It is very easy to get drawn into the hype surrounding Arsenal and Manchester City as we approach the final round of the Premier League title fight.
Sky are obviously waiting for City’s game at Bournemouth tonight to discover just what is at stake on Sunday but, either way, they will find an angle to hype it to the Nth degree.
If the race for top spot is done then the focus will be on the battle to avoid the drop or, failing that, the scrap to secure a place in Europe.
It will be painted as a classic Premier League season with so much at stake. The truth is it has largely been bang average, particularly towards the summit.
Watching Arsenal struggle to find a way past Burnley last night was a sobering reminder that this Gunners team is not one the purists will admire. There is absolutely nothing wrong with basing a title challenge around a strong defence and Arsenal’s is superb, but to create so little on a regular basis despite a team possessing the flair of Bukayo Saka, Leandro Trossard and Eberechi Eze is a damning indictment of Mikel Arteta’s tactics.
The triumph over the already relegated Clarets was their eighth 1-0 win of the season with Kai Havertz’s header from Saka’s corner marking the 19th time they have scored from a set-piece this term (excluding penalties). Unless they go absolutely berserk at Crystal Palace at the weekend, they will finish with the lowest number of goals scored for a title-winning team since Leicester City in 2016.
Chuck in Arteta’s hugely irritating touchline antics and they become a team that is very difficult to enjoy.
In the other corner we have a City side that seem likely to fall just short in Pep Guardiola’s final year in charge.
The traditional accusation against City is they leave people cold, failing to muster a strong feeling either way – a Middle Eastern project built on money with inevitable consequences. It’s hard to disagree but it’s also impossible not to enjoy the likes of Rayan Cherki, Jeremy Doku and Antoine Semenyo in full flow.
They get the nod over Arsenal from a stylistic perspective but with City come other questions. An independent commission is yet to publish a verdict almost a year-and-a half after a disciplinary hearing concluded into 115 charges of alleged breaches of financial regulations.
City deny any wrongdoing and we should rightly assume they are innocent until proven guilty but, whatever happens, the matter continues to cast a cloud over English football as a whole. Few genuine football fans will be disappointed if they miss out.
There are positives from this Premier League season
That’s not to say the Premier League has been a total write-off this season.
The likes of Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford continue to show steady, organic growth can work alongside clever, data-focused recruitment models and it will hopefully result in the glass ceiling that has always prevented clubs from breaking into the Champions League places being smashed once and for all.
It has also been hugely refreshing to see Sunderland and Leeds prove promotion is not always followed by immediate relegation. Much has been made of how much the clubs spent last summer but it was never about how much and more about how: by improving the physical stature of their squads they have been able to compete.
The antithesis of Brighton and Brentford’s shrewd approach has resulted in an absorbing battle to avoid the drop.
Tottenham and West Ham are the two in contention to go down and it feels absolutely just that they are now paying the price for persistent mis-management. The Hammers’ move to the London Stadium has been a disaster from day one and they are a shell of the club they once were.
Spurs have the stadium but that’s about it. Ignore the frankly bonkers calls of conspiracy from a head-shakingly large proportion of their fanbase and focus on the vast amounts of money they have thrown at bang average footballers. Dominic Solanke: £65million, Richarlison: £60m, Mohammed Kudus: £55m, Wilson Odobert: £30m, Radu Dragusin: £26m, the list goes on and on.
The feeling is if they survive they will bounce back under Roberto De Zerbi but a huge overhaul in personnel is required.
EFL and non-league offer refreshing antidote to Premier League’s self-promotion
If Spurs do go down, they will become the headline act in a thriving EFL scene. Crowds are up, there are storylines galore and a real sense that football is so much more than the sanitised world of a Premier League absorbed in an ecosystem of money, state ownership and self-promotion.
Go even further and non-league remains the heartbeat of English football – a place where egos are left at the door and the focus is on community and participation.
Ultimately, it’s not all bad. There are plenty of good stories out there, and many reasons to be positive, you just have to look beyond the bluff and bluster to find them.
