The FA Cup final has Saturday all to itself, with Sunday all about Arsenal and Forest in the Champions League scramble and saying goodbye to Goodison Park. Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, one of the all-time great title bottle-jobs is likely to be completed.
Game to watch: Crystal Palace v Manchester City
While it is generally agreed that The Magic of the Cup has been replenished to some extent this season, FA Cup-based sorcery apparently largely comprising ‘lots of big bastard clubs go out early and let others have a go’, the final has been largely overshadowed by the more obvious, more broad slapstick pratfall chortles/p*ss-boiling offered up by the Europa League final.
And that’s a shame, really, because this could be great.
Yes, City are obvious yet fragile favourites, looking to salvage last-gasp silverware from a season of disappointment but with no real scope to shift the needle as decisively as next Wednesday will for one of the Premier League’s two silliest clubs.
Let’s be real: a City win is a bit dull. A bit of an anticlimax after they were the only serial winner left from about the quarter-final onwards. All we’ve got to cling to with a City win is the low-key banter of every English team that joins Arsenal in next season’s Champions League having won a trophy. It’s small beer.
But what if Palace win it? Now there would be a thing. They are perhaps the largest club in the land to have won none of English football’s top three prizes and are absolutely good enough to have a genuine shot against a City team for whom undoubtedly This Means Less.
Palace have matchwinners and the freedom to put all their energy into this one season-defining game. Man City still have to complete the technicalities of a top-five finish after last week’s carelessness at Southampton, and the tiresome prospect of dragging their weary selves off to America as soon as the season ends for FIFA’s latest big idea.
Team to watch: Everton
More ‘Ground to watch’ really as Everton and the Premier League bid farewell to Goodison Park.
It’s sure to be an emotional occasion on a par with the Upton Park and White Hart Lane farewells of recent years, and Everton fans who are sure to miss the old place desperately can at least on what evidence we’ve seen so far content themselves that their new place is far more Tottenham Hotspur Stadium than London Stadium.
But thoughts of the future can wait, because Sunday will be a day for unashamed wallowing in the past and the memories contained within these creaking walls.
David Moyes has given Everton fans a great deal over the years, but arguably his greatest gift to the club has been ensuring this could all at least take place free from on-field stress.
The springiest of new-manager bounces lifted them clear of trouble, while the incompetence of the bottom three and a few more besides has enabled them to inch even further up the table even as that bounce has dissipated.
They’re 13th and can climb no higher. What happens in the present is of no consequence now, although everyone will be keen to see the place off with a win.
Here, even the ever-mischievous fixture computer has decided to play along, offering up Southampton as the party guests and least likely of all imaginable party poopers.
Player to watch: Chris Wood
If Nottingham Forest are to retain a realistic shot at a top-five finish then they must surely beat West Ham on Sunday afternoon.
The good news for Forest is that teams who aren’t up to their necks in banter have generally managed to do just that recently before the Hammers lifted their own mood by taking four points off Tottenham and Man United in their last two games.
Wood opened the scoring in a 3-0 win over the Hammers back in November, and Forest would give plenty for anything even halfway similar to that this time around.
Forest’s season is still one of huge success, but one win in six games has left the scale of that success looking greatly diminished. A win here gives them at least a final-day shot at a top-five finish, with fellow contenders Chelsea the visitors to the City Ground.
Manager to watch: Mikel Arteta
Another season without silverware has undoubtedly raised some awkward questions for Arteta, and it has absolutely not helped him that it is someone other than Man City who have this time run away with the league.
Far harder to shrug and insist there is nothing to be done when it’s Liverpool leaving you for dust, and with Arsenal fans denied the copium of simply answering any criticism with ‘115 charges’ the mood has turned slightly fractious.
The bigger problem than who has left them behind, though, is the ease with which it’s happened. For the first time in three years, Arteta can no longer point to tangible progress towards their target to encourage patience and trust in the process.
That the season is guaranteed a banter ending in which either Spurs or Man United bumblef*ck their way to a trophy only adds to the air of discontent.
They are two unpalatable outcomes, but one of them is truly unthinkable. But Arsenal are not entirely out of the woods yet for completing the self-banter of finishing third in a two-horse race.
Man City’s slip at Southampton and Arsenal’s comeback at Liverpool last weekend have helped, and a point against Newcastle this weekend should now be enough to at least allow Arteta to point at maintaining Arsenal’s place in such a difficult season.
Defeat to Newcastle, though, and Arsenal suddenly find second place taken out of their own hands ahead of the final day.
Finishing second or finishing third shouldn’t necessarily mean all that much; the rewards are the same. Were the mood at Arsenal more buoyant, it would be shrugged off easily.
But that is no longer quite the case. Arsenal have gone backwards this season, Arteta’s stock has fallen, and they could do without this being made more evident in the final league table.
European game to watch: Ajax v FC Twente
The Eredivisie rarely grabs our attention away from the larger European leagues here and isn’t the easiest to find but if you can watch the final day of the season it is a clear standout on this occasion.
Because Ajax – or Jordan Henderson’s Ajax as we are sadly contractually bound to call them – stand on the verge of one of the all-time great chokes.
With five games left of the season they held a nine-point lead and needed just six more to win the title. Somehow, absurdly and improbably, they now go into the final day in second place.
A 99th-minute equaliser for 10-man Groningen against Ajax in midweek has turned the title race on its head, with PSV’s six-match winning run since a seemingly decisive 2-0 home defeat to Ajax turning this into the stuff of legend.
The 10-point swing to PSV over the last four games means that even if Ajax do pull themselves out of this doom spiral in their final match of the season against FC Twente it will matter not a jot unless PSV themselves now bottle it at mid-table Sparta Rotterdam.
That seems profoundly unlikely, but the very existence of this title race at all was profoundly unlikely just a few weeks ago.
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