Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday, The Athletic discusses three of the biggest questions posed by the weekend’s Premier League action.
This was an unusual round of fixtures, as the involvement of three Premier League sides in the FA Cup’s semi-finals led to three postponements and no games on Sunday, but it started on Friday with a surprisingly convincing win for Nottingham Forest at Sunderland and then saw crucial wins for Forest’s relegation rivals on Saturday, as well as an eventful victory for Liverpool over Crystal Palace and an uneventful one for Fulham over Aston Villa.
Here, we will discuss what on earth to make of the latest cliff-hanger in the Arsenal psychodrama, who is going down, and why Chelsea didn’t run around like that for Liam Rosenior.
Can Arsenal survive four more ordeals?
Stop me if you have heard this one before, but the last time I was on Briefing duty, I asked if “nervy” Arsenal were still title favourites. That was seven weeks ago. Have the Premier League scriptwriters been on strike?
I suppose what they would say is “why change a good plotline?” because while Arsenal’s football is getting harder to watch, there is something incredibly compelling about their effort to drag themselves over the line in the Premier League for the first time since 2004.
Is this a two-horse race between them and Manchester City, or is it a three-horse race between the two halves of Arsenal’s split identity and Manchester City?
Because, on the one hand, Mikel Arteta’s well-drilled machine are back on top of the table, three points clear, having beaten Newcastle United 1-0 on Saturday. OK, they did not create much from open play and the goal was their 17th of the season from a corner — a new Premier League record — but a win is a win.
It was also a set piece with a twist, as it came from a third corner in quick succession that they took short. They messed up the first one, but the second attempt gave Eberechi Eze a shooting chance from the edge of the box that he narrowly missed, and the third one worked just like Arsenal’s corner coach Nicolas Jover dreamed it: Noni Madueke to Kai Havertz to Eze to the back of the net. Brilliant.
But, on the other hand, Newcastle United, who have now lost four straight league games, had more possession, more shots, and marginally better chances than Arsenal.
The home team started well and were worth their early lead, but the game turned after Havertz limped off before half-time. He is a good player, but Premier League champions can usually function without someone of his quality, particularly when they have a bench full of multi-million-pound signings.
Unfortunately, one of those was Viktor Gyokeres. I do not want to pick on the guy, but we have seen enough evidence now to know why all the data scientists in the Premier League’s recruitment teams passed on the Swede when he left Coventry City in 2023 and he ended up in Portugal at Sporting CP. He is fast, strong and can finish. He just cannot hold the ball up or pass, which is a problem in a team that prefers controlled possession to fast breaks.
The sun was shining, but the mood at the Emirates got darker when Eze had to go off, too, and the last 20 minutes or so were pure angst, as Yoane Wissa missed the best chance of the game to earn Newcastle a point they probably deserved.
The scenes after the final whistle said it all. Half the Arsenal team flat out on the floor, Arteta celebrating as if he had won the Champions League, and fans hugging each other like they had survived another ordeal. They have four more games of this.
The good news, although I doubt it will make any difference to their stress levels, is that football data experts Opta think Arsenal are still the clear favourites to beat Manchester City to the title, as they have an easier run-in than Pep Guardiola’s terminators.
My supercomputer is not as famous as Opta’s, but if we add up the points totals of Arsenal’s remaining opponents — Fulham, West Ham, Burnley and Crystal Palace — and divide them by four, we get 36.75 points, which is good enough for 16th in the table. If we do the same exercise for City’s opponents — Everton, Brentford, Bournemouth, Palace, and Villa — we get 49 points, good enough for seventh.
Will that nugget be enough for cool, calm, collected Arsenal to convince cautious, constipated, cranky Arsenal they can do this? Tune in next week to find out!
Will 40 points be enough to stay up?
Of course you are tuning in — you are all on tenterhooks to learn who is getting relegated this season, aren’t you?
Well, Wolves were put out of their misery last weekend, and Burnley joined them during the week, but this weekend did nothing to clarify who will be joining them. On the contrary, it confused things.
First, Forest visited Playa del Sunderland and took full advantage of the hospitality on offer to score four goals in 20 first-half minutes and then add a fifth in added time at the end of the game.
They are now unbeaten in six league games — eight in all competitions — and finally look like the side we thought they would be last summer. Shame it has taken nine months and four managers to get there, but better late than never.
That is assuming they have not left it too late, though, as 39 points is not the safe harbour it has been in recent years. Even the most confident Forest fan will have admitted on Friday that the job was not quite done… but is it one point more? Two? Three? Hold that thought.
Saturday saw 17th-placed West Ham United host Everton, and 18th-placed Tottenham Hotspur travel to Wolves. For most of both of these games, quality was in short supply. But there were bags of effort and lots of late drama.
West Ham broke the deadlock thanks to a trademark Tomas Soucek header, only for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall to seemingly burst everyone’s bubbles by slamming in an equaliser with two minutes of normal time to play.
But West Ham are made of sterner stuff these days and actually now look like the team we thought Forest would be (tight at the back, good on the break), which is hardly a surprise as they are coached by the guy who Forest should have left in charge this season: Nuno Espirito Santo. So it was not a shock when Callum Wilson restored their lead four minutes later. The real shock was when West Ham nearly released the former England striker in January.
