With 11 matchweeks to go, pressure is ramping up at both ends of the table. In the title race, Manchester City threw down the gauntlet to leaders Arsenal with a 2-1 home win over Newcastle United, temporarily moving to within two points of the summit.
Arteta’s side responded in style, beating north London rivals Tottenham 4-1 on Sunday in a chastening afternoon for Spurs’ new interim head coach, Igor Tudor. Tudor will be casting an anxious glance down the table after relegation rivals Leeds, Burnley and West Ham all picked up a point.
It was a weekend brimming with Premier League narrative. Let The Athletic explore the numerical ingredients that shaped it.
Gyokeres shows he is more than just goals
Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres rightfully got plenty of headlines for his brace against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday. His two finishes made it five goals in five league games, and brought him to double figures (10 goals) in his debut Premier League campaign.
Much of the discussion has been about the Sweden international’s form in front of goal, but his out-of-possession efforts might have been overlooked a little this campaign. His relentlessness to regain the ball was infectious to his team-mates on Sunday, as the 27-year-old used his physicality to impose himself on Spurs’ centre-backs.
An example of this is shown below as Radu Dragusin looks to carry the ball out of defence, but is muscled off it thanks to Gyokeres’ suffocating pressure and intense work rate. After regaining possession, Arsenal’s striker is then able to quickly release Eberechi Eze, who finds Leandro Trossard for a shot on goal.
Using data from Gradient Sports, we can see that no player averages more pressures in the final third per 30 minutes out of possession than Gyokeres. He might not have hit the ground running in front of goal, but that work rate is unlikely to have gone unnoticed by Mikel Arteta.
Arsenal squeezed the pitch persistently at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, winning possession in the attacking third on 19 occasions in total. For context, their next highest tally this season was just eight occasions in another 4-1 victory. That was over Aston Villa in December.
That intensity was mirrored in Gyokeres’ performance. He looked every inch the fit, strong centre-forward that would bully defenders during his time in Portugal. To have given such an excellent display in a north London derby will only endear him to Arsenal fans even more.
Chelsea’s confusing season
There is plenty for Chelsea fans to be positive about in the final months of the season.
Sitting fourth in the Premier League table, they are fighting on three fronts and have an exciting new head coach with fresh ideas. However, despite some obvious strengths in the squad, there can still be a confusing picture at Stamford Bridge.
Against a relegation-battling Burnley, Chelsea should have been able to see off Scott Parker’s side without needing to hit top gear. Instead, they collected their sixth red card of the season — more than any Premier League side — and subsequently dropped two points to a promoted side for the second game in a row.
On the one hand, Chelsea’s goalscoring return from attacking set pieces is among the best in Europe’s top five leagues, scoring 6.1 goals per 100 set pieces in the league. On the other hand, another set-piece goal conceded against Burnley means no side across Europe averages a higher expected goals (xG) conceded than their 6.5 per 100 set pieces against this season.
It is a similarly befuddling outlook when you zoom out further. On the one hand, only title-challenging Arsenal and Manchester City have spent a lower share of their time in a losing position than Chelsea’s 18 per cent this season.
On the other hand, their 17 points lost at home from winning positions is more than any other Premier League side. Only West Ham United (20) have dropped more points from winning positions than Chelsea’s 19 across all games this season.
There is still plenty of opportunity to finish the campaign strongly, but Chelsea’s tendency to giveth with one hand and taketh with the other has been the theme of their season.
Liverpool’s late, late drama
In a tight Liverpool match, never leave the ground early or switch the channel.
Alexis Mac Allister’s stoppage-time strike against Nottingham Forest, arriving minutes after his earlier apparent winner was ruled out for handball, was their seventh in stoppage time this season, which is the joint-highest total in Europe’s top five leagues.
“In the end we were the lucky ones,” Liverpool head coach Arne Slot told BBC’s Match of the Day afterwards, describing it as a game of “fine margins”. But Liverpool have not always fallen on the right side of those margins. They have conceded six times in added time this season, four of them decisive winning goals for the opposition, more than any other side.
Mac Allister celebrates his late intervention at the City Ground (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Late dramatic twists have been a theme across the Premier League this season. There have now been 25 stoppage-time winners in 2025-26, six more than last season and more than in any of the previous seven campaigns.
It sparked scenes of wild jubilation for Liverpool on Sunday, yet Slot will crave a return to the calmer rhythm of their title-winning campaign. Last season, Liverpool won just once in injury time, when Darwin Nunez scored twice at the death against Brentford, and they did not lose a single match while leading or drawing after the 90th minute.
West Ham’s wastefulness
If West Ham are narrowly relegated, Saturday’s 0-0 home draw with Bournemouth may be the match they look back on most ruefully. Head coach Nuno Espirito Santo watched forlornly from the dugout as his side failed to score from 20 attempts, generating 3.27 expected goals, the most any team has created without finding the net in the last eight seasons.
In fairness to West Ham’s attackers, the total was built largely on half-chances rather than glaring misses. When more presentable opportunities arrived, Bournemouth goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic kept them out with a series of smart, reactive saves, most notably to deny Callum Wilson’s flicked volley late on.
Of the teams in the relegation fight, West Ham are the form side. Their eight points from the last five matches is the highest return of any club in the bottom half. Yet with this stalemate and the 1-1 home draw with Manchester United — when they conceded in injury time — they have let four vital points pass them by.
Positive performances mean little with only 11 games remaining — securing points by whatever means necessary is the order of the day.
Manchester City’s direct approach
Long-renowned for their patient, methodical play, Manchester City’s emergence as one of the Premier League’s leading counter-attacking sides this season has come as a surprise.
Nico O’Reilly’s opener in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Newcastle took them level with Brentford on nine goals from fast breaks. Rodri’s defensive aerial duel win, Marmoush’s lay-off and O’Reilly’s finish combined in a move as simple as it was ruthless.
This uptick in slick counters is not the result of a radical tactical overhaul. The visualisation below shows that while their approach has become more direct this season — reflected in their higher direct speed and fewer passes per sequence — City remain the league’s most patient side in possession.
Instead, they have just become more efficient on the break.
After the match, Guardiola pointed to the speed and physicality of Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon and Anthony Elanga as central to Eddie Howe’s side posing such a threat in transition, but City have strengthened their own athletic profile in recent seasons.
From O’Reilly’s development to the January signing of Antoine Semenyo and the hulking presence of centre-forward Erling Haaland, City now have the counter-attacking firepower to complement their more cerebral approach.