With one miserable, drawn-out, glorified administrative exercise left before Premier League Finals Night, we already know the four cheeky tungsten chappies heading to London. Which, if we are being brutally honest, renders the final league night in Sheffield about as essential as an ashtray on a motorbike. Then again, most excursions to the Steel City tend to carry the same overwhelming aura of “could’ve probably stayed at home here.”

Sure, the PDC will slap some dramatic music over the promo package and pretend Thursday night matters like NATO negotiations, but everyone knows the truth. The table is settled. The finalists are sorted. The permutations have all the tension of a dead goldfish floating in a garden pond. The only genuine intrigue is discovering which exhausted pro has mentally checked out already and is spending the evening fantasising about necking cocktails in Tenerife instead of standing backstage in Sheffield eating lukewarm pasta out of a biodegradable tray like a divorced geography teacher on a school trip.

And honestly, can you blame them? By now, they’re all fucked and want their midweeks back! Soon lads …. soon!

Ask the fellas skipping Riesa this weekend whether they’d rather spend three days trapped in the arsehole of European travel logistics – surviving cancelled Deutsche Bahn trains, sleeping in airport terminals that smell faintly of bratwurst and depression, while some German bloke named Klaus screams at a vending machine – or instead bugger off to the Canaries for a few days of sunshine and alcohol-induced amnesia… they’d snap your hand off quicker than a junkie selling a car radio.

Or better still, remain at home in their pants watching the carnage unfold from the sofa as one of their mates discovers his luggage has somehow ended up in Peru while he himself is stranded in Düsseldorf eating a stale pretzel and contemplating whether death might actually be less inconvenient.

Still, despite the glorified dead rubber in Sheffield, we do at least know one thing for certain – the Premier League trophy is staying in England or crossing the border to Wales. Which, depending on where you’re from, is either technically British or the start of a three-hour pub argument involving Stella, a pool cue and somebody called Dai.

Regardless, the O2 will crown either Luke Humphries retaining the title, Luke Littler snatching it back, Jonny Clayton collecting a second Premier League crown, or Gerwyn Price finally getting his hands on the one major trophy that has continued to evade him – rather like women tend to evade an ugly ginger bloke stumbling around a nightclub at half one in the morning.

Four exceptional players. Four genuine contenders. Four men capable of averaging 110 one minute and then missing double eight like they’re trying to hit a moving squirrel with a fucking blindfold on the next.

By the time most people read this, the semi-final line-up will probably already be confirmed, which again raises the unavoidable question of what exactly the point of Sheffield is apart from giving local pissheads somewhere indoors to sing Yaya Kolo at strangers dressed as bananas.

Still, let’s dissect the runners and riders ahead of the big London dance.

LUKE LITTLER

Most sane darts fans look at Luke Littler and immediately assume the title is probably heading back into his hands. The teenager has spent the last year treating elite professionals like characters in a video game, casually bulldozing world champions while still looking young enough to get asked for ID buying Red Bull.

And although he’ll rightly start Finals Night as favourite, he probably won’t completely piss it. This isn’t one of those weird ProTour afternoons where someone ranked 47th in the world suddenly starts averaging 114 after being wank all season. This is serious business against serious players.

That said, if form is the great indicator ahead of any major sporting occasion, then the Nuke arrives looking less like a contender and more like a runaway racehorse on steroids. Three wins from the last four league nights is absurd form. The kid is playing darts with the kind of detached cruelty usually associated with Victorian headmasters or parking attendants.

The terrifying part? He still looks like he’s having a laugh half the time.

JONNY CLAYTON

Before this campaign began, there were actual human beings – presumably with access to oxygen and basic education – who made Jonny Clayton favourite to finish bottom of the table. Bottom! Yeah, I know right. That now looks about as intelligent as sticking your kettle in the freezer.

The Ferret has spent most of the campaign making those predictions look utterly idiotic, sitting near the summit for large chunks of the season and sealing his O2 place long before the reigning champ. And he’s doing it in classic Clayton fashion too – relaxed, clinical and permanently looking like a bloke who’s just wandered in from plastering a neighbours wall – ironically, just the kind of thing he was doing not so long ago.

