Arsenal aces face possible Premier League medal snub just for playing no Premier League games

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Football365

·20 mai 2026

Arsenal aces face possible Premier League medal snub just for playing no Premier League games

The Premier League title is settled and the relegation battle is heading to the final day. All very exciting, we’re sure.

But we’re not really interested in any of that. We’ve got philosophical questions about the nature of threeness and unacceptable wordplay.

Vidéos OneFootball

This is the important stuff. That, and the latest triumphant return of Ace Watch.

Zero Hour

Today’s quasi-philosophical debate: is a ‘three-word response’ still a ‘three-word response’ when two of the three words are in fact the same word?

We’re genuinely not sure, but it’s definitely the most important thing happening in all of football right now.

To the Daily Star we go, as ultimately all of us one day must:

Pep Guardiola breaks silence on Manchester City future with 3-word response

We’re just going to ignore that they’ve put ‘3-word’ instead of ‘three-word’ lest we get rattled into the shadow realm and grind our teeth to dusty stumps in an impotent rage, and get straight to the important part.

For what was Pep’s silence-breaking three-word (we can’t bring ourselves to write it out wrong again)?

Asked how much reports on his future had affected preparation for the game, Guardiola told Sky Sports: “Zero, absolutely zero.”

We’re genuinely curious here. We’ve lurched one way then the other on this all morning. Help us, please.

Pep talk

Talking of Pep’s silence-breaking, and speaking here as a snarky football media column with a confirmed soft spot for the Currant Bun’s wordplay, we cannot let The Sun get away with this.

PEPXIT: Pep Guardiola breaks silence on Man City exit after draw against Bournemouth

Pepxit? PEPXIT? PEPXIT? Absolutely not. Sounds like a haemorrhoid cream. And not a very good one. Pexit, possibly, we might allow if we were feeling in a generous mood. But not this. Never this.

We must concede we did slightly bring this upon ourselves, though. We didn’t think we were actually giving The Sun terrible ideas when amusing ourselves and literally nobody else with the equally execrable Bexit and Palmexit on Monday.

Cross wires

A very giddy John Cross is busy this morning in the Mirror hailing the start of the Arteta Era of Dominance.

It’s not an idle thought. Arsenal have been the best team in the country this season, there is no reason at all to expect them to step backwards from here, and every realistic rival is either going to begin next season starting a new journey or midway through one in which all faith has seemingly been lost.

It’s absolutely true that Arsenal could become English football’s dominant force for the foreseeable.

That is what makes Arteta’s achievement even greater. Arteta has gone toe-to-toe with his mentor, Guardiola, and finally come out on top. For all City’s wealth, experience and power, Arsenal have won through to be crowned champions again. Let’s be clear: Arsenal have spent big themselves, they are hardly plucky underdogs, but they have beaten arguably the best team of the Premier League era. We may be witnessing a changing of the guard. City have won 20 trophies in Guardiola’s 10 years in charge but they cannot stay on top forever. City’s rivalry had been with Liverpool. Now Arsenal have stepped forward ready to be the dominant force in English football.

Absolutely cannot disagree with any of that. Or this bit…

Arsenal have built a formidable squad. Two players for each position. The best squad they have had for years. Pundits were queuing up to say it was the best squad but you only prove that by winning.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

And now Arsenal have done that in the most wonderful, glorious fashion.

Have they now, John? They’ve won the title in the most wonderful, glorious fashion, have they? A mere 24 hours after they, and we quote:

‘…stumbled over the line with a night of nerves which ended with the supposed champions-in-waiting time wasting and running down the clock against already relegated Burnley.’

We all remember Arsenal’s terrible, embarrassing, City-encouraging win over Burnley in which they faced not one single shot on target or any shot of any kind from the 58th minute, don’t we, John? Mainly because it was you who told us all about it. Including this:

‘Normally you would say the three points was all that mattered and Kai Havertz secured those with a first half header. But that was not the case. It was painful, ugly and was far from convincing.’

NARRATOR: It was the case.

Law and order

It’s instantly become a firm Mediawatch favourite that you will all tire of far more quickly than we do. It was the Mail last week. Here’s the latest example from the Daily Express:

Roy Keane’s future son-in-law’s behaviour for Southampton comes back to bite after Spygate

This is who you are now, Taylor Harwood-Bellis. Might as well change your name by deed poll.

Record breaker

We are once again sat in something approaching awe at the sheer wizardry of the Reach headline writer’s art. It takes real skill to dress up ‘Man who has made no Premier League appearances this season might not get Premier League medal’ into…

Arsenal world record-holder may not receive Premier League winners’ medal

We’re kicking ourselves for not joining the dots before handing over our click because the ‘Arsenal world record-holder’ is, of course, Kepa Arrizabalaga and the ‘Arsenal world record’ he set is obviously the time back in 2018 Chelsea were daft enough to activate his £72m Athletic Bilbao release clause.

And of course he very much still might get a winners’ medal anyway despite being a mere five appearances short of the five-appearance threshold required to guarantee one, because Arsenal have 40 of the things to dish out as they see fit and would, you’d think, place a man whose been on every Premier League subs’ bench this season for them quite high on that list.

Still, nice headline.

Ace Watch

But it’s not just Reach playing silly buggers here. The Sun are, as ever, showing their whole arse with the sort of abandon more normally associated with Piero Hincapie.

Former Chelsea star one of two Arsenal aces NOT guaranteed a Prem winners’ medal

Now we might, on a good day, have been willing to look the other way at Kepa being described as an ‘ace’. He’s a world-record holder after all. It’s borderline, but we think we can allow it.

This, though?

The other Arsenal ace that could miss out on a medal is third-choice goalkeeper Tommy Setford.

Come on, now. He hasn’t even sat on a Premier League bench this season.

Unfortunately we’re also going to have to be quite ‘Well, actually’ boring and note The Sun have managed to entirely misunderstand the Premier League rule they’ve quoted in their own story while we’re about it.

Premier League rules state that each club will get 40 medals to give out as they see fit, with the proviso that the manager and all players who have made at least five appearances have to be first in the queue. It means, for instance, Ethan Nwaneri will automatically get one for his six appearances before going out on loan to Marseille.

But this on Kepa’s situation is wrong.

And thus despite the Spaniard amassing six appearances in the Carabao Cup, four in the FA Cup and one in the Champions League, he can only get a medal with the “consent of the board”.

That rule applies were Arsenal to have more than 39 players (Arteta gets a gong as well, remember) meeting the five-game threshold, leading them to request additional medals from the league. As Arsenal have a mere 24 players meeting that threshold, they have a great many spare medals they can hand out, as The Sun themselves quote from the rulebook, ‘to such of its Players and Officials as it thinks fit’.

So it’s entirely up to Arsenal themselves, not the Premier League board or anyone else, to decide whether a goalkeeping ace who has sat on the bench for 37 games gets one. Or indeed a goalkeeping ace who has sat on the bench for zero games.