Manchester City took pole position in the Premier League title race after their narrow victory against Tottenham on Tuesday night.
Erling Haaland’s double made the difference for Pep Guardiola’s team, which goes into the last game of the season two points ahead of Arsenal.
A victory over West Ham will seal their fourth successive title, although Arsenal will still have hopes of ending two decades of pain when they face Everton.
Tuesday’s result also meant Tottenham are out of the race to qualify for next season’s Champions League.
Mail Sport’s Jack Gaughan was on hand at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to give some of the talking points from the match.
Erling Haaland scored a brace to give Manchester City the lead in the Premier League title race.
Pep confirms that he is staying
Pep Guardiola has confirmed for the first time that he will continue as Manchester City manager next season.
The City manager will begin his ninth year in charge and City fans will have feared the Spaniard would leave if the club made history by lifting four titles in a row.
“I couldn’t be in a better place in terms of my president, CEO and sporting director,” Guardiola said. ‘The people above me, I have never had this support in my life. That’s why I’m still at City, eight years, and there will be another nine.’
Those words will be music to the ears of City fans.
Pep Guardiola confirmed he will remain as Manchester City manager next season ahead of their victory.
Internal turmoil for Spurs fans
There were apparently hundreds of empty seats amid the internal turmoil of Spurs fans.
Despite Ange Postecoglou insisting that anyone who wanted defeat needed “counselling”, Spurs fans outside said they were hoping for an away win.
That all changed on the inside, as Spurs created a decent opening atmosphere. But when Haaland scored, his fans started shouting: “Are you watching Arsenal?”
Tottenham fans chant ‘are you watching Arsenal’ after Erling Haaland’s first goal?
Sarr was everywhere
Spurs opted for split forwards to counter City, so Pape Sarr had to cover a lot of ground in the middle.
As their touch map shows, it was everywhere, falling back into the midfield and even further out as they tried to clog up the central areas. he attempted to obstruct the central area of the park.
City CAN face Girona
On Tuesday it emerged that City should be able to face Girona in next season’s Champions League.
City Football Group sister club Girona can enter the competition if CFG, which owns a 47 percent stake, places shares in a “blind trust” controlled by a third party.
The crux of the issue is whether they can compete with each other lies in demonstrating that there is no executive control or exchange of information. It seems like it shouldn’t be a problem.
Girona, sister club of the City Football Group, could face Manchester City in the Champions League next season
Arsenal fans’ prank backfires
We’ve seen it many times over the years on the eve of big games, and it was no different here after a small group of Arsenal fans tried to rile City ahead of this trip to Spurs.
Some of them traveled to where they thought City were staying and set off fireworks at 2am to disrupt their sleep. The only problem was that City didn’t travel to London until the next morning.
Arsenal fans set off fireworks outside what they thought was Manchester City’s hotel.
Italian interest in Spurs defender
Spurs are willing to sell Emerson Royal this summer but value the wing at around £25million.
AC Milan and Juventus are among the clubs showing early interest in the Brazilian, but their valuations are expected to fall short of that figure.
Emerson joined Tottenham from Barcelona at the end of the 2021 summer window in a deal worth £25.8m.
Saudi side Al Nassr made an approach in January but failed to match Tottenham’s rating, while Postecoglou needed him to fill the central defender role during a defensive injury crisis.