There was also that glorious little spell where Jonny seemingly decided he could not be arsed with ranking money whatsoever and would instead exclusively terrorise unranked televised events with the same savage determination middle-aged women show when the reduced-price Aldi stickers come out at half seven. World Cup. Masters. Premier League – he hoovered the lot up like a cocaine-fuelled Pacman.

Then he won the Grand Prix, realised he was suddenly absolutely loaded while also no longer skulking around the Order of Merit and understandably thought: “Yeah, perhaps this ranking lark isn’t complete bollocks after all.”

GERWYN PRICE

The fascinating thing about Gezzy – apart from the fact The Iceman is not, in fact, constructed entirely from frozen water – is that despite all the finals, titles, major trophies and televised carnage, he has somehow never won the Premier League Darts. Which feels slightly bizarre in much the same way it would feel weird discovering Keith Richards has never smoked pot. Price is always dangerous. Always capable of detonating a session. Always one leg away from averaging something obscene while screaming at the crowd like an angry nightclub bouncer who’s just found someone snorting in the disabled toilet.

People love to pretend Price is finished every six months too, which is adorable. The man could average 107 for three consecutive weeks and some clown on Facebook would still comment: “Not the same player anymore.”

No Premier League title yet, but the ability has never been in question. Sometimes sport is just weird. Peter Wright never bagged one either despite countless campaigns often dressing like a hallucinating substitute teacher.

LUKE HUMPHRIES

About a month ago, Luke Humphries looked in genuine danger of missing out altogether. There were moments where the reigning champion resembled a man desperately trying to assemble IKEA furniture without instructions whilst simultaneously having a nervous breakdown.

Now? Now he suddenly looks terrifying again. A few magnificent Thursdays later and Humphries has barged his way back into form with all the subtlety of a bulldozer through a Wendy house. Add in another Players Championship title recently and Cool Hand arrives at precisely the right moment looking composed, confident and annoyingly complete.

The frightening thing with Humphries is when the confidence returns, everything else follows behind it. The scoring becomes relentless. The doubles suddenly look twice the size. The rhythm sharpens. The whole package clicks into place. Right now, on pure form, his game is every bit as formidable as anyone else left standing.

So then. Where’s your quid going? Truthfully? Fuck knows.

If all four men arrive at the O2 playing their absolute best stuff, we could genuinely be looking at one of the greatest nights in Premier League history. Ton-plus averages. Last-leg deciders. More Big Fish than SeaWorld and the sort of relentless tungsten carnage that leaves statisticians needing a fucking lie down. Throw in a couple of nine-darters and the place could descend into complete, beautiful anarchy.

We are talking crowd chaos here. Limbs everywhere. Pints flying through the air like badly-guided Exocets. The kind of night where middle-aged blokes in replica shirts start chucking £9 lager over complete strangers while screaming at double tops as though missing it will personally result in their house being repossessed by Halifax. Then waking up the following morning with a head pounding harder than an 18-30s orgy, staring at a Greggs sausage roll in absolute silence while trying to work out how they somehow burned through half the monthly life savings in three hours and now possess a traffic cone they definitely didn’t leave home with.

On the other hand, sport is sport. Sometimes the script gets set on fire and thrown directly into a canal. They could all turn up and play absolute shit. Littler could average 67 and look like someone’s dragged him out of a Year 11 maths lesson against his will (although even then, he was smashing in maximums for fun I’d say). Humphries could miss so many doubles the board starts considering a restraining order. Price might spend more time roaring at the crowd like a dad standing barefoot on Lego than actually hitting trebles.

And Clayton? Well he could suddenly throw like an actual ferret that’s been launched into the arena after three cans of Monster and a traumatic experience at a fireworks display.

If the latter does somehow happen, there will be millions across Britain hovering over the remote contemplating whether they’d actually rather switch over to EastEnders and watch Phil Mitchell threaten somebody with a car jack for the umpteenth time.

But honestly? I doubt it. I think Phil Mitchell is now done with violence.