Leeds United can almost mathematically forget about Premier League relegation, and there’s scope for the Whites to move higher up the table.

A confident 3-1 win over Burnley on Friday night brought choruses of ‘we are staying up’ from the Whites fans in Elland Road. You can see why, a nine-point gap to Spurs has been opened up, alongside a seven-point to West Ham.

For Leeds, though, there was the added incentive of looking up. Our win temporarily moved us above Newcastle United, and drew us level on points with Crystal Palace.

Leeds United move up to 14th as Bournemouth beat Crystal Palace 3-0

We were initially above the Magpies, but their win at home to Brighton on Saturday means they climb back above United, knocking us down to 15th again.

However, we are level with Palace on 43 points, with the Eagles coming into their away clash at Bournemouth with just two more on the goal difference tally. Importantly, Palace have a much worse ‘goals scored’ column, so losing by two goals would drop them below Daniel Farke’s side.

Two baffling first-half goals for the Cherries lifted Leeds up into 14th as a result. First, Jefferson Lerma scored an own goal against his old club, diverting a header over the line that looked to be going wide.

Then, a hugely controversial penalty was gifted to Andoni Iraola’s side, when Dean Henderson fumbled a cross and was deemed to have tripped Marcos Senesi – Eli Junior Kroupi converted from the spot. Rayan made sure of the result in the second half when he scored a third for the Cherries.

Due to Palace’s defeat, Leeds move narrowly above into 14th on goal difference. Palace, though, do have a game in-hand. But, it comes against Manchester City at the Etihad.

Importance of Leeds United moving above Crystal Palace into 14th revealed – Premier League prize money mapped out

On face value, finishing anywhere above 17th might just be seen as a means to boost our pride in this great survival campaign.

However, there’s significant financial incentive to finishing as high as possible. The Premier League’s merit payments dished out to each position makes for positive reading regardless of Leeds’ finish, but improves based on how high we go.

Here are the merit payments from the 24/25 Premier League season, to get a better picture:

PositionUK merit (£m)Int’l merit (£m)Total merit (£m) 12th £14.5 £9.3 £23.8 13th £12.9 £8.3 £21.2 14th £11.3 £7.3 £18.6 15th £9.7 £6.2 £15.9 16th £8.1 £5.2 £13.3 17th £6.5 £4.2 £10.7 18th £4.8 £3.1 £7.9

As you can see, if we’re to assume the merit payments follow the same pattern up the table, moving from 15th to 14th could bank Leeds around £2.7million.

For further scale, the difference last season between 17th and 14th is £7.9million. That’s more than Ethan Ampadu cost Leeds in 2023.

While us fans can relax about the prospect of being sucked back into the relegation battle, the job’s not done. A higher finish will be a great incentive to Farke to prove his top flight doubters wrong, along with satisfying the 49ers even further.

Not only that, but the difference to prospective targets between Leeds scraping 17th, and playing our way up to 14th might be vast.

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