Big Weekend: West Ham v Arsenal, Man City, Jorgensen, Emery, play-offs, El Clasico | OneFootball

An extremely pointy-end Big Weekend, this one, full of the kind of games that force all manner of unexpected temporary allegiances as old enmities are forgotten for 90 brief minutes and favours are sought.

We’re going to know an awful lot more about both the title race and that final relegation spot when the dust settles, while the battle for sixth has greater significance now Aston Villa rather than Nottingham Forest have made it to the Europa League final.

It’s all just preposterously big at this point. We can’t wait.

Game to watch: West Ham v Arsenal

Surely the pivotal fixture left in the Premier League season, the one around which the title race and relegation fight now hinge.

Almost impossible now to see how this doesn’t prove vital to at least one of those contests, and it throws up the delicious prospect of the only other fanbase hoping for an Arsenal win here being Spurs. And if Manchester City haven’t taken care of their own business on Saturday, then by Sunday we could have the even more absurd scenario where Spurs are more enthusiastic about an Arsenal win than Arsenal themselves.

The Celebration Police truly won’t know what to do with themselves if they have to start nicking Spurs fans for celebrating an Arsenal win. What world is this?

Even if City have won on Saturday evening to keep some kind of pressure on Arsenal, it’s hard to see how even they could stumble if they go to West Ham and win. Surely not even the distractions of what’s to come in Budapest could throw Arsenal off course given games to come against long-gone Burnley and a Palace side whose focus will be entirely elsewhere.

And a West Ham defeat could spell disaster for them, leaving them needing huge help from elsewhere. If Spurs were to beat Leeds on Monday night, the Hammers will find themselves four points adrift of their rivals with a far worse goal difference and needing two wins from their final games against Newcastle and Leeds to have any chance at all.

A West Ham defeat would also mathematically confirm safety for Leeds, and Crystal Palace if they are still in need of such assistance. Forest just need to match West Ham’s result this weekend to effectively secure their own survival given the absurd goal-difference swing that would be necessary to reel them in.

There are always games at this time of year that send ripples through other teams’ seasons, but it’s rare indeed to find one so crucial to both ends of the table.

Team to watch: Manchester City

Because it’s not been convincing for a little while now, has it? It hadn’t cost them significantly until the slapdash 3-3 draw at Everton on Bank Holiday Monday, but such a setback had been in the post for a while.

The 2-1 win over Arsenal in what was billed as a title decider was a better result than performance against a team who came into that fearing the worst but who have managed to use a battling display even in defeat as a springboard. And the fact is it was never a game where Arsenal could lose the title, only win it. Declan Rice was right when he said it wasn’t done.

City still had to be flawless from there and they simply haven’t been. They laboured to victory at Burnley, passing up the chance for a goal-difference boost that could still prove key to the whole caper. They scared the sh*t out of themselves in the FA Cup semi-final against Championship side Southampton.

And then came the mess at Everton in which they were only able to partially repair the likely terminal damage caused by a 13-minute meltdown in which the Toffees scored three goals.

They must surely now win out from here to have any realistic chance, and every game looks like a trap. Starting with Saturday evening’s game against a Brentford side very much involved in the multi-team scramble for sixth place that does now look like it could bring with it an unimaginable prize for someone.

Player to watch: Filip Jorgensen

We’re guessing here, but it would be a surprise if Robert Sanchez were able to take his place in the Chelsea goal after the way he left the defeat against Nottingham Forest last week.

And that’s interesting because one could, if one were so inclined, make the argument that Chelsea’s current malaise can be traced back to Jorgensen’s last start for the Blues.

We all know the details of Chelsea’s misery by now. Six straight Premier League defeats, the first five of them without so much as a goal in a streak only ended by Joao Pedro’s otherwise meaningless if brilliant late consolation against Forest, and a run that has mathematically ended top-five hopes for a team that had been there or thereabouts all season right up until they suddenly weren’t.

But it really is only a couple of months ago that things were not too bad at all. Chelsea had just given Aston Villa a 4-1 paddling in the Premier League and reached the FA Cup quarter-finals. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and the grumblings against poor old LinkedIn Liam had already begun, but it wasn’t terrible either. In all competitions they had lost just two of their last 15 games and both of those were narrowly and against Arsenal, which doesn’t seem so bad.

And then, with a little more than a quarter of an hour remaining of their Champions League last-16 first-leg trip to PSG, Chelsea were level at 2-2 in the Parc des Princes and arguably the better side. They seemed to be heading for an entirely acceptable first-leg result whatever transpired from there.

