Is this a real Premier League title race or a cleverly maintained illusion? | first division

hhello hello. Evidence. Is this thing still on? As we approach the penultimate weekend of the Premier League season, a title race is supposedly not enough. appear exist. Arsenal are leaders, one point ahead city ​​of manchester. City has one game less. Mathematically speaking, nothing has been decided or resolved yet.

Of course, what remains to be seen is whether this is actually a real title race or whether we are simply living a skillfully maintained illusion. After all, it has been almost three months since City dropped points against anyone other than a direct rival for the title. They haven't lost in the league since December and are on a six-game winning streak. Three more will be enough to retain the league title. Two will do if Arsenal mistake at Old Trafford on Sunday.

Danger, danger, parries and thrusts, obstacles in the way, seething tempers and feverish eyebrows: these are all the classic ingredients of a title race. Instead, City have basically avoided them all, ripping up the script in favor of a bloodless cruise to excellence. The model here is 2018-19, when City gleefully shackled Liverpool for 15 weeks as an elaborate internet phishing scam, tormenting them with the prospect of a prize that was ultimately never within their reach. Liverpool lost once all season, won their last nine games and finished with 97 points. City won their last 14 games and surprise! – finished at 98.

This season has on the surface felt more like a fight, with Liverpool originally making it a three-horse race and several leadership changes as a result of the vagaries of the calendar. But the metanarrative has been basically consistent throughout: the city gradually picks up the pace until no one can live with them.

It is quite possible that Arsenal's own challenge failed with the 2-0 home defeat to Aston Villa in April. They could still climb their personal Everest and reach 89 points, their highest total since the season of invincibles. They were able to finish with a 16-1-1 record in their last 18 games, only to come out on top and find City already there, smiling at them with the blue flag planted. It may turn out that the last month of their season was a complete waste of time, time spent pointlessly persuading themselves that they were chasing something real.

And in this sense, they would not be alone. For months, an entire title-race industrial complex—frothy pundits, portentous headlines, meandering call-in shows—has been assembled in anticipation of an epic denouement, as if a thrilling finale could simply be born by an enchantment. On the contrary, it is notable how few dramatic twists there have been, how little sound and fury, how little intrigue and mind games that would normally signal a career adjustment.

What we get from the City, instead, is the kind of faint electronic hum that is associated with an appliance that has long been taken for granted. They are all linked and ready, all the tendrils pointing in a single direction, all the nerve endings calibrated towards a single focus. About the only fuss has been some rumors about The future of Jack Grealish. and potential midfield transfer targets for the summer. This is City's business and they know it better than anyone.

Beyond that, a terrifying calm. There is a school of thought that City are a club driven by grudges and enmities, fueled by antagonism and looking for scraps at every opportunity. Perhaps this is true at boardroom level, or in the wild frontiers of the internet, where City fans remain unrivaled in their ability to fuel conspiracy theories and delusional snubs, desperate to be hated. But within the four hard walls of that pale blue dressing room, Pep Guardiola has long mastered the art of turning off the lights, drowning out the noise, smoothing out the rough edges in search of a frictionless winning machine.

This is evident in the tedious Netflix documentary chronicling his Treble-winning season, a show so lacking in internal tension that at one point we're treated to several minutes of Grealish talking, seriously, about how much he loves Bovril. “Oh, those Bovrils in Bristol City, now we're talking,” Grealish sings. “How good is it? Manu (Akanji), have you ever had a Bovril, do you like the sauce? I took about eight home. I was giving them to people. Bovvy. I love it.”

For Guardiola, part of this intense calm comes from experience: not just the knowledge of having been here before, but the assurance that one more title will in no way make or break his legacy. “It's not winning or losing that will change my opinion of this season,” he said this month. “We can lose all four games and that means I don't trust my players? It is impossible.

The small spate of injuries from earlier in the season has disappeared, leaving a fully fit squad for the visit of Fulham on Saturday lunchtime. Meanwhile, Arsenal must watch and wait before going to Old Trafford to play what is still technically still. Erik ten Hag's Manchester United. And as much as Arsenal start as favourites, Liverpool have discovered three times this season that a wounded United, under no obligation to win and content simply to play on the counter-attack, can be a surprisingly dangerous animal.

Either way, at some point – be it Tuesday or the following Sunday – City will most likely be toasting another title, a sixth title in seven seasons, the kind of dynastic dominance that English football fans always relish. has liked to make fun of in other countries. Perhaps this is now the true farmers' league: a league that was bought and grown, and is now harvested as it pleases.

The outcome of the 115 Premier League charges against City remains a distant and paradoxical point on the horizon: it will never get closer, no matter how much time passes. And in any case, City's ultimate innocence or guilt only has a tangential relevance here. The bigger picture is that dominance on this scale, whether obtained legally or illegally, whether obtained through state sponsorship or mastery of regulatory fine print, comes at a cost to the spectacle as a whole.

Perhaps then title bewilderment is the kind that becomes inevitable when a league begins to revolve so completely around one club. This is City's universe now, and even when you push against the walls it's never entirely clear how much of it is real and how much is projection.