Football is a simple game played by 22 men chasing a ball around a field - and after 38 weeks, Manchester City win the title.
The day before anti-climax dawned, they had rehearsed the full trophy lift routine at Arsenal with stage, bells and whistles - just in case City slipped up. But we’ve all seen this movie several times before and, deep down, everyone knew how it would end.
The stage and champions’ walkway remained hidden backstage. Like the losing team’s ribbons at a cup final are never needed for tying around the trophy handles, they were surplus to requirements. Sky Sports had been billing the last day of the Premier League season as a “thrilling” finale, but for neutrals it was about as thrilling as a hen night in a convent.
Inside the first four minutes, as news filtered through of City scoring 200 miles away, a deathly hush fell on the Emirates like a curtain. All that remained was a forlorn chase like revellers trying to make the midnight train home knowing the carriage has already turned into a pumpkin.
The DJ’s pre-match playlist had included the Beastie Boys’ 1980s racket Fight For Your Right To Party, but Arsenal never had a chance to get the party started. For a couple of minutes before the interval, hope sprang eternal as Takehiro Tomiyasu’s equaliser and Mohammed Kudus’s phenomenal bicycle kick at the Etihad changed the mood from resigned to revitalised.
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Then fake news of a West Ham equaliser sent Gooners into a premature frenzy, but the mundane truth was a casualty of the grapevine’s crackles. Arsenal went through the motions of laying siege to the Everton goal, and they deserved Kai Havertz’s late winner, but in the end it was immaterial.
Unlike Michael Thomas snatching the title in the dying seconds at Anfield 35 years ago, in truth it was never up for grabs. So a team who won more games, and scored more goals, than the Invincibles in 2004 has finished the season empty-handed and broken-hearted again.
Arsenal players look dejected at the final whistle (Getty Images)Defiantly, as the last grains of sand drained from the hourglass, the Emirates broke into a supportive chorus of manager Mikel Arteta’s husbandry and the final whistle was greeted by a round of applause reminiscent of a century at Lord’s. Chapeau, Arsenal - you took it down the home straight again, but manager near misses are not enough for Arteta.
“Don’t be satisfied,” the Holloway Road messiah told the crowd in his post-match address. “We want much more than that - and we are gonna get it."
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