We’ve already talked about how much we enjoyed the Premier League weekend just gone because so much of what happened was annoying or funny. And we want more of that.
Here then, are our 10 demands for the remainder of the season. Ten things we want to happen because they will be amusing, annoying, annoyingly amusing or amusingly annoying. Or all of the above.
Tottenham or Man United win the Europa League
Genuinely incredible effort from these two banter powerhouses to have set this up so perfectly that it is now unavoidable. The two worst Premier League teams that won’t get relegated also find themselves in the final of a competition that rewards its winner with a place in the Champions League.
This is guaranteed to be the most piss-boiling final ever staged, annoying Arsene Wenger in particular more than anything except an offside law that isn’t completely insane.
Whoever wins here, everyone else loses. But especially the team that actually loses. These are now the most outrageous pair of high-wire seasons that we can ever recall, one of which ends in incredibly irritating success and one of which goes down as the worst Big Six campaign by an astonishing margin.
We keep changing our mind over which outcome is funnier. Gut feel says that keeping Spurs trophyless while Man United get worse and worse while winning better and better trophies each year is the stronger bit, but as the final draws closer we start to see the charms of the alternative.
Spurs finally winning a trophy when they are objectively, measurably worse than at any time across the drought – up to and including having two points from eight games almost immediately after their last trophy – is undeniably funny. And we are a million per cent here for the ‘Ange has had a better season than Arteta, actually’ discourse that follows even as Spurs sack him anyway because, you know, actual 17th place.
Don’t overlook that element. Ruben Amorim might decide United has all been a terrible mistake and walk away, but he’s not going to get the sack win or lose. Postecoglou probably gets the sack either way, and that’s extraordinary in itself.
The chance for Postecoglou to add his name to the roll of honour that is Tottenham’s Premier League era trophy-winning managers – George Graham, Juande Ramos, er, that’s it – is simply too delicious to dismiss out of hand.
Mind you, we aren’t quite willing to entirely rule out these two somehow contriving a way to both lose and save everyone else from the distress of it all.
The Europa League winner finishes 17th
Very important, this, and another tick against Tottenham’s name. It’s greedy, because 16th is quite a funny finishing position for a Champions League qualifier, but it’s not really any funnier than, say, 13th or 15th is it?
Maybe it’s just us, but 17th definitely feels funnier. Seventeenth has a different feel to those other sh*t finishing positions. It has peril. Jeopardy. Obviously there has never actually been any real peril thanks to the antics of that bottom three, but finishing one place above the relegation zone adds an extra frisson to the lore we can create around the achievement.
And years from now, absolutely nobody will care that the gap was actually 15 points or whatever. One place above relegation is the fact, and right now – on the basis that neither Spurs nor Man United look capable of, or even particularly interested in, winning any more Premier League points, it nudges us towards favouring Spurs in Bilbao and trusting them to (not) do the business domestically against Villa and Brighton.
We do understand – and broadly agree with – the way Spurs and United have both prioritised the Europa League since the knockouts began. It was a sound judgement choice from both given the already ropey place they found themselves in the league.
But we really don’t think they necessarily had to commit so very hard and make it so very obvious. We are, though, delighted they did.
Premier League winners and losers: Amorim and Ange, Newcastle, Dias, Rusk, Beto, Jackson
Arsenal finish third in a two-horse race
Southampton’s very unfair decision to start defending at the 36th time of asking as well as Arsenal’s comeback at Anfield make this slightly trickier than might have been the case, but it remains entirely possible.
Arsenal have only a two-point lead over Newcastle, who they face on Sunday. All we need is for Newcastle to win their last two games of the season and this one is in the bag.
Of course Gunners will then start insisting they were never in a title race actually because there hasn’t actually been one and actually the real failure is City falling off actually, but nobody listened to Spurs fans saying this kind of sh*t in 2016 and nobody will listen to Arsenal fans now.
