Big Wembley days, playoff drama and a Tory party-style race to the bottom

With several weeks of nothingness looming, bar the odd bit of transfer-related tumbleweed rolling across the football landscape until the Women’s World Cup takes the bare look off the summer, it’s important we enjoy the last few weeks of the season before everything shuts down after Big Cup final next month. This weekend the action ramps up another few notches as the Premier League inches closer to its denouement with the title and a couple of top-four places up for grabs, while the unseemly scramble to avoid – with apologies to not-officially-doomed-quite-yet Southampton – the two remaining relegation spots continues to enthral. It looks almost certain that two of Leicester, Leeds, Forest and Everton will be joining Saints as they go marching in to the Championship, in a race to the bottom that has eclipsed even that of the Tory party.

In the women’s game, Chelsea take on Manchester United in Sunday’s FA Cup final at Wembley, with Emma Hayes’ side bidding for the first leg of a third consecutive league and Cup double, while her opposite number Marc Skinner will be hoping to mastermind his side’s first major tournament win. The final will be played in front of a 90,000-capacity crowd, a testament to the tireless work of the dwindling number of below-the-line commenters on Big Website’s women’s football pages who have spent years telling those who play the game or write about it to get back in the kitchen and stop ramming it down our throats.

While 60 of the EFL’s 72 teams are officially on the beach, the rest have playoff semi-finals to dread. Despite their atrocious start to the season, Middlesbrough are arguably the best equipped to go up from the Championship, while promotion for any of Luton, Sunderland or Coventry