Key events
Ebere Eze couldn’t be any more likeable, right? Wrong!
Not the football department
Most of the Premier League has been decided. It’s a long weekend and the weather looks pretty good. The perfect opportunity to finally get off the couch and go out and see the world in all its glory. Except the snooker is on so that won’t be happening.
Judd Trump and Mark Williams will resume at 8-8 in their semi-final; it’s the best of 33. Xintong Zhao is already into the final after a ruthless demolition of Ronnie O’Sullivan.
Birmingham City P45 W33 D9 L3 F82 A30 Pts 108
A win for blues in L1 (or even a draw ) will see them set a global record for most points in a professional football league season.
I think that’s special enough to be worthy of a mention…
It is now!
If you haven’t seen it, check out the terrific goal from Calvin Miller that sealed promotion. I can’t find a YouTube link but it’ll be in the usual places.
Well done Falkirk on back to back promotions
The Fantasy Premier League deadline was last night, ahead of Manchester City’s game v Wolves. Did you forget? I forgot, mainly because I’m seventh in the Smyth family league and I’m used to fighting for the title and I’m not handling it well.
On the plus side, I left Kevin De Bruyne as captain, so there’s that. There aren’t really any standout choices this week; most of the top teams have tough games and you’d expect some, certainly Arsenal, to rest players.
In the last few seasons, Leeds, Burnley, Southampton, Leicester and others have been trapped in a cycle of promotion and relegation. Philippe Auclair looks at the slippery problem of parachute payments.
Only once before this season and last had all three promoted clubs immediately returned whence they came, in 1997-98. It was more common for them to remain in the top division together, which has happened four times since 2002, last and most remarkably in 2021-22 when Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest not only survived but prospered and grew into contenders for a place in European competitions. This, however, looks like an aberration.
Liverpool were quiet in the transfer market last summer, which makes their title stroll even more impressive. This summer, Arne Slot will have his imaginary chequebook at the ready.
[Winning the league] definitely helps to attract new players as well because mostly the players that we want, we are not the only club who thinks they are good players, so they have more options. Then maybe it helps for them to see that the way we do things here is special. Until now, if I spoke to players who we wanted to bring in, I always told them that our fans are really special and it is special to play at this club. But after Sunday I don’t think I ever have to tell anyone again how special our fans are because that was unbelievable.
On this day in 1972… the first leg of the first-ever all-English European final. (Longer highlights, including the Wolves goal, are available.)
Football League Q&A with Ben Fisher
At 11am, Ben Fisher will be here to answer your questions about all things EFL. Let’s be havin’ them: email matchday.live@theguardian.com or post below the line.
You think the life of an algorithm is easy? Try being an as-it-stands table on the last day of the season.
The best dead rubbers in the world
Manchester City is now nailed on to finish in top 3. 4th and 5th place race between, Newcastle, Chelsea, Nottingham and Villa is the only talking point left now in the Premier League and still there are four games to go. This may be most unexciting Premier League ever with only 4 teams now having some sort of interest left in the remaining games.
The 2000-01 season is another contender for this dubious award. The biggest thing at stake on the last day of the season was whether Liverpool would qualify for the Champions League ahead of Leeds (they did).
Man Utd won the title on New Year’s Day, pretty much; and though the bottom three weren’t quite as far adrift as this season’s, they were all relegated with games to spare.
Leicester and Southampton have had miserable seasons, picking up 18 and 11 points respectively. But at least one of them will add to that total at the King Power Stadium today.
The young are getting younger. A 14-year-old is the talk of cricket’s IPL; my friend’s nine-year-old has the vocabulary of a learned quadragenarian; and three years on from Ethan Nwaneri’s record-breaking Premier League debut, Arsenal have another 15-year-old who looks ready for first-team action.
Premier League regulations prevent players who were not 15 at the start of a season from playing, meaning Dowman will not be able to surpass Ethan Nwaneri’s record as the competition’s youngest player, set in September 2022 when Nwaneri was 15 years and 181 days old. But Arteta was asked whether the attacking midfielder, who has drawn comparisons to Martin Ødegaard, could be an option for next season after the success of the academy graduates Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly.
“For the near future, yes,” he said. “Now he is involved in the squad. He trains with us a lot. Does that mean he will play in the Premier League many games? I don’t know; depends how good he is and how impressive he is and how much he offers the team like Ethan, like Myles, like any other player in the squad. Let’s see how this evolves but we certainly got a big, big talent there.
Enough of Tony Adams. What are you plans for this beautiful Saturday? Going to a game? Mowing the lawn while listening to Nessun Dorma? Settling into an all-dayer at JD Wetherspoons? Let us know either below the line or via matchday.live@theguardian.com
On this day in 1998, Tony Adams writes his own script as Arsenal win the Premier League. Wonderful commentary from Martin Tyler, too, right up there with Aguerrooooooooo.
Chelsea’s young players will form a guard of honour for Liverpool tomorrow. Jacob Steinberg has been looking at what Enzo Maresca and friends can learn from the champions.
Chelsea, who have the second-youngest squad across Europe’s top five leagues and are monitoring the 19-year-old Ajax left-back Jorrel Hato, should take note. They will give Liverpool a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon and face a team with stability at their core. Van Dijk, now 33, is still the defensive rock and has signed on for two more years. Alisson, at 32, remains one of the best goalkeepers in the world. It is a simple equation: buying the best usually makes you the best.
Barney’s regular Saturday column is about a young man who, on Wednesday night, came agonisingly close to breaking the internet
Lamine Yamal was the buildup, the takeaway and also the TV commentary to this game, which for long periods was just Rio Ferdinand saying “OH MY GOD” a lot. In the second half you kept having to check the score to make sure it wasn’t actually 6-1 to Barcelona (Lamine Yamal 6), as opposed to a 3-3 draw and a good away result for Inter.
On this weekend five years ago there was no football, just Covid and a whole lotta fear. Barney Ronay has been looking at how the pandemic changed sport – for richer and poorer.
The pandemic had a start date. But the closest we got to a national throwing-off of the shackles, our own VV day, was July 2021 and the sight of a lone England football supporter placing a flare between his buttock cheeks before releasing it into the air of central London. This was our healing moment, our iconography of closure, our own white cliffs and union flags.
This morning’s headlines
Preamble
Hello and welcome to live coverage of another super soccer-filled Saturday. This is our home for all the latest news and previews ahead of today’s action, which begins at 12.30pm with Aston Villa v Fulham and the last day of the regular Championship season. Then we have the final round of fixtures in Leagues One and Two, plus Bayern Munich’s chance to win back the Bundesliga after a shocking one-season drought.
At 11am we’ll have a special Q&A with Ben Fisher, who knows more about the Football League than 99.82 per cent of sentient beings, so please send in any questions for that. You can contact us at matchday.live@theguardian.com or post below the line.
Before we get started, these are some of the key matches we’ll be following today.
Premier League
Aston Villa v Fulham (12.30pm)
Everton v Ipswich (3pm)
Leicester v Southampton (3pm)
Arsenal v Bournemouth (5.30pm)
Championship (all 12.30pm)
Bundesliga
League One (3pm)
League Two (3pm)
You can peruse a fuller fixture list here.
