20 hours ago
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This was supposed to be Arsenal’s title. For 200 days, it looked like it would be.
But Wednesday night, Erling Haaland scored his 35th goal of the season after five minutes at Turf Moor, and Manchester City went top of the Premier League for the first time since October. Arsenal’s 200-day lead was gone, just like that, to a team that three weeks ago looked like they had run out of steam.
I am a Manchester United supporter. I have no dog in this fight. So honestly, watching this title race from the outside has been one of the most entertaining things the Premier League has produced in years. Not because the football has always been brilliant. Because it really has not. But because absolutely nothing has gone the way anyone expected.
Arsenal were supposed to win this!
The title felt done. Football journalists were already writing the “Arsenal end the wait” pieces and filing them for publication on whatever Sunday it became official.
Then Bournemouth beat them at home. Then they lost at the Etihad to goals from Rayan Cherki and Erling Haaland. Then last night, City beat Burnley, and Arsenal’s 200-day stint at the top was over. Now they have no tie-breaker advantage. If the two clubs finish level on points, goal difference and goals scored, City win the title because they have won more points in the head-to-head matches this season. Arsenal hold none of the cards. It’s a case of who blinks first, and I think Arsenal will blink.
Mikel Arteta has taken Arsenal close, and he deserves some credit for that. But his performative coaching on the sideline, his cringeworthy “tricks” in training, they point to a man feeling the pressure. He’s so worked up, I think it’s translating to the pitch.
The Chelsea disaster …
While the title race has been the main event, Chelsea have been providing the most genuinely extraordinary sideshow in Premier League history. Three managers in 16 months. Some 2 billion pounds ($2.7bn) spent on players. Seventh in the table. And my personal favourite stat of the entire season: five consecutive league games without scoring, the first time that has happened to Chelsea since 1912.
Their most recent manager, Liam Rosenior, was sacked this week. He had been in the job for 106 days on a six-and-a-half-year contract. He is perhaps best remembered for a news conference in January where he explained that the word “manage”, split into two, gives you “man” and “age” and that, therefore, management means “ageing men”. He aged extremely quickly. He is now 41 and unemployed.
The week he was sacked, Chelsea’s parent company published accounts showing operating losses of 689 million pounds ($930m) over three years. That is a loss of 629,000 pounds ($850,000) every single day. For three years. At a football club that cannot beat Brighton.
There is a serious point buried in the Chelsea comedy. Spending money without a coherent plan is not a strategy. The clubs who disrupted the established order this season, Bournemouth above all, did it through organisation and intelligence. Bournemouth sold their five best players for a combined 250 million pounds ($338m) in 18 months. Their manager, Andoni Iraola, adapted, rebuilt and is still on course to finish in the top half while playing some of the most attractive football in the country. Bournemouth beat Arsenal at the Emirates. They beat Liverpool at Anfield. Chelsea spent many times their budget and could finish below them.
When did it turn?
If I had to pick one result that changed everything, it would be Southampton beating Arsenal in the FA Cup quarterfinal. Southampton were relegated the previous season.
It did not cost Arsenal the title by itself. But it was the first moment where you looked at Arsenal and thought: Something is not quite right here. The composure, the belief, the ability to handle big moments and it wobbled. Once that wobble is visible, every subsequent result gets filtered through it. The Bournemouth home loss felt worse because of Southampton. The City defeat felt worse because of Bournemouth. And now with five games left and City top on goal difference, the whole thing looks like a slow unravelling that started on that day.
Five to go!
City have Everton away, Brentford at home, Bournemouth away, Crystal Palace at home and Villa at home on the final day. Arsenal have Newcastle at home, Fulham at home, West Ham away, Burnley at home and Crystal Palace away on the final day when they will face a club whose best player, Eberechi Eze, left for Arsenal in the summer and will be returning to the stadium where his career was made.
Arsenal also have the Champions League semifinal against Atletico Madrid to get through. City have no European football. They are rested, they are focused and Haaland has 35 goals this season with five games still to play.
I said at the start of this that Arsenal were going to bottle it. I said it in February when they were nine points clear, and people were not particularly happy about it. I stand by it. The momentum, the tiebreakers, the fixture congestion and I think the mentality – all of it points towards City.
But I have been watching this league for 30 years, and I have learned one thing above everything else: The Premier League will find a way to surprise you. The season that looked decided in December is never decided in December. The team that looks unbeatable in April sometimes loses to Bournemouth on a wet Tuesday night and never quite recovers.
It happened to Arsenal. Maybe it happens to City too.
Five games. Everything to play for. Come back and tell me I was wrong.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
