Ah, the business end of the season.

Man City finally stumbled over the Premier League line thanks to Manchester United reserves not really being up to scratch.

City are home and hosed in the title race
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Leicester City made Gary Lineker cry by nicking the FA Cup from Chelsea thanks to a Youri Tielemens thunderbolt.

Fulham joined West Brom and Sheffield United as thoroughly condemned to Championship football next season.

Liverpool can still, somehow, find a way into the Champions League places. Will Leicester’s last seven days be enough to see them through to the end of the season meaning either one of Thomas Tuchel and Jurgen Klopp won’t be among Europe’s elite next time around?

Unless, of course, Tuchel learns how to win a cup final and lifts the Champions League trophy ahead of Pep Guardiola in a fortnight.

Tuchel has a big couple of weeks ahead of him
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Having seen their Champions League dreams fade and, almost, die, can West Ham burst their bubble sufficiently to avoid both the Europa League and the Europa Conference and, therefore, avoid a relegation battle next season?

And what about Tottenham? Will their new gaffer prefer a non-European season or a jaunt in an utterly pointless gig to kick start his reign? And who will he actually be?

As mentioned, City were crowned champions by virtue of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reserves losing to Leicester on Tuesday.

Resting the team made a lot of sense, given they wanted to beat Liverpool on Thursday but hey, the best laid plans and all that.

Solskjaer’s men have lost their last two matches in the Premier League
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Guardiola treated his football family to some dancing, some beer and then, the best bit – some pizza – to celebrate regaining what was previously theirs.

They then headed to St James’ Park to take part in a Premier League classic, beating Manager of the Month Steve Bruce’s Newcastle 4-3 with a cheeky little hat-trick from Ferran Torres.

Does Torres’ treble convince Pep even more that he can play as a nine? Meaning that it doesn’t really matter that Borussia Dortmund are reaching peak Borussia Dortmund levels with their claims Erling Haaland is going nowhere this summer? That won’t please Noel Gallagher.

Haaland is set for a summer saga
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Massive congratulations to Leicester City who, against some odds beat Chelsea 1-0 at Wembley in front of 22,000 actual football fans.

Chelsea were utterly toothless for the second game running, having contrived to lose to Arsenal 1-0 during the week, but take nothing away from the class shown by Brendan Rodgers’ team.

The winner was a goal befitting a cup final – Tielemens picking it up and absolutely hammering it past Kepa in goal.

Naturally, as is their want, Chelsea fans talked of conspiracy forgetting Ayoze Perez didn’t handball it according to the laws of the game and that Ben Chilwell, no matter how harsh it might feel, was actually offside in the build-up to that very late non-equaliser.

Kasper Schmeichel, a man with significant boots to fill, was a hero alongside young Wesley Fofana who marshalled the defence brilliantly – mind you, on reflection, he only really had to mark Timo Werner.

Given the goal he was responsible for against Arsenal and his complete disinterest in closing Tielemans down at Wembley, the proposed swap deal seeing Jorginho head to Barcelona in return for Pjanic might catch Tuchel’s eye. He’d rather get Marco Veratti, though.

Leicester lifted the FA Cup for the first time ever
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Liverpool kept their outside chance to nip into fourth place alive with the last touch of the game at the Hawthorns.

Alisson, having a challenging year, became the first Premier League player ever to score in tracky bottoms – something that will now haunt Gabor Kiraly forever.

Sam Allardyce might have seen his proud record of never being relegated go up in smoke, but he’ll always have that point against at Anfield, right?

Hal Robson-Kanu, an amalgamation of two of my favourite footballers of all time, incidentally, might wonder why nobody has let him start a match since 2017 after his lethal finish to put the Albion ahead. Mohamed Salah equalised, but this was all about Alisson and his bonce.

Alisson was Liverpool’s unlikely hero
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Tottenham’s match against Wolves was considered an audition for Nuno Espirito Santo in some people’s eyes. His team did the eminently sensible thing in which case and lost 2-0, Harry Kane in the goals again, obviously.

What odds on Daniel Levy panicking in the summer and giving Ryan Mason the job?

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Kane scored in the win over Wolves as he looks to claim the Golden Boot[/caption]

With Uncle Roy Hodgson likely to be announcing his departure from Crystal Palace in the next week, he’ll be able to look back on their 3-2 win over Aston Villa as one of their best attacking performances during his time there.

Christian Benteke looked like the striker Tim Sherwood reckons he got a tune out of, Wilf Zaha and Andros Townsend ran riot and then there was Eberechi Eze – a player who will be getting a few top-six phonecalls this summer for sure.

Jack Grealish was back and notching up his 101st foul against him within 2.6 seconds of coming on the pitch.

Crystal Palace had a good afternoon against Aston Villa
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Burnley were confirmed as safe earlier in the week and their performance against a rampant Leeds would suggest they might have enjoyed a little too much dancing, real ale and hot pot in the coming days.

Southampton and Fulham both put in performances that kinda summed up their respective seasons.

The Saints, pretty good when it all comes together (see also their 3-1 win over Palace earlier in the week). Even Theo Walcott turned up. Fulham, pretty good for spells which, as we all know, isn’t really enough to stay in the league.


Sheffield United spent more than £20million on a young striker supposed to score the goals that kept them in the Premier League this season.

On Sunday evening, a young striker scored his first goal for the club as they beat Everton (at Goodison Park, obviously) 1-0.

Daniel Jebbison, not Rhian Brewster, opened his club account at the age of just 17 meaning he is now linked to every big club in the land. Everton? Well, they are just Evertoning themselves to eighth place now.

Everton have the sixth worst home form in the Premier League this season
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It’s everyone out at Arsenal this summer (other than the manager, apparently) as Hector Bellerin, David Luiz, Bernd Leno, Ainsley Maitland-Niles (to United, really? Surely not), Granit Xhaka and many more being directed to the exit.

This usually means some players are being targeted – and Arsenal are being linked to Europe’s hottest young central midfielder in France’s Eduardo Camavinga.

Just the small matter of seeing off Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona to get that deal over the line.

More likely is that Ryan Bertrand will join them on a free – be still those beating Arsenal hearts.

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