Manchester City’s 1-0 win at Burnley wasn’t pretty, but manager Pep Guardiola and his players won’t care one bit. The victory means that with two games left in the season, they control their destiny in one of English soccer’s most intense title chases. The only thing is, that title might not be enough for the club’s fans.
For an hour of Sunday’s game, it didn’t necessarily look like this would be the case, though. After comfortably dispatching archrivals Manchester United during midweek, City found 15th-place Burnley much harder to break down. While Pep’s men were throwing everything they had at the Clarets, the cutting edge so routinely a part of their play was nowhere to be seen until the 63rd minute when Sergio Aguero got just enough on a ball that had gotten caught underfoot to get it over the line for the game’s only goal.
While the scrappy game-winner was nothing to write home about, the euphoric celebrations of the City players showed just how much it meant. While there was still a half hour left to play, they’d finally broken through Burnley’s resistance and knew what might be the most difficult matchup of their title run-in was theirs.
The win puts City back atop the league table on 92 points, one point ahead of second-place Liverpool. Both clubs will expect to win their remaining two fixtures, meaning that when the season ends on May 12, City could win the league with 98 points, while Liverpool could finish second with 97. If that holds true, Liverpool’s second place point total would have been enough to have won them the Premier League 93-percent of the time.
As painful as that might be, Liverpool can still get something huge from this season. Unlike City, they’re still alive in the Champions League and if they can get past Barcelona in the semifinals — no small task — they’ll be big favorites to win the tournament for a sixth time, more than double the next nearest English side.
But what might be most insane about this season is that if this completely realistic scenario plays out — City winning the league, Liverpool the Champions League — both teams’ fans would almost certainly feel disappointed. While a title is nothing to sniff at, City’s fans came into the season hoping to see their team, fresh off a record-setting 100-point title-winning season, win the Champions League for the first time. Then, after they won the EFL League Cup, and were still challenging on three other fronts, the first quadruple in English soccer history became the goal, until Spurs dashed those dreams earlier this month.
Meanwhile, as much as Liverpool might love to add another Champions League title to their already packed trophy cabinet, what they’d love even more is a league title, as they haven’t won one since the 1989-90 season, two full years before the formation of the Premier League. During that long dry spell, Liverpool have added a Champions League trophy to their haul, and reached two other finals.
Of course, what makes sports so magical is the unpredictability of it all. While both sides will be favored in their final games of the season, both have a matchup left that could throw a wrench into things — Leicester for Manchester City, and Wolves for Liverpool. In all the talk about their pursuit of the quadruple everyone seems to have forgotten that if City slips up, Liverpool is in line for the double. Of course, if City wins the league and the FA Cup the next week, they could win a rare domestic treble. In this most amazing of seasons, why not one last twist to really shake things up.
Blunder of the Week
David De Gea, Manchester United
David De Gea is really having a nightmare end to the season. The keeper, maybe the best in the world as recently as two weeks ago, has gifted United opponents goals because of inexplicable errors in three of his last four games. But it’s Sunday’s blunder that might hurt the most, as it allowed Chelsea to tie things up in a game that the Red Devils absolutely had to win. Although there was still a half to play, United never recovered the form that had put them on top early and almost certainly saw their top four hopes dealt a mortal blow when the game ended in a 1-1.
Unexpected Show of Sportsmanship of the Week
Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds United
With their chance of automatic promotion on the line, Championship side Leeds United unexpectedly found itself ahead of Aston Villa in the 72nd minute of Sunday’s must-win game. There was one problem with Mateusz Klich’s goal, though, it came with a Villa player on the ground injured and the rest of his teammates signaling for Leeds to put the ball out. While it’s up to the referee to actually stop play when a player is injured, Leeds manager Bielsa didn’t feel right possibly winning the game, as vital as it may have been, on such a controversial goal, and instructed his side to give Villa an uncontested goal to make up for the faux pas. It was an unexpected move and one that could prove costly, as Leeds’ failure to win means they’ll now have to qualify for next year’s Premier League through the always unpredictable Championship play-offs.