Big Weekend: Liverpool v Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, Amorim, Palmer, play-off final, Serie A title race

It’s the final Premier League weekend of the season and that means it’s permutations time as the European places are settled, but to be honest we’re far more interested in joining the great big party that’ll be going off at Liverpool.

Game to watch: Liverpool v Crystal Palace
Look, are there bigger and more important games on this weekend? Yes. Pretty much all of them in one way or another.

But how often do any of us get the chance to watch a Premier League game that is less football match and more massive communal party? It will end with Liverpool receiving the Premier League trophy they won bloody ages ago now by beating a Tottenham team that – and this is impossible to imagine now – was in the grip of a banterously long trophy drought.

But it isn’t just the home team having a big party here, with Crystal Palace also jubilant having sauntered past 50 Premier League points for the first time ever and also if less importantly won the FA Cup to nab their first ever piece of major silverware.

Just a game where a lovely time can be had by all. Get Palace to bring the FA Cup with them. Delay the kick-off because everyone is just too busy giving each other guards of honour.

The (very tenuously semi-) serious point here is that this should be one of the most happily cigars out and flip-flops on football matches ever staged and thus has rich potential to be one of those proper end-of-season games that ends 5-5 or some such silliness, where by the end the delirious fans of both teams are cheering every goal and wondering how on earth they’re going to make it to August with only transfer bumwash and the unwanted Club World Cup to sustain us.

Other sadly untelevised but very live contenders for 5-5 style shenanigans on the final day include but are not limited to: Wolves v Brentford, Fulham v Man City and of course Tottenham v Brighton.

Team to watch: Nottingham Forest
By far the most interesting of the Champions League chasers by simple virtue of novelty, while we also can’t deny we enjoy the fact that the Premier League could send interlopers off to the Big Cup for two years in a row, and those teams both in fact be former winners of said cup from before football was invented.

Alas, a team that had everything safely in their own hands, spending much of the season in the top three, has wobbled sufficiently to leave their chances of a top-five finish now on the slender side.

Even a month ago, Forest were sitting pretty in fourth, with a game in hand that could take them back above Man City and a three-point lead over Chelsea in sixth.

Four games and five points later, they are on the outside looking in. The fact they face Chelsea on the final day is a half-full or half-empty situation depending on how you choose to view it.

While they face undeniably the hardest task of the five teams scrapping for the remaining three places alongside Liverpool, Arsenal and – stop giggling – Tottenham in next season’s Champions League, they do at least know that a win for them automatically takes care of one of the two failures they need from a rival.

If Forest take care of their own business they just need a stumble from Villa or Newcastle. And while Forest’s form has stalled – although it has by no means been a total collapse – they have had enough memorable days at the City Ground this season to believe they can deliver one last blow to the establishment, if only to save Nuno Espirito Santo from another confrontation with an angry iPhone 7-wielding owner.

Manager to watch: Ruben Amorim
One of the great unique elements about the final day is the vast chasm in importance it can carry for two clubs in the same game.

Sure, your Nottingham Forest v Chelseas are great, all-to-play-for head-to-heads that can determine the success or failure of entire seasons. And we’ve already dispensed with our usual miserabilism to look fondly at the great big party that’s about to go off at Anfield for Premier League winners Liverpool and FA Cup winners Crystal Palace.

But perhaps the most fun final-day games are those between teams still fighting for a big prize and those who have just had their dreams crushed to dirt by the only club in the entire country that might be as ridiculous as they are.

Step forward, Manchester United and their beleaguered life-choices-reconsidering manager Ruben Amorim.

The good news for Amorim and the lads is that they will almost certainly avoid the ignominy of finishing 17th even in the very likely event that they cannot rouse themselves from Wednesday night’s disappointment in Bilbao to stop an in-form, Champions League-chasing Aston Villa.

But that’s only because Tottenham’s preparation for their own final game of the season against Brighton has been comprised entirely of memes, full-kit wankering, beer, cigars, parades and settling 17-year-old scores with Domino’s Pizza.

