Revisiting top 10 funniest season outcomes: Spurs, Arsenal on track, Liverpool not so much | OneFootball

In March, we came up with the 10 funniest things that could happen over the last couple of months of the season.

The last couple of months of the season is now the last month of the season, and we’re delighted to report that a lot of what were in many cases deliberately outlandish predictions – because obvious, straightforward things are rarely funny – are either very much on track or have been superseded by other new and still quite humorous possibilities.

What we said then we’ll say again now: we really are sorry, Spurs and Arsenal, but your continued misery features prominently.

Let’s revisit last month’s badinage and see where we’re at with these.

Tottenham relegated

Yes. Very much so. We chortled about it like it was already inevitable back in March and it’s only grown more certain in the weeks since.

Spurs have been a kind of reverse Man City since the new year. Only in the last fortnight have they actually fallen into the relegation zone, yet the sheer unstoppable force of their momentum has made their downfall feel utterly inevitable for absolutely ages.

You do have to hand it to Spurs, though. Nobody torments their own fanbase quite like these absolute bastards. Every time you sense Spurs fans coming to terms with their fate, even if it does involve entering some kind of fugue state, along they come with a fresh supply of false hope mined from the very bottom of the barrel only to then snatch it away again.

The Brighton game genuinely ought to be illegal under some kind of human rights legislation. Even games that aren’t Spurs games are getting involved now. Before Forest v Burnley, you’d imagine Spurs fans were at peace with the idea that Forest would almost certainly win that.

But 1-0 down at half-time having mustered barely a shot? Hello. But, of course, other teams are not like Spurs. Other teams don’t just give up when they suffer one setback in a match. Forest won 4-1, obviously. Morgan Gibbs-White, keen to join Spurs last summer, scored a hat-trick, obviously.

The first rule of Spursy is that the Spursiest thing will always happen.

Even West Ham’s total inability to lay a glove on a barely-there Crystal Palace whose focus now lies entirely on the Conference League is part of the conspiracy.

Had West Ham won, as they surely would have done had they attempted to do so earlier than the last 30 seconds of added time, Spurs would surely be resigned to their fate for the final, decisive time.

Now? All manner of ‘If we can just beat Wolves…’ prognostications have started bubbling up once more. Oh my sweet summer child, of course you aren’t going to beat Wolves. Your next win is obviously going to be at Chelsea after you’ve already been relegated.

Arsenal remain potless

And cruel irony isn’t restricted to the white half of north London. The red half are every bit as good at it.

What a vicious twist that Arsenal remembered they actually are quite good at football just at the moment it really might all be too late.

They were excellent at the Etihad and could easily have walked away with a point or even three. But they didn’t, and now face banterpocalypse.

And even in our wildest ‘funniest outcome’ fever dreams we didn’t have ‘getting knocked out of the FA Cup by Southampton’ on the bingo card. We were more on a ‘finish second in everything’ daydream back then. In fairness, losing to Southampton is probably less bad from an Arsenal standpoint.

Shrewd of them to avoid the ‘four silver medals’ outcome. It’s something. But we have found ourselves idly wondering something in our weaker moments in recent days. Suspend your disbelief for a second and just imagine that Spurs somehow stay up – we know, but stay with us here.

If that happens, which theoretically it still could, and if Arsenal finish second in the Premier League and don’t win the Champions League – very possibly as a result of some Harry Kane unpleasantness or other for added cruelty points – which of the two North London clubs is happier at the end of the season?

It’s the absolute f*cking idiots who’ve somehow finished 17th again isn’t it? Football is utterly ridiculous.

Liverpool win Champions League

Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

It was all going so well, wasn’t it? But when your first two ideas are looking even more solid than they did initially, you can allow yourself a whiff or two. Especially when you look at what comes next on this list.

The thrust of what we wanted to achieve from Liverpool winning the Champions League isn’t completely lost. It was to muddy the Slot Out waters. Liverpool fans quite reasonably wanting to get rid of a manager who had, in the space of two seasons, matched Jurgen Klopp’s tally of Premier League AND Champions League titles would have been truly spectacular but also very greedy on our part.

We can’t have that, alas, and it was always asking a lot. We’ll have to settle for the fact that Liverpool are going to qualify for the Champions League with a double-digit cushion and hope that serves to make the season sufficiently confusing.

No, it isn’t anywhere near as good as winning in Budapest would have been. No, it isn’t anywhere near as funny. But sometimes when life gives you lemons, you have to make Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Man City win domestic treble

We’re so back. Even a month ago this was still a bit ‘Technically they could now, you know. Technically’. Now it only takes two odds-on shots to land for it to happen.

And it will still tick all the boxes we had a month ago. A Man City treble win – matching a feat only they have previously achieved and that even the great Sir Alex Ferguson regarded as essentially unattainable – would be extraordinary in itself, but mainly for the fact nobody would really care.

