Joe Cole believes Manchester United are ‘in the driving seat’ to secure the Champions League spot ahead of top-four rivals Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham United.
Manchester City are set to win back-to-back Premier League titles under Pep Guardiola, while Liverpool and Chelsea look set to battle it out till the end for second place.
But just two points separate the next four clubs, with United currently occupying fourth spot after their slight upturn in results since Ralf Rangnick took over from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as manager.
West Ham have been fourth for much of the campaign but lost two games in a row before the winter break to slip to fifth, and have also played more games than all of their top-four rivals.
Arsenal will move above West ham and United if they win their matches in hand, but it is Tottenham who have the most games left as Antonio Conte looks to secure a top-four finish in his first campaign in north London.
Tottenham improved Conte’s squad with the signings of Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur on transfer deadline day but Cole is not convinced they will have much impact in the Premier League.
As a result, Cole sees Manchester United as the favourites to finish fourth this campaign, despite their inactivity during the January transfer window.
‘Spurs brought in a couple of players who were struggling to get into what I consider a poor, for their standards, Juventus team,’ Cole told Coral.
‘I have watched them a few times this year and covered two live games and they’re not the Juventus of even two years ago.
‘So while they are decent players, do they really improve the Tottenham squad? Maybe slightly, but it’s almost like nobody wanted to really pull the trigger in that little bracket of teams and go and gamble on a big signing to really make a difference.
‘You have to respect that because you don’t want a situation where a team overspends and things go very wrong but I don’t think any team chasing fourth have really added anything significant.
‘So it’ll be down to what we’ve seen so far and I think Manchester Utd are still in the driving seat.’
