Four games, eight teams, one screen, pure Barclays – and the biggest winners weren’t even involved | OneFootball

Never mind all the singing and political hoopla in Vienna yesterday. This was the real European contest.

Four simultaneous games, all of them spending the entire afternoon on a knife-edge, all best enjoyed watching Sky Sports Multiview and what their commentator repeatedly if disarmingly insisted on calling the ‘quad box’.

The great thing about watching four games all at once on the same screen is that you are actually watching none of those games. We could tell you almost nothing about the ebb and flow of those games, the tactical gambits being deployed. You get absolutely none of that stuff.

But what you get is drama. All of the drama. Goals suddenly fill the screen. Every one of them, we are told and implicitly trust, absolutely massive in the extremely complicated race for Europe.

This really might have been our favourite afternoon of the whole season. Just joyous end-of-season scenes in which everything mattered, but not too much. There was no existential threat here – that would come later for West Ham and vicariously Tottenham as the Hammers headed to Newcastle.

An afternoon of goals, and penalties, and VAR drama that was sufficiently present without becoming the overarching narrative for once, and As It Stands tables, and nobody really knowing what they actually need to qualify for Europe because… for the most part they don’t know what they actually need.

There were two things absolutely key to our enjoyment of it all. First, that every game remained in the balance until the final minutes. Second, that we had to guess that it was the final minutes because not one clock was deployed.

We’re sure there is a very grown-up and sensible reason why there weren’t clocks next to the scorelines under each screen. But we absolutely cannot think what it might be.

But it all helped. It all helped in the pursuit of just letting all the Barclays wash over you. To just accept that “This is a massive goal” is absolutely true and correct.

We did pick up on the fact that Brighton could confirm a return to Europe today, but instead they carelessly lost at Leeds as Dominic Calvert-Lewin pounced on a mistake to round the keeper and score with… oh, very little time left. Don’t know exactly how little, obviously. Who cares?

There were a couple of very obvious penalties not given on field, as is the style of the era, but luckily for everyone they were sufficiently obvious that VAR said it might be an idea to overturn them and neither ref decided to continue the day’s trend for ignoring such sage counsel.

Everton were in with a great chance of Europe, we were told. Then suddenly they weren’t as Sunderland tore them apart in the second half. At which point it was Sunderland in with a great chance of Europe.

In keeping with a season where the positions between seventh and 14th have apparently been handed out at random week by week all year long, Sunderland are now above Chelsea in the table. Everton, having been As It Standsed up to eighth at one point are instead 11th. They will have to win on the final day at Spurs to have any hope of Europe now. Which could be tremendous fun if Spurs have to win to stay up.

Wilson Isidor scored a late goal for Sunderland, something that feels like it’s happened once per business month all season long, a sufficiently pleasing thought that we don’t want to go and look it up to discover it hasn’t happened until October. This was not a day to let facts in the way of vibes. Not when we’re so deep in the quad box.

There were some daft goals, which is pleasing too in this environment. Ricochets and deflections and wild defensive errors all feel somehow far more suitable in this environment than worldies or sh*tpingers. Antonee Robinson’s first Premier League goal from a penalty for some reason. Adam Wharton’s first Palace goal, which doesn’t sound like it can possibly be correct but which, again, we will absolutely not be checking.

But the very best thing about it all? That on an afternoon of four mini screens and eight teams the biggest winners of the lot were in fact Bournemouth, who weren’t playing in any of those games.

The battle of the B-Teams is now firmly in their hands, and still have two open routes available into the Champions League via pipping Liverpool to fifth or getting in by finishing sixth if Villa still end up fifth and go ahead and win the Europa League final this week. Which, again, just feels like an entirely correctly convoluted set of things in this environment.

We’re already counting down the minutes, hours and days on an invisible clock and taking in all the final-day nonsense via a genuinely unwatchable and entirely incomprehensible 10-game Multiview screen we’re insisting be dubbed the deca box.