less to the coefficient.

Italy's current coefficient score is 19.428, Germany are on 17.928 and England make up the top three with their score of 17.375.

Aston Villa would need to lift the Europa Conference League trophy in Athens at the end of the month and win all three matches to help the Premier League close in on the Bundesliga. That could be a possibility with Unai Emery's team taking on Olympiacos over two legs in the semi-finals and then facing one of Fiorentina or Club Brugge in the final providing they make it there.

Even if Villa do win all three of their games, the Premier League would be reliant on the German sides enduring a horrendous set of semi-final results just to give them an outside chance. However, Germany could quite easily seal an extra Champions League berth during the semi-final stage over the next couple of weeks.

Two wins would be enough to see them come out on top and the same goes for a win and two draws. In the Champions League, Bayern Munich face Real Madrid over two legs and Borussia Dortmund take on PSG.

Bayer Leverkusen also face a tricky semi-final tie as they play Roma. Xabi Alonso's side are the odds-on favourites to lift the Europa League trophy in Dublin after an extraordinary season that has seen them win the Bundesliga and not even lose a single game across three competitions.

It doesn't exactly look promising right now for the Premier League obtaining an extra Champions League place for next campaign, but an awful lot can change in football. For Tottenham, the one way Ange Postecoglou's side can guarantee that they will be back in Europe's premier competition from September onwards is by pipping Villa to fourth place in the final Premier League table.

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