Sunday 16th April, 2pm
West Ham @ 5/1
Arsenal @ 4/7
Draw @ 16/5
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At least, according to TS Eliot and his sprawling poem The Waste Land it is. But was he referring solely to the capricious, unfeeling weather that is synonymous with this month of year? The kind we have all experienced this week?
Or was he foreshadowing the precise juncture of the 2022/23 Premier League football season – in and around Gameweek 30 – when hope and ambition is cruelly replaced by anguish and existential despair?
Who can possibly say? Your guess is as good as mine. Despite several attempts, I have never made it past the opening line…
If it is the latter, however, for which clubs will April be especially cruel? Arsenal? Hmm, potentially.
From one angle, The Gunners are in a great position. A sunny, sheltered enclave benefitting from a points cushion; and no pesky, distracting cup competitions on the horizon. They have a mere eight games left to play this season. And if they win them all, they will be Premier League champions. It couldn’t be simpler.
But a minor shuffle of one’s chair and a different outlook suddenly comes into view. A bulwark of dark clouds can now be seen developing at the bottom of the valley. Because there are potentially tricky fixtures within this approaching octet: Chelsea (home), Newcastle (away), and Brighton (home).
Oh, yes, and Manchester City (away).
Unreal City are currently espousing a peerless brand of football. A variety so robust and relentless that even Bayern Munich were unable to repel its vigour; leaving The Etihad thoroughly dumbstruck in midweek – as if they had just received an unexpected elbow in the larynx from a passing linesman.
But the sky blue side of Manchester still has the business end of two cups to navigate. Does that help to even things up?
Both teams have very winnable games this weekend – City host a floundering Leicester; Arsenal make the short journey east to face a scrapping West Ham – before all eyes are inexorably drawn towards April 26th…and the seismic showdown between the pair.
By the time the month of April is done, Manchester City could already be top. To relinquish their lead at such a late stage of the campaign, after holding onto it for so long, would be cruelty indeed for Mikel Arteta’s men.
Due to the starkly bifurcated nature of the current Premier League table – with the bottom half packed together more tightly than a vast deposit of anthracite – literally every game this weekend is riddled with connotations. Every game will either impact the chase for Champions League football, or be a brutal relegation death-match.
And if it is cruel at the top, well, then it is even crueller at the bottom.
Southampton v Crystal Palace at 3pm on Saturday is the only proper basement six-pointer this weekend, however. And, following the remarkable regeneration The Eagles have recently undergone since the arrival of Roy Hodgson, momentum is now very much with the away side. Another win gives Palace a little more breathing space, whilst simultaneously sending Southampton a little nearer to The Championship.
Perhaps the most closely contested game of the weekend, though, will also be its first: Aston Villa v Newcastle is Saturday’s midday kick-off.
Villa have surreptitiously leapfrogged Brentford, Liverpool, and Brighton in the table and will now have continental adventures in their sights. And who better to guide them through such terrain than three-time Europa League winner, Unai Emery?
When the Spaniard took over in November the Midlands crew in claret and blue were in freefall. And yet Emery has engineered the impressive turn-around using almost exactly the same squad of players with which Steven Gerrard was toiling unhappily.
Unbeaten in seven, a result against Newcastle will indicate precisely how ambitious Aston Villa can be in the coming weeks; how exuberantly they can dance in the April rain.
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