Meanwhile, Spurs, under their third manager of the season, were huffing and puffing in their attempts to blow Wolves’ defence down. They got there in the end, thanks to Joao Palhinha tackling the ball into the net at the back post. But it would not have been enough to give Spurs a first league win this year without Antonin Kinsky’s wonder save from a Joao Gomes free kick at the death. It was a wonderfully redemptive moment for a player whose career looked in doubt when Igor Tudor gave him the hook in the first half of Spurs’ calamitous Champions League defeat by Atletico Madrid in March.
Anyway, all that excitement meant Spurs and West Ham had closed their gaps to Forest to five and three points, respectively. And mathematicians among you will have quickly worked out that means West Ham remain two points clear of their London rivals on the right side of the drop zone.
This is a drama for four parts, though, and our final player remains Leeds United, who had a weekend off from the stresses of the relegation battle to try to win at Wembley for once (more on that very soon). They have put up a more consistent effort this season than Forest, West Ham and Spurs, but it has only brought them one more point than Forest, which means they sit on exactly 40 points, which for years has been considered to be every relegation-threatened side’s target. Will that be enough this year?
According to Opta, Leeds have the easiest run-in of our quartet. They also have a better goal difference than Spurs and West Ham. But they still have to play those two sides, both away from home.
West Ham have momentum, but on paper, their remaining fixtures are the hardest and their goal difference is the worst. Forest, still in the Europa League, must go to Chelsea and Manchester United, while Spurs have away games at Aston Villa and Chelsea, who will need little encouragement in getting up for that game.
With Roberto De Zerbi in the dugout and some confidence back in the team, you can certainly make a case for Spurs reaching 40 points or more, which would bring Leeds into the equation, but it is a case that depends on you forgetting everything you have seen in 2026.
No, I am going to stick my neck out (not very far) and say this is a straight fight between West Ham and Spurs, with the winner staying up.
Why didn’t Chelsea work like this for Rosenior?
We usually stick to Premier League action here, but the FA Cup deprived us of any Sunday fare, so I don’t feel bad about basing my third and final item on what Chelsea and Leeds served up at Wembley in the cup semi-final.
I do, however, feel a little bit bad for Liam Rosenior, who has spent the past month gradually losing his mind on the sideline while his expensively assembled Chelsea side put in increasingly listless displays in the league. He was sacked on Wednesday, but if he was watching this game, he would have seen his former team cover more ground and tackle harder for interim boss Calum McFarlane than they ever seemed to for him.
Effort has never been a problem for Daniel Farke’s Leeds, but quality can be, and that was the case against Chelsea. Brenden Aaronson had the game’s first great chance, but he could not convert. To be fair, it was a fine save from the oft-maligned Robert Sanchez, but it immediately felt significant and we did not have to wait long for the “told you so” moment.
That came when Enzo Fernandez, who never played this well for Rosenior, got on the end of a nice Pedro Neto cross to head home in the 23rd minute. The Argentine had already set up Joao Pedro for a shot that the Brazilian had struck against the post.
Fernandez celebrates his winning goal (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
There was not a great deal to write about after that, although Sanchez made an even better save to keep out a fierce Anton Stach strike in the second half. Leeds got better as the game went on, but it would be a stretch to say Chelsea were hanging on when the final whistle blew.
And unlike Leeds, they are pretty experienced at this type of thing. Leeds’ last FA Cup final came in 1973, when they lost a famous game to Sunderland. Chelsea are so good at semi-finals that they can even win them when they are in disarray on and off the pitch.
It is a nice knack to have and it would be completely on brand for the current holders of the Europa Conference League and Club World Cup to beat Manchester City, who survived a late scare by Southampton on Saturday, in the final next month.
Or they could revert to the form that got Rosenior sacked — probably leaving them in need of a cup win to secure European football next season — and get absolutely walloped. Neither would surprise.
Maybe that is the thrill that BlueCo want to bottle and sell to the next set of speculators.
Coming up this week
- We complete this abridged round of Premier League action on Monday with Brentford’s visit to Manchester United. A win for the latter would almost guarantee Champions League football next season (and maybe seal Michael Carrick’s chance to lead them into Europe), while a victory for Brentford would make a nice change from all the drawing they have been doing lately. It would also boost their hopes of a first European campaign in the club’s history.
- There are no such novelties for the stars of Tuesday’s big game, which might actually be this season’s biggest game, as it sees Paris Saint-Germain host Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. It is a match that needs no marketing — if you like football, you will like this. However, the addicts among you do have second-screen options. For example, Southampton versus Ipswich Town is a Championship clash with huge promotion implications, while the National League play-off qualifying round between the Uniteds of Scunthorpe and Southend will be amazing. Trust me.
- Wednesday sees the other half of Tuesday’s slate, with Arsenal going to Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, and Boreham Wood hosting Forest Green Rovers in the National League play-offs. Yeah, you’re right, it’s not as exciting as Tuesday, is it? But if obscure derbies are your thing, Macclesfield-Chester in the National League North play-offs could be fun.
- Thursday’s fare is not even two, but four European semi-finals. In the Europa League, we have an East Midlands/West Midlands derby in Nottingham Forest against Aston Villa, with Sporting Braga against Freiburg on the other side of the bracket. And in the Europa Conference League, Crystal Palace travel to Krakow in Poland to play Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk, while Rayo Vallecano host Chelsea’s stablemates, Strasbourg.
- If that is all a bit too cosmopolitan for you, do not worry, because Friday’s main attraction is a classic “Roses” clash between Leeds and Burnley. They were only separated by goal difference at the end of last season in the Championship, but appear to be going their separate ways this summer.
