🔍 All or Nothing for Arsenal & City

Regrettably, we have to start this week with an apology. Last week’s edition promised a rundown of what’s at stake for all 20 members of the Premier League over the course of the rest of the season. As several hawk-eyed readers noticed, the actual list only included 19 teams. I wish I could say this was, in fact, an artful and ironic comment on the current state of West Ham United. But it wasn’t. I’m just not very good at counting.

With my tail placed firmly between my legs, allow me to address it now: West Ham’s task for the remaining six games, now, is to avoid relegation. Nuno Espírito Santo’s side made a decent start to that by beating Wolves, handsomely, last Friday. That result means West Ham has now lost just two of its last eight Premier League games; of all the teams still scrabbling for survival, their form may well be the best.

That’s an encouraging sign for the immediate future; the note of caution is that staying up will not solve the club’s more deep-seated problems. There has been precious little trace of any real vision from the club’s owners for what they want West Ham to be; it feels like the most disconnected, the most discordant team in the Premier League. Without extensive change, there’s every chance West Ham’s fans will have to go through this all again next year.

This week, though, is not about the relegation battle. It is, instead, about the Merseyside derby. No, only joking. We have a title decider on our hands.

Long before the final whistle, they knew. They might not have known, not for certain, after Nico O’Reilly put Manchester City ahead against Chelsea last weekend. They would have been pretty sure a few minutes later, when Marc Guéhi doubled the lead. But by the time Jeremy Doku added a third, settling the game, they were certain.

“Are you watching, Arsenal?” the gleeful traveling City fans sang, the lyrics echoing around Stamford Bridge. They knew what they felt: that in the course of 30 hours or so last weekend, the Premier League title race had shifted decisively in their favor. Arsenal still had the points on the board, but City now unquestionably had the momentum.

And it had happened at a time so perfect that it almost could not be scripted: seven days before the two teams meet at the Etihad for a game that, now, looks very much like it will decide the identity of this season’s champion.

At the risk of being a spoilsport, that is not actually how this works. There will – or there should, at least – be a genuine title decider in English football this season, but it is next weekend, not this, and it is in the fifth tier, not the top. As things stand, Rochdale and York City are separated by two points at the summit of the National League, the division in which Wrexham’s adventure started. Purely by coincidence, they meet on the final day of the season. That is a title decider.

Those occasions, in the top flight, are vanishingly rare. The most famous game in English football history fits the bill perfectly: Arsenal’s 2-0 win at Anfield to clinch the title in the last game of the 1988/89 season, the one that formed the emotional climax of the book “Fever Pitch.” (Well, I think so. I’ve never read it. It documents what is one of my saddest childhood memories. I have no desire to think about it.)

But very few others do. The great, juddering clashes between Manchester City and Liverpool, in the pomp of Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, tended to come earlier in the season. The most famous, the one in which Leroy Sané’s intervention swung the championship toward the Etihad, happened in January. 

Manchester City’s win against Manchester United in 2012 comes pretty close, admittedly; that victory sent Roberto Mancini’s team top of the Premier League with just two games left to play. What is forgotten – or at least rarely mentioned – is that it would have meant nothing at all had Sergio Agüero not scored in the 94th minute of the very final fixture of the campaign. That, as it turned out, is when the title was actually decided.

The same will likely be true of Sunday’s showdown – that word feels fitting – between City and Arsenal. Should Mikel Arteta’s side win, it would mark a hugely significant step towards a first championship for 22 years. But it would still rest on Arsenal navigating safe passage through the remaining five games of its season. 

That is no less true of City. A win would leave the destiny of the title in Guardiola’s team’s hands: three points behind Arsenal with a game in hand and an almost identical goal difference. But to claim it, City would still have to win six more matches. Beating Arsenal would mean very little if, as an encore, City goes and loses to Crystal Palace.

But none of this should downplay the scale of the occasion; if anything, the rarity value means we should cherish it all the more. And the context is truly perfect: City charging as Arsenal stumbles; Arteta, the pretender to the crown, having to snatch it off the head of his mentor; Arsenal, champion-in-waiting for much of the season, having to travel to Manchester to earn that epithet.

It is, as an event, worth all of the superlatives that will be thrown at it. It is the biggest game of the season, obviously. It is the biggest of Arteta’s managerial career, certainly. It may well be the single biggest occasion that Arsenal has experienced, as a club, since the Champions League final of 2006. It could yet be the game that defines whether these are the final few weeks of Guardiola’s gilded City career, or not.

More loftily, it feels like a collision between what the Premier League has been and what might lie in its immediate future. Guardiola’s principles have defined English football for much of the last decade, ever since he arrived at City. He has made inverted full-backs and ball-playing goalkeepers and all of the rest of it standard issue. That may well be his greatest legacy, beyond his achievements with City; he has changed English football’s culture irrevocably.

