For me Clive, it’s all about the Socratic paradox. The wisest man is the man who knows enough to know he knows nothing. I’ve always said that. Or never said it. Or only said it sometimes. One of those. Either way the Premier League title race could have been designed to prove that, in an age of thundering takes and mega-certainties, nobody actually has any idea what’s going on here.
Manchester City’s draw at Everton on Monday night has already been described as The Moment. Advantage Arsenal. This is the consensus. On Tuesday morning, Rob Earnshaw was asked on Sky Sports if this is “the week the season will be decided” and replied: “ABSOLUTELY,” almost before the question had ended. And while you have to admire Rob Earnshaw’s sense of showmanship, there is still a large chance this might not actually be the case.
With a combined seven games to go for Arsenal and City, we are already through the looking-glass, into a place where nothing is fixed, where the pace of twist, turn and narrative volte-face is so swift it can be hard to remember which way we’re facing right now. In the space of two weeks Arsenal have taken on the position of fearless buccaneers and masters of the chase, thereby shedding their previous role as pigeon-chested choke-merchants. A team dismissed as defensive nihilists, basically Daleks in shorts, might still win the league by scoring more goals than free‑flowing Manchester City.
If so, Arsenal are currently being driven there by the free-scoring exploits of Viktor Gyökeres, transformed from a man playing football with his legs on the wrong way round for the last seven months into a cold-eyed Nordic goal predator who eats only bark and foraged reindeer. Even the awkward motivational notes – buying an ancient olive tree, being on fire, forcing a dog to support Arsenal – previously nailed-on indicators of mental fragility, are now master-strokes of psychological warfare.
Or maybe not. This is probably another overreaction. But there are two things worth saying about City’s visit to Everton. First, this was a brilliant late-season game. The Hill Dickinson looked great, transformed from giant disposable vape dumped down on the dockside into a geyser of authentic footballing energy. City dominated the first quarter. They looked utterly locked in. Everton made 14 passes in the opening 14 minutes. Then came the energy shift.
Before Monday night, Thierno Barry had scored six league goals in 34 games, just a nice man trying hard to do something he finds extremely difficult. At which point he rattled off two in 13 minutes against perma-champs to thrust himself into the front of the season-ending montages, hammer of destiny and all round title-killer.
By the end, the TV punditry lineup was left debating the micro-semiotics of a wild 3-3 draw. Did it feel like a defeat? Did it feel – hang on – like a win? Jérémy Doku celebrated two dropped points by cupping his ear at the home fans, which may end up an invitation to eternal meme-dom or a supremely vindicated show of confidence. Nobody really knows.
Pep Guardiola was great all the way through, from the touchline shots of his spring outfit, which suggests someone has told him he would look really good in a Peacoat, and in his furiously literal-minded middle-aged dad way he’s gone out and bought a coat with a big P on it; to a gripping post-match interview where he managed to keep up his smile-at-all-times persona despite looking like he wanted to go straight home and rip the head off a guinea pig.
The second thing worth noting is Mikel Arteta’s contribution to this. For the first time there was a sense of Arteta being present, in outline, at a City game. Every winning team tenses up at some point. If City showed signs of pressure Arteta has played a part in this by not allowing his team to fade when it might have.
The current three-match bounce-back run is about details as much as will. There has been mid-season coaching of Gyökeres’s runs and movement. Myles Lewis-Skelly played really well in midfield at the weekend, albeit against an end-of-season Harrison Reed, but this is an example of getting the timing right, because it worked. Even Arsenal’s theatrical set-piece delays, which were taking rhythm out of their own game, have been modified in recent matches.
From here the trip to West Ham on Sunday afternoon is perfectly set up. Win this one, in any way possible, and that just leaves Burnley at home and Crystal Palace away. But again there is no certainty here. West Ham have to play like there’s no tomorrow. Arsenal’s last two trips to the London Stadium have ended in 5-2 and 6-0 wins, but last year also brought a 1-0 home defeat by the same opponents, a game that basically killed Arsenal’s season.
Whatever happens now it is worth pointing out this is why the Premier League is still a good product for all its many flaws. What was once routinely dismissed as a migrainously dull season has become a really good one. It turns out the dead air, the weekends watching close-quarter wrestling and arguing about video assistant referees, was a conscious lull, deliberately dissonant music, all of it building to the sweet resolution of the last few weeks, like Pink Floyd clanking their way through nine minutes of jarring chords and wailing noises just so they can swoop away into some transcendent melodies and cooing lyrics about lying in the sun.
This is one reason why, whatever happens here, nobody is choking. It’s just really hard to win this league or even to get this close. City went hard at Everton and still found a team able to buck like a retreating scrum and push back. This is what happens when everyone has to run to the end, where a perkily competent middle-class keeps everyone honest to the death, and where two defensive errors are all it takes to transform Guardiola from super-chilled tactical master to bald fraud, arrogant overlord, handsome egg-headed swindler, and so on.
Arsenal will be favourites to take the title from here. They have access to a greater number of points. City have to go to Bournemouth and get something, Arsenal really should beat West Ham. But there is still time for another narrative shift, another about-turn, a last second swapping of the crown and the coxcomb.
And there is a wider parable here, a reason to feel hopeful about football, sport and human activity generally. Sport is always trying to tell you things. This was a season that seemed to be showing us exactly why and how the machines have won, a league being squashed into submission by tactical systems designed to destroy variables, agency, the human element. In its modern form, football can feel like just another mega-product. Digital tribalism. Brand worship. Fawning over celebrities. Gianni Infantino wants a personal motorcade. Chelsea FC ambassador Cole Palmer is now also an ambassador for Coca-Cola. Follow all 469 games simultaneously on our new, fun BetDeath.net app.
Actually, what the season’s end is showing is that those more random qualities are still key. A title race that will now boil down into luck, boldness and fine points of execution feels like sport finding a back channel to tell us it’s still alive and that this can still be uplifting and recognisably human.