Let it never be said that we shy away from a hot take, because this one is positively molten: Liverpool are going to win the league.
We’ll give you a moment to come to terms with the sheer bravery of that statement. Done? Good. So now we’ve all accepted Liverpool are going to win the league the more interesting question becomes when are they going to win it, and which options might be the funniest because that, at the end of the day, is what matters, isn’t it?
So let’s run through some possible scenarios.
First off our starting point. Liverpool have 79 points from 33 games after a late win at Leicester which revealed plenty about Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Arsenal 66 from 33 after preparing for PSG by thrashing Ipswich.
Maths fans will already have noted that means the most points Arsenal can finish with is 81, so three points is now the magic number for Liverpool, whether those points are those they collect themselves or are instead dropped by Arsenal. Or some other combination of the above.
April 23: The earliest Liverpool can win the Premier League
Liverpool were not involved in the game which confirmed their only other Premier League title: a 2-1 win for Chelsea against closest challengers Manchester City in June 2020.
History could repeat itself as the Reds are within a single theoretical round of results of winning the Premier League for a second time. Here is the now very straightforward quickest route to a title party from here:
* Arsenal lose to Crystal Palace on April 23
Palace lost the reverse fixture against Arsenal 5-1 and have conceded five goals in both their last two home Premier League games, but you never know.
Liverpool could, of course, render anything Arsenal do from here null and void by winning any of their final five matches, the first of which comes against Spurs four days later.
May 11: Liverpool win the Premier League against Arsenal
While a great many Liverpool supporters would prefer to sort it as soon as possible out of sheer panic, plenty would relish the opportunity to secure the title specifically against an Arsenal side who by that point could well be preparing for a Champions League final.
So what do Arsenal, and indeed Liverpool, need to do (or not do) to keep the title race alive into the final few weeks so that Liverpool can claim it with victory against their closest ‘challengers’ while some commentator out there glibly quotes Brian Moore?
Obviously there are multiple routes that can lead us here, but the crucial numbers are that by May 11, Liverpool’s lead must be somewhere between four and nine points. Any less than four and they cannot quite get far enough ahead with two games still to play. But – now surely more relevantly – more than nine and the game is already up.
Getting Arsenal within nine is tougher after the gap opened up to 13 points recently, but it is still not impossible.
Here’s the gist of the easiest way to get there.
* Arsenal take maximum points against Crystal Palace and Bournemouth to move to 72 points from 35 games
* Liverpool fail to beat both Tottenham and Chelsea, leaving them with a lead of seven (lose both games), eight (draw one game and lose the other) or nine points (draw both games), and a title race still technically just about breathing, which they can finish by not losing to Arsenal.
So there you have it. All we need is for Arsenal to keep winning while Liverpool make a complete messes of two conspicuously easy fixtures against powerfully unserious teams, and we’ve got ourselves an Anfield title decider. Well not really a decider. Liverpool would probably still win the title even if they lose that game. But that won’t stop the Super Sunday graphic-and-montage team and it’s not stopping us either.
READ MORE: Clive Tyldesley: Arsenal fan chorus was sharper than any Sky Sports scripted poetry
May 3-4: Liverpool win title and Arsenal have to give them a guard of honour at Anfield the following week
We make no apologies for this being our favourite option of the lot. You can call it bias if you like, and in a way it is. We are enormously biased towards the funniest outcome in any given situation.
It is our unshakeable belief that the only way to save VAR is to stop poring over pixels in a futile bid to try and get every decision correct and instead to just go with whatever the team agrees is the funniest outcome from any VAR review.
And the funniest outcome for this title race is for Liverpool to wrap up the title the week before Arsenal’s visit so that Mikel Arteta’s team are obliged to either give them the standard guard of honour for newly-crowned champions or be harshly considered pricks if they refuse.
We’re not really sure why or how the guard of honour became a thing, but we’re glad it has and doubly glad that the seemingly reasonable “Why the f**k should we?” position is considered bad form. Again: because it’s funny. There really isn’t any good reason why Arsenal’s players should be forced to prostrate themselves before Liverpool’s in this way, but we don’t make the rules. We simply laugh at the outcome.
And the worry for Arsenal fans now is that this seems an alarmingly plausible occurrence. Unlike the previous two options we’ve outlined, there are multiple combinations of extremely believable results that lead us to a situation where Liverpool start the weekend of May 3-4 with a lead of no more than 12 points and end it with a lead of at least 10, which is what we need.
Really, it looks a lot like the previous scenario but without the unlikely ‘Liverpool repeatedly messing themselves’ element. If Arsenal take maximum points from their next two games (Palace, Bournemouth) then that would take them to 69 at the start and 72 by the end of that pre-Anfield weekend.
We would therefore need Liverpool to have no more than 81 points by the start of that weekend and at least 82 by the end of it. Given they are already on 79 and have two games before then, it basically means they have to lose to Spurs before beating Chelsea. Win both of those games and they’ll overshoot and if anything, Clive, win the title too early.
May 25: The earliest Liverpool can relinquish their Premier League lead – and the earliest they can bottle the title to Arsenal
Thirteen points seems like a big lead, doesn’t it? And that’s because it is. But it can still technically evaporate and we must pretend that might happen to set up an absolute blockbuster final day.
All that this one needs is for Arsenal to win all their games while Liverpool lose all theirs, and all that requires is for each of us – up to and including Arsenal and Liverpool themselves – to simply forget everything we have learned and come to know during this season to date.
But the fact remains that this sequence of results is technically possible.
* Arsenal beat Crystal Palace on April 23
* Liverpool lose to Tottenham on April 27
* Arsenal beat Bournemouth on May 3
* Liverpool lose to Chelsea on May 4
* Arsenal beat Liverpool on May 11
* Arsenal beat Newcastle on May 18
* Liverpool lose to Brighton on May 19
* Arsenal beat Southampton on May 25
* Liverpool lose to Crystal Palace on May 25
If all that mad sh*t happens the 10-goal swing Arsenal would also need in their favour is all-but guaranteed to send them hurtling towards a first title since 2004, an absolutely unstoppable wave of Liverpool bottling discourse and viral AFTV videos reaching numbers that would see questions raised in parliament.
A changeover is also technically possible if Arsenal win all their games and Liverpool draw one and lose four, but let’s at least try to grow up, be realistic and predict an earth-shattering run of five straight defeats for the would-be champions.
