West Ham United have been relegated while Tottenham survived on an emotional final day of the Premier League season when Pep Guardiola and Mohamed Salah made their exits after record-breaking spells in English football.
West Ham beat Leeds 3-0 but that wasn’t enough to climb out of the relegation zone because fourth-from-bottom Tottenham also won, 1-0 at home to Everton, which meant they stayed two points clear of their London rivals.
Joao Palhinha scored Tottenham’s winner in the 43rd minute and Spurs defended stoutly to stop Everton scoring the two goals that would have kept West Ham up. A brilliant diving save in stoppage time by goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky was met with huge sighs of relief around Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as it basically guaranteed Spurs’ Premier League status for another year.
“After a bad season like this one, we showed up as a collective and had amazing support from the fans,” Palhinha said.
“The club will grow up with this season and we know what we have to do in the future.”
While there were huge celebrations from the Tottenham players and coaching stuff, the cold hard truth is that the club has now finished 17th for consecutive seasons, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Recently-hired manager Roberto De Zerbi suggested a mass cleanout could be on the cards, saying, “From tonight, we have to start to organise and to build a new team. I think we have not to change too many players.
“We have 10, 11, 12 players good enough to stay. And then we have to complete the squad with first level of players.
“My target is to start the pre-season with the team I have in my dream, in my head.”
That could spell trouble for many of the players who underperformed so much this season, but Premier League legend Gary Neville preferred to put a microscope on those who run Tottenham, not mincing words as he witnessed the celebrations after full-time.
“Is it too far to say that they’ve been pathetic? That they should be ashamed of themselves? Probably not,” Neville said, per Sky Sports.
“There’s got to be a massive reset; there’s got to be an autopsy that goes really deep right the way through the club.
“When you’re owners of a football club – and I’m an owner of a football club – sometimes you have to start by looking in the mirror yourself.
“Success sometimes doesn’t come in a football club because of the decisions that you [the owner] make, because of what you do. Not because of what the fans, what the players, or what the coaches do.”
Regardless, Tottenham’s win over Everton meant West Ham’s 14-year stay in the Premier League was over and Spurs, who won three of their last five games under De Zerbi, will be in the top division for a 49th straight season.
“We shouldn’t be in the position we’re in but we’ve found ourselves in it and we’ve not done enough to stay up,” West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen admitted.
“Hurt is the only thing.”
“This club deserves to be in the Premier League. Our aim now is to get this club back into the Premier League.”
Meanwhile, Guardiola’s decade-long tenure at Manchester City – which has included six Premier League titles among 17 major trophies – ended with a 2-1 loss to Aston Villa which featured a mid-match guard of honour for first Bernardo Silva and then John Stones, two of Guardiola’s stalwarts.
And Salah was given a standing ovation – before he kissed the Anfield turf – during his second-half substitution in his 442nd and last game for Liverpool, in which he grabbed an assist in a 1-1 draw with Brentford. The Egypt winger finished his nine years with the Reds with 257 goals.
Arsenal had already clinched the title and closed their first championship-winning campaign since 2004 with a 2-1 win at Crystal Palace.
In the final shake-up for European qualification, Bournemouth and Sunderland finished sixth and seventh, respectively, to get into the Europa League while Brighton ended eighth to reach the Conference League.
Brighton lost 3-0 at home to Manchester United, for whom Bruno Fernandes scored and bagged a record-setting 21st assist of the season.
Sunderland, who beat Chelsea 2-1, will be in Europe for the first time in 53 years — a remarkable achievement for a team in their first season back in the top division and which were in the third tier as recently as 2022.
Chelsea, on the contrary, missed out on European competition entirely after finishing in 10th place — 10 months after winning the Club World Cup.
Manchester City striker Erling Haaland won the Golden Boot as top scorer in the Premier League on Sunday for the third time in his four seasons in English soccer.
The Norway international didn’t feature at all in City’s final game of the campaign againsat Villa and finished on 27 goals, five more than Brentford striker Igor Thiago in the list of top scorers.
No other player in the league reached 20 goals.