Cities could win each of the top three divisions, after Manchester City closed the gap still further against Arsenal on Sunday afternoon. And in the tenth division, a new record attendance was set.
So that’s that, then, is it? Manchester City have won the Premier League then, have they? Of course they haven’t, but that’s the impression that you could quite easily take from some of the post-match reporting on Sunday afternoon’s match between City and Arsenal.
This was, of course, completely inevitable. This match has stood out like a sore thumb in the schedule since the fixture list was released last summer, and it’s felt like it would turn out to be an end-of-season showdown since Arsenal ascended to the top of the Premier League at the end of last summer.
They’re still there now, though they might not be by the end of this week. City are now three points behind them, but they play their game in hand on Wednesday night at Burnley. A one-goal win would put them top of the table on goals scored. More than that, and it’ll be on goal difference. Anybody saying that the title race is done and dusted, with the teams likely to be tied on points (and possibly on goal difference), is both illiterate and innumerate. Few would predict anything but a comfortable away win from that midweek match, but you never know.
But the match did tell a story about the 2025-26 Premier League season. In a season of fine margins, there wasn’t much between these two teams. Ryan Cherki danced through the Arsenal central defence to give City an early lead, though this only lasted a minute after a mistake from Gianluigi Donnarumma which produced a noise for the ages from Gary Neville.
There were chances at either end before Erling Haaland swept City back into the lead midway through the second half, and perhaps the long-running meme of the afternoon will turn out to be the image of Haaland in a shredded undershirt after a tangle with Gabriel which might well have seen the Arsenal defender being sent off after moving his head towards his opponent.
So there you go. The end of season decider has been played and little to nothing has been decided. Even in terms of anything symbolic, the league table doesn’t look much different to before. The likelihood of this race not going to the very last seems extremely slim, at the moment.
All of this has eclipsed the London Crisis Clubs and their progress over the weekend. Spurs continued to slip towards relegation after yet another stoppage-time equaliser, this time at home to Brighton on Saturday evening. This will overshadow what was an okay performance which might otherwise have offered some degree of reassurance that the new head coach is already starting to get his ideas through to the first team.
But this isn’t the time of year for thinking about the future. At this particular moment in time Spurs need points and nothing else, and one point from a home match isn’t enough when your rivals are winning, and both Leeds and Nottingham Forest managed that over the weekend. It now looks as though Spurs need an absolute minimum of two or three wins from their last five matches. There were signs of how they could get those on Saturday, but also an extremely large one indicating how they probably won’t. West Ham can make it even worse for them with a win at Crystal Palace on Monday night, but at the time of writing the result of that match isn’t known.
This match was followed by another featuring a London club having a bad time of things at the moment. Chelsea’s Saturday night home defeat to Manchester United made it one win from their last eight Premier League matches, and they’ve now failed to score in their last four straight matches. Chelsea’s league position is very close to being an optical illusion.
They remain 6th, but they’re now tied for that position with Brentford and Bournemouth, and they’re only two points off the bottom half of the table. Send not for whom the bells toll, Liam Rosenior, they toll for thee. Stickthat on your LinkedIn. Manchester United’s post-Leeds crisis, meanwhile, turned out not to have lasted for very long.
Elsewhere at the bottom of the table, Morgan Gibbs-White demonstrated that he made the right decision in choosing Forest over Spurs by scoring a hat-trick in their 4-1 win against Burnley on Sunday, while Leeds United have more or less ensured their Premier League place for another year by beating Wolves 3-0 on Saturday, a result which relegated their opponents in all bar a mathematical sense.
Wolves are 15 points off safety with five to play and also have a way worse goal difference than anybody else. Their next match is against Doctor Tottenham at Molineux on Saturday. Both teamsdesperately need a win, with Wolves’ relegation to be mathematically confirmed should they fail to win. Don’t even start.
All of this means that the Merseyside derby is extremely low down the list of matches played over the weekend. It was the first one to be played at the new Everton enorm-o-dome, and Liverpool won it with a goal scored by Virgil van Dijk after 100 minutes, which allowed them to open up a seven-point gap over Chelsea and more or less ensure their Champions League place for next season.
Aston Villa did the same, opening up a ten-point gap thanks to an enjoyably knockabout 4-3 win against Sunderland at Villa Park. Up in the north-east, meanwhile, vultures continue to circle Eddie Howe after Newcastle were beaten 2-1 by Bournemouth. They’ve now won three and lost eight of their last eleven in the Premier League and have dropped to 14th in the table.
The less said about Brentford 0-0 Fulham, the better. Fair play to Sky Sports, though, for eking three minutes of highlights from it for their YouTube channel.