The defining drama of the 2025-26 Premier League season was perfect – if anything a bit too perfect, a bit too on the nose. The archetypal contemporary English football scene: a corner, deep into injury time. The goalkeeper has joined the attack. An inswinging delivery and a pitched battle under the ball, resembling a painting of a medieval battle as players crash into each other, eyes rolling wildly in their heads.
Everybody is desperately fouling everybody else. The ball squirms from the keeper’s grasp, breaks loose, is smashed over the line. The stadium explodes in celebration ... but then falls silent as the remote referees take centre stage. There follows a long, vacillating delay, before the VAR decides to penalise somebody at random, and decides the outcome of the season at both ends of the table.
And so Arsenal tightened their grip on the Premier League trophy after the match officials’ body finally decided, apparently, to crack down on goalkeeper abuse, just when the team that has done more than any other to institutionalise the practice was at risk of fumbling the title.
Darren England was the referee at the Emirates last December when Gabriel set Arsenal on their way to victory against Aston Villa by jumping into Emiliano Martinez and preventing him from cleanly catching a ball that instead bounced into the Villa net.
England saw nothing amiss on that occasion, but at the London Stadium on Sunday he was the VAR who sent Chris Kavanagh to the screen to disallow Callum Wilson’s 95th-minute equaliser for a foul on David Raya.
Arsenal's David Raya attempts to hold on to the ball under pressure from West Ham players; Callum Wilson eventually fired it into the net, only for the goal to be ruled out. Photograph: John Walton/PA Wire
Arsenal's David Raya attempts to hold on to the ball under pressure from West Ham players; Callum Wilson eventually fired it into the net, only for the goal to be ruled out. Photograph: John Walton/PA Wire
And let’s be clear: it was a foul – in fact it was two fouls. If you zeroed in on the Arsenal goalkeeper you could see West Ham’s striker Pablo’s hand closing around his left arm. A clear foul. Jean-Clair Todibo had a handful of Raya’s shirt. Another foul.
Looking at the wider picture, you could also see Declan Rice in the background, comically rugby-tackling West Ham centre back Konstantinos Mavropanos and driving him towards the goal line. Fortunately for Arsenal and unfortunately for West Ham, the foul on Raya apparently superseded the simultaneous foul on Mavropanos.
West Ham were left feeling the same sting of injustice that businessmen must feel when they are prosecuted for tax evasion in Russia. It’s not that I’m actually innocent – I’m guilty as hell – but so is everyone else! So why me? Why now?
The week before last, Paris Saint-Germin and Bayern Munich played out what was, by global consensus, the best match of the season. According to Luis Enrique it was “without doubt, the best game I’ve been involved in as a coach”.
Obviously when millions of people express admiration for anything there will be a critical reaction and backlash. We learned after PSG-Bayern that there are people who feel that any match that finishes 5-4 must by definition have had something wrong with it. There must be something superficial about this level of pyrotechnics, it must in some way be ... unserious.
A counter-narrative formed that this was just what happened when you brought together two extremist teams who had abandoned the whole concept of defending – goal hyperinflation, a cheapening of what is most precious about the beautiful game, a TikTok spectacle for the ravaged attention spans of our age, etc, etc.
But to believe this is to ignore the evidence of your eyes. There were nine goals on the night. Two came from the penalty spot and another two were headed in from set pieces. Four of the remaining five were among the best goals scored this season in the Champions League. The only one of the five open-play goals that could be attributed more to poor defending than inspired attacking play was Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s second, when Bayern got caught out pushing up too eagerly and left themselves short at the back. This was, quite simply, a display of football brilliance on an unmatched scale.
Arsenal's Declan Rice is notable for his resilience, most of the time. Photograph: Daniel Hambury/EPA
Arsenal's Declan Rice is notable for his resilience, most of the time. Photograph: Daniel Hambury/EPA
West Ham against Arsenal showed us the other extreme of football. Two teams desperate not to make a mistake. A match defined by fear and incompetence. A match that nonetheless produced astonishing drama. Nobody could take their eyes off it as it was happening.
And now that it’s over, nobody will ever watch it again. So which version of football is the superficial one?
You can’t expect every game to be like PSG-Bayern. But maybe it would be better if this kind of thing was encouraged? In the Premier League the referees have decided that what people would prefer is fouling at set pieces, enlivened with occasional random enforcement of the rules to provoke debate. Arsenal are the ones who first perceived the full implications of “let it flow”, and turned it into a systematic method of winning games. They will be the champions this league deserves.
Are the referees correct about this? It’s interesting that the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year award went to Bruno Fernandes, a player who, while consistently excellent, has been a sideshow to the main contest between Arsenal and Manchester City. Really, how could anyone vote for Bruno ahead of Rice, who has been the most consistent performer for the team that will likely win the title, or Raya, who is perhaps that team’s one absolutely indispensable player?
Maybe it’s because Bruno stands for a different kind of football – creative, spontaneous, risk-taking, spectacular – and people would like to see more of it. The thing that stands out about Rice is not so much his technical or creative quality but his strength, his durability, his resilience.
These are the qualities the Premier League really values. From this perspective Rice is not only the player of the year: he’s the symbol of the league.