The Champions League places for next season feel like they are sewn up again - but it is only recently that the Premiership’s ‘Big Four’ have seriously been threatening to become a league of their own.

After all, Spurs got within a lasagne of taking their north London neighbours’ place last year, a feat which Everton had achieved the previous season, though to little benefit. Liverpool didn’t finish in the top four in 2002-3 either and Chelsea had missed out the two seasons previously.

In fact, the first time these four took the top positions was 1997-8. The second occasion was 2003-4, the third last year and the fourth will be in ten weeks’ time. The pattern is clear: the rich get stronger, the rest of us struggle. This season will be the second in what could become a routine wherein the cream of the other Premiership teams will be playing for fifth and sixth. I know it’s been talked about for a while, but the stats say it is only happening now. Trust me, I hope I am proved gloriously wrong next season.

Therefore, I am looking at the cream of ‘The Other Premiership’: Who will come fifth and sixth, the two so-far guaranteed European positions? My starting point is 28 games played. No team this century have had fewer than 40 points after 28 games and made the top six. The teams at this end of the table score a mean maximum of 20 points in the last ten games. The overall average for the teams who end up in the top eight is 16.1 points, for the two that end up in fifth and sixth, a touch over 18 points. We are talking at least five wins and a draw or three.

Additionally, at this stage, this year’s table is more similar to those of last season and the three seasons before 2003-4, when points’ totals of over 60 after 38 games were required to make the top six. Even when 56 points have been few enough, teams do not get from below 40 points to those UEFA Cup positions in ten games.

Neither team’s run-in is particularly challenging, but still I am ruling out Spurs and Blackburn and all those below them. In short, the four teams in the extract of the table below are the only ones in the running for UEFA Cup positions from the league, if recent records are not to be made.

This season’s Top 1, 2, 3 and 4 read like this:

Posn                           Pld  Pts
5   Bolton Wanderers 28 47
6   Reading 28 43
7   Everton 28 42
8   Portsmouth 28 41

This certainly doesn’t mean that these four teams will all end up in the top eight, but no team in the last six seasons has come into the top six from below what we are looking at.

You may have your own ideas about which teams are going which way. I am not judging on present form but I will look at the run-ins. Before I do, however, the first thing to note is that Sam Allardyce's Bolton cannot be complacent. Last season, after the same number of games, they had a point more and finished eighth. Everton had more points and finished seventh in 2002-3. Nevertheless, they should hold on to fifth place this year.

Reading only play four of the present top eight in their run-in, including two of the top four. Everton and Bolton play five of the top eight, but only Portsmouth play six of the top eight, including each of the top four. They visit Reading and Everton, too, and I don’t think they can hope for 18 points from those games; eight will probably be closer.

The fixtures suggest that Everton could go above Reading and stay there for at least a few games but may be below them again at the end of the season. If Reading don’t crumble when temporarily in seventh, they should be the first newly-promoted side since Ipswich in 2000-01 to make the UEFA Cup positions.

I expect Portsmouth to make way for many of the teams below them. Most likely is that Blackburn, Everton and Spurs are fighting for seventh, eighth and ninth, though the FA Cup may provide an alternative and still decide which other league positions count.