Crystal Palace win the FA Cup
It struck us very hard indeed on the weekend as Spurs and United both apparently had no choice but to continue their dirty protest Premier League seasons because there’s a Europa League to be won in 10 days’ time that one of them was completely pantsed by a team who have the FA Cup final in less than a week and yet still somehow felt willing and able to turn in a passable league performance.
From the moment all the other big guns departed the scene alarmingly early, there has been widespread expectation that Man City would very boringly go ahead and win it to smarten up their unexpectedly tricky season of (relative) strife in the larger competitions.
Very funny, then, if that in fact does not happen. And simply magnificent that we have the very real prospect now of a season where both Spurs and Newcastle end their absurd respective trophy droughts yet get upstaged – in scale of achievement if not coverage – by Palace winning their first major trophy ever. With all due respect to the 1991 Zenith Data Systems Cup.
We certainly await with great interest the gushing broadsheet thinkpieces the following day fansplaining away about how if you didn’t weep tears of joy at the sight of Palace’s magical win and immediately pledge to name your first-born son Selhurst in their honour that you simply don’t get association football.
Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich win all remaining games
We were previously fairly settled on the idea of them getting as few points as possible once it was clear they were all going down without much of a fight, but having between them pocketed a massive five points from their last six games we’re changing tack.
Time for some futile but funny late wins for the relegated trio. Time for a May manager of the month award to be hastily introduced just so Simon Rusk can win it.
Alexander Isak ends season with back-to-back hat-tricks to pinch Golden Boot
Again, there’s nothing personal here. No bias, other than the bias in favour of whatever we decide is funnier. And the funniest thing is for a Golden Boot race long (and correctly) considered settled in favour of Mo Salah suddenly not being that.
Isak nipping in to pinch the trophy with a pair of season-closing hat-tricks would be entertaining enough even without the fact one of them comes against Arsenal and thus has enough rocket-fuelled narrative to get us all through the summer. Win-win.
Trent Alexander-Arnold blasts a 30-yard own goal in Liverpool’s final game of the season and Adebayors it to every corner of the ground in celebration
If they’re going to boo you anyway, might as well go out with a bang.
Chelsea miss out on the Champions League
For reasons plentiful and obvious it is quite simply funnier than any of the other possible teams missing out would be, sorry if that offends.
And yes, they should sack Enzo Maresca anyway; the football is utter sh*t.
Chelsea don’t win the Europa Conference League
Doubling down on Chelsea because really all season long nobody has even really considered the possibility of Chelsea not winning the Europa Conference. Nobody has paid any attention and, beyond the neatness of becoming the first club to complete the full set of major European trophies living and dead, nobody will really pay any heed to Chelsea winning it.
But Chelsea not winning it? Now there’s an event. Especially if United have won the Europa League final and Antony thus walks away from this season with winners’ medals in both the Europa League and Conference League to somehow prove the haters both completely wrong and absolutely right in one late twist.
Nottingham Forest don’t get to go out for Champions League football because they have European football at home
Being improbably third for vast swathes of the season but finding yourself still quite improbably seventh when the music stops and dropping into the Europa Conference rather than the Champions League is a mindf*ck.
Qualifying for Europe was so far beyond even a stretch target for Forest at the start of the season, yet it would now feel like something very close to actual failure. That’s not remotely fair, but none of this is fair. Football isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair.
Then there’s the added noodle-scratcher of whether it would actually be better to land in one of the lesser competitions.
Fast forward a year from now and Forest could be getting ready for a Europa Conference final and thinking how lucky they were not to accidentally qualify for the Champions League.
Of course being in the Champions League is a huge deal and elevates a club to a new level and opens new doors – see Aston Villa’s January dabbles in the loan market for evidence of just how transformative it can be – but what if it is actually more fun to end up like Spurs or Chelsea in a tournament you actually have a chance of winning as long as the sheer weight of Antony’s banter-magnetism isn’t too great?
READ: Antony and De Bruyne to Arsenal? Six Premier League rejects Mikel Arteta should consider signing