It simply isn’t this season of Barclays’ primary narrative arc and never will be. It’s a secondary-character story viewed entirely through the way it impacts the anti-hero protaganists at Arsenal and even Spurs.

In years to come, the most memorable Man City figure from this season won’t be Guardiola or Haaland or Cherki or Silva or O’Reilly. It will be him with the Arsenal water bottle at Stamford Bridge.

As we said last time out:

Spurs and Arsenal launch joint legal campaign against Man City

With absolutely everything above involving these three going flawlessly to plan at this stage, we can just leave this here with no notes or addenda required.

Forest win Europa League and finish 17th

This one still has legs, but does require some new footnotes.

It was always harsh to expect any other club to match Spurs in the absurdist banter stakes, even one as thoroughly capable of both the sublime and ridiculous as Forest. And listen, fair play, they’ve given it a red hot crack. But it does look now, alas, like they are just a bit too cowardly to finish 17th and are probably going to finish 16th instead.

No shame in that for Forest, of course. Spurs really are just built different.

Crystal Palace win Conference League

Still very much on. Still every chance Oliver Glasner goes out by adding yet another trophy to the previously empty shelves at Selhurst Park and makes London very much the Conference League trophy’s natural home.

Double funny if both Forest and Palace oblige and each end up winning the competition the other was supposed to be in.

If you’ll allow a brief moment of seriousness to creep in here – don’t worry, we’re taking the p*ss out of Liam Rosenior in a minute, we promise – we do rather suspect that a blueprint for European football has been established over the last couple of seasons.

English teams will do well enough in the Champions League, but never dominate it. There are too many other big clubs around for that to happen. The Premier League’s advantage in continental competition is not that their best team is necessarily better than anyone else’s; it’s that England’s 17th-best team is better than anyone else’s fifth-best.

The Premier League’s depth is its secret sauce. And that depth has grown stronger at the precise moment the Europa League has been weakened by the righteous but impactful removal of undeserving Champions League losers.

And now we see this new reality most clearly in the Thursday night competitions, where England absolutely do now dominate almost despite themselves. No English team has been knocked out of either the Europa League or Conference League by anyone other than another English team for very nearly two seasons now.

And there really is every chance that holds until the pots are dished out again, with Palace very much on track to claim the Conference and whoever wins the East v West Midlands semi-final between Forest and Villa sure to be favourite in the Europa final.

Liverpool, Chelsea and Aston Villa all finish outside top five

Okay, look, we were pushing our luck here. We’re very happy with our current hit-rate from the above, so we’ll allow ourselves this ostentatious swing and a miss.

All is not lost, though. Liverpool and Villa are locked in for the top five, sure, but look at Chelsea. They are absolute dog toss right now.

So bad, in fact, that they are currently the worst of London’s ‘Big Three’ and right now that is an extraordinary thing to be.

Don’t believe us? Consider the standard, accepted form-guide number of six games.

Banter-addled, relegation-doomed Spurs? One win, two draws, three defeats.

Bottle-addled, happening-again-doomed Arsenal? One win, one draw, four defeats

And Chelsea? One win – against Port Vale ffs – and five defeats.

They are literally worse than the two biggest running jokes in English football who are both themselves operating at something dangerously close to 100 per cent banter.

That is utterly extraordinary and means that merely finishing outside the top five is no longer the limit of Chelsea’s comedic ambitions. They’ve fallen so far out of Champions League contention that they’ve ended up falling into the huge writhing mass of clubs scrambling to reach European football at all.

They are now only two points above the bottom half. They are closer to 14th place than to fifth. They might get another chance to ruin the Conference League for everyone else next season, by which point we assume they will have appointed a proper football manager. They might well not even get that. (Conference League, that is. Although also the proper manager, in fairness.)

Brentford and Sunderland qualify for Champions League

Sure, we doubled down on the above with this one. Stood to reason, didn’t it? If we had all the bigger teams finishing outside the top five then it stood to reason that someone else had to take their places.

Brentford and Sunderland in the Europa and Conference League will have to do. It’s still pretty funny, we suppose.

And there are apparently still possibilities for sixth place involving Villa winning the Europa League and finishing fifth that make our head hurt when we try and think about them too hard but sound like they could definitely be funny in a too-clever-for-us way like Frasier.

One potential piece of fun we think we’re right about is that there is a non-zero chance that if Chelsea can get themselves secure in sixth they will play a game against Liverpool where it benefits them to lose and thus potentially help Slot’s side leapfrog Villa.

Liam Rosenior launches a podcast and starts selling a course and/or supplements

Lots of the above have decent chances of success, but our safest and most nailed-on winner comes right at the last.

If Rosenior isn’t trying to make Herbalife a thing again before big 2026 is out or at the very least advising his subscribers they can get 10 per cent off Huel with the code utterspoofer we will eat every single one of our hats.