Then Jorgensen had 15 minutes from hell, Chelsea conceded three more goals to lose 5-2 and have never recovered.

Their only wins since then have been against Port Vale and Leeds to reach the FA Cup final, that latter success in particularly looking increasingly bizarre when placed in the context of both teams’ wider form.

Because Chelsea’s main thing since that night in Paris has been losing, and specifically losing by three goals. They ended up doing it in both legs against PSG as well as in league games against Everton, Man City and Brighton. Forest were moments away from inflicting another such beating on a club in disarray.

Rosenior is gone, with Calum McFarlane handed the unpleasant task of trying to steer Chelsea’s collection of football players that look less of a football team than ever before through the final weeks of the season.

The fact Chelsea have left it to McFarlane rather than seek a proper interim – especially with Chelsea more than anyone being the home of the elite-level interim manager – speaks to where the actual football sits in the business’ priority list.

Chelsea’s season was far from over when Rosenior left. It could still even now end with Champions League qualification – admittedly via an unlikely sixth-place back door – and FA Cup success. But it looks far more likely to end in catastrophic disappointment.

And that collapse can be traced back, specifically if incredibly harshly, to the last time Jorgensen started a game.

Manager to watch: Unai Emery

Mr Europa League is at it again after leading Aston Villa to the final in emphatic style on Thursday night. Villa will be warm favourites to end a long wait for silverware when they face Freiburg in Istanbul on May 20.

But that leaves us mischievously wondering how Emery might approach the next couple of Premier League games. We all know how he approached the games directly before each leg of the semi-final.

Sure, it was fine when it was against Fulham. But then he did it again with knobs on against Spurs, and that represented a significant misreading of the prevailing Barclays mood.

Villa absolutely shouldn’t care one bit about any of the noise after prioritising their own season over Spurs-based banter, but there is now a compelling case for going strong this weekend at Burnley. Take care of business here, and a top-five finish is secured. Champions League football is secured. Even without the Europa League final to consider, it would be a wise move given Villa’s last two Premier League games are against Liverpool and Man City.

Then only Istanbul matters. Villa can then forget all about Friday’s game against Liverpool. It becomes a box-ticking exercise in the middle of 10 days focused entirely on Istanbul.

We can even throw things forward if we like and wonder what sore-headed team Emery might pick against City in the final game of the season and how industriously they approach it. Because if that game still carries any significance and there’s any hint that Villa are approaching it with anything less than absolute commitment, then the howls of complaint after the Spurs game will seem but whispered grumbles.

Football League game to watch: Middlesbrough v Southampton

All the play-off games are games to watch, of course, but the first leg between Middlesbrough and Southampton is the Championship one that falls within our strict Saturday-Sunday definition of the weekend and thus it gets the nod here.

Both have known the play-offs were their likely fate for a few weeks now – and even that they were each other’s likely opponents – and it does feel like a finely balanced tie between equals. Almost literally, with the two of them finishing the season on 80 points and separated by a single goal on goal difference. Both ended the regular season in reasonable nick with two wins and two draws in their final four games.

It does lack the dynamic of the other semi-final, which has your classic play-off dilemma of a third-placed Millwall who had automatic promotion ambitions until the very last against a sixth-placed Hull who are just grateful to have snuck in and kept promotion on the table at all.

But it should be a gloriously tense and taught game played under immense pressure. The play-offs really do hit different.

European game to watch: Barcelona v Real Madrid

There’s rarely a Clasico that wouldn’t be the European game to watch, but rarely one that’s so straightforwardly the selection as this.

So unhinged has the build-up to this game become that the fact Barcelona will be crowned La Liga champions if they avoid defeat has been relegated to a footnote.

Yes, fine, very good, well done them. But never mind all that, frankly, we’re all far more interested in which Real Madrid players will even be available for this and which ones have been too busy fighting each other in training.

The week has been dominated by multiple stories of bust-ups and slappings and fights and whether Kylian Mbappe could or should return to the team after injury.

Fede Valverde is out of the game through injury that may or may not have been caused by one or other of his highly publicised squabbles with Aurelien Tchouameni. Valverde has insisted it’s all been blown out of proportion, which does sit firmly in ‘well he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ territory at this time.

The main point is this, though. How often do you get to watch a game with such a high chance of seeing both a title winner crowned and the prospect of a couple of lads from the opposition going full Bowyer-Dyer, and all in what is already the highest-profile club game in European football anyway?