While last-laugh-having Postecoglou faces the challenge of identifying his 11 least hungover players, Amorim and his team face an altogether different kind of headache.

There is a grim fascination to be had in watching just what kind of performance Amorim and United are able to pluck from their arse against a very good side with no thoughts yet of the beach. We have a strong suspicion that the answer is ‘sh*tbone awful’ but, while nothing can be done now to save a season that saw all its remaining eggs trampled under Cristian Romero’s boots on Wednesday, a broken club in utter disarray could do with at least something to send them into the summer with some vague hope that things might be all right in the end.

Player to watch: Cole Palmer
Sympathy for Chelsea is not something generally in great supply, but there is some to be found for Enzo Maresca and his players as they attempt to manage their way through a frankly unprecedented set of circumstances.

As almost everyone else’s season winds down, or in many cases has long since already wound down, the Blues face a decisive Champions League six-pointer at Forest on Sunday, then a European final three days later, and then after a moment to catch their breath head off to the States for the Club World Cup that absolutely everybody definitely wanted and needed and is in no way just a giant player-flogging FIFA cash cow.

In circumstances like these, it is entirely unhelpful for your only real recognised number nine to bag himself a three-game suspension. Nicolas Jackson has done just that, though, and is still out for the vital trip to the City Ground.

With Christopher Nkunku and Marc Guiu also out or at the very best extremely doubtful, the challenge of getting Chelsea over the line here before turning attention to the uncommonly large and important challenges that still await them in this never-ending season falls on the likes of Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke, Pedro Neto and Jadon Sancho, back in contention here having been ineligible for the win over Manchester United.

It really is a time when Chelsea could do with Palmer stepping up after a Difficult Second Season. Or Difficult Second Half Of Second Season, more fairly.

Last month’s from-behind win at Fulham was, absurdly, Chelsea’s first and only Premier League away win since a 4-3 caper at Tottenham in early December. It’s a 10-game run in which Chelsea have scored only five goals and been shut out six times.

Palmer himself hasn’t scored a Premier League goal away from home since opening the scoring in a 1-1 draw at Palace on the first weekend of January. That came near the end of a run of seven goals in nine Premier League games.

His only goal since that run was a nerve-settling late penalty in the 3-1 win over a partying Liverpool.

Sunday, at a team with the joint best home defensive record in the league, would be a fine time to step up. And unlike at almost every other club in the country, it’s even quite a useful time to get back into form for the further challenges that lie immediately ahead.

Football League game to watch: Sheffield United v Sunderland
We’ve already had a curious taste of a play-off final style game thanks to the unique circumstances that turned this year’s Europa League final into a Champions League play-off, with much attention given to the financial prize on offer and the chance for one of the two teams to spend next season being ritually humiliated at a higher level for which they are painfully ill-equipped and unprepared.

So yeah, nothing at all like the Championship play-off final. Hopefully this will be at least a more watchable and entertaining game than we saw in Bilbao, and the Championship play-off final does traditionally deliver on that front.

There’s no chance of a new club in the Premier League this time around with Sheffield United and Sunderland bidding to join other familiar faces from Leeds and Burnley.

Sunderland would bring the greater novelty having not been seen in the top flight since 2017 and spending a good few years of the interim down in League One, but it’s Sheffield United – automatic promotion contenders for most of the season – who will start as favourites.

READ MORE: Championship play-off prize money: What’s at stake for Sheffield United and Sunderland?

European game to watch: Napoli v Cagliari
We generally try to avoid Friday night games but the Serie A title race is clearly the place to go this weekend and that means Friday night lights are our only option as Napoli and Inter scrap it out for the title.

Both slipped up last weekend, leaving Napoli a point clear and with destiny still in their own hands as they seek a second title success in three years. Victory over Cagliari will do the job, delivering Antonio Conte a Serie A title with a third club after also tasting glory with Inter and Juventus.

In a wildly out-of-character move, Conte has fallen out with the suits at Napoli which means this might be a brief yet glorious reign.

Inter travel to Como at the same time on Friday hoping to do all they can to benefit from any further slip-up in Naples.