But this season has felt much more Arteta-coded. The Premier League has been defined not so much by big ideas as fine margins: long throws, set-pieces, a search for control amid the chaos. Whether City wins on Sunday, whether City wins the title, or not, Arteta – as the man who employs Nicolas Jover – has probably been the defining figure of the campaign. His legacy may well be to undo at least some of what Guardiola accomplished. But how entrenched his ideas become might just rest on what he has to show at the end of it.

That will not be determined on Sunday. As much as it may not feel like it right now, there are challenges to come. In 2014, Liverpool beat Manchester City 3-2 at Anfield in a game that had been billed as a title decider. It was the moment when Brendan Rodgers’ team – well, Luis Suárez’s team – seemed to have taken charge. There was a month or so to go. Liverpool, in Steven Gerrard’s words, was not to let it slip.

Two weeks later, Liverpool lost at home to Chelsea. City, that season, lost the battle and won the war. Sunday will be compelling, enthralling, tense; it will be a suitable pinnacle for the campaign. But whether it is a conclusion or not, whether it decides anything, will depend on what comes afterwards.

Paris Saint-Germain, at the very least, left England on Tuesday night knowing they had been in a game. I don’t think it is the effect of my admittedly red-tinted spectacles to say that Liverpool left the Champions League deservedly but with dignity.

In the second half, in particular, Arne Slot’s side hurled everything at the European champion, at least until Ousmane Dembélé’s counter-punch goal. And that, ultimately, was all the fans had asked for.

Watching that with considerable interest will have been Bayern Munich, now confirmed as PSG’s opponent in a tantalising semifinal. Bayern is, and this cannot be stressed enough, a lot better than Liverpool. In Michael Olise, Harry Kane and Luis Díaz, the German champion – current and future – has an attacking trio to rival Dembélé, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué (or Bradley Barcola, take your pick.) 

As much as Bayern’s second leg with Real Madrid suggested that Vincent Kompany’s team is not invulnerable, Anfield suggested the same could be said of PSG. They were, at times, a little careless in possession. Their fluidity, just occasionally, leaves them exposed. Only one team – Real – has retained the European Cup in the last 36 years. Bayern will believe it can stop PSG adding its name to that list.

Rog and Rory break down a chaotic Premier League weekend with seismic consequences at both ends of the standings. Plus, with five Champions League spots now officially up for grabs, the middle of the table is suddenly a battleground, as clubs scramble and dare to dream of Europe. Also, Tottenham’s season hit a new low as defeat to Sunderland dragged them deeper into a relegation fight that once felt unthinkable.

Watch on YouTube or listen here.

This one is pretty easy, too, to be honest. But before we get to that: Saturday brings the final of the Copa del Rey, too, a meeting between Atlético Madrid and Real Sociedad in Seville. Few managers deserve major honors as much as Diego Simeone, but my heart will be with La Real. I was in San Sebastián a few weeks ago to watch the second leg of the semifinal, against Athletic Club; the delight at making the final, at the hands of their nearest and dearest rivals, was palpable. Also Real Sociedad has possibly the best chant in soccer.

But yes, obviously, England is home to the weekend’s main event. Sunday starts with a significant Merseyside derby: the first at Hill Dickinson Stadium, and a fixture that Arne Slot really can’t afford to lose. And then Arsenal travels to Manchester for unquestionably the biggest game of the Premier League season.

Almost every aspect of the forthcoming World Cup – did you know there’s a men’s World Cup coming? Apparently it’s quite a big deal – has been covered in the most forensic detail imaginable: the ticket prices, the expansion of the format, the welcome fans are likely to receive. But Vincent Jansen has a question about one element that has not really been addressed. 

“How, if at all, do you think the additional knockout round will affect the World Cup?” he wrote. “For more than 40 years, you had to win four knockout matches to win the whole thing. I wonder how teams will be affected once they get to the quarterfinals having already played two of these exhausting matches and still only be halfway.” 

A similar thought occurred to me not too long ago, Vincent. I think we should probably acknowledge that the group phase is going to feel bloated: dozens and dozens of games to eliminate only a third of the teams. My guess is that a single win will be enough to send a team through to the last 32. The tournament, at that stage, may well drag a bit.

But – just as with the expanded Champions League – it is hard to build an argument against more knockout football. Especially if that takes the form of a single game, rather than a home-and-away tie, as it does in European club competition. There is no jeopardy, no tension, like it, given the prize on offer; it may well also give a little bit of an edge to teams who might ordinarily be overpowered. I don’t know if I think it or if I just hope it, but there’s definitely a chance that extra round is an improvement.

That’s all for this week. If you have any thoughts, observations, questions or quibbles, let me know at [email protected]. And enjoy the game of the season – maybe not quite the century – wherever you end up watching it. They don’t come round very often. We may as well make the most of them.

Take care,
Rory

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