The relegation battle is back on: A Premier League recap

And Arsenal's title odds are looking great too.

Author

Ted Knutson
February 23, 2026

The gap from West Ham to Nottingham Forest is down to 2 points, and it’s only 4 points to Spurs. The Hammers have 11 points and a positive xGD over their last 6 matches. Uh oh.

It’s kind of weird to say the best team in Europe this season needed a win, but Arsenal really needed a win in the North London Derby. (And they are the best team, though that doesn’t mean they will win everything or even anything. Football is gloriously competitive right now —argue less, enjoy more.)

The two players Arsenal fans love to hate on most this season are Viktor Gyökeres and Eberechi Eze. Thankfully for Gooner faithful, Eze hates Spurs way more than fans hate him, and it was alternating goals from those two expensive misfits that brought home three vital points away from home against their hated rivals.

Five of these six goals are against Spurs, and the other is against Palace. Arsenal need to figure out how to get this guy running on spite more often.

Eze opened the scoring with a crazy piece of technique to put it home from close range. Then Rice fucked up to give Kolo Muani a very easy equaliser, and it was meltdown all over again, right?

Gyökeres absolutely leathered home the second off a one-touch and wallop, and Arsenal were again on top. A second equaliser from Kolo Muani was ruled out after a two-handed push on Gabriel to give him space and CONTROVERSY was not part of NLD. Shrug.

Arsenal’s third came from a fortunate bounce back to Eze off a Saka shot that deflected off a defender heel, and finally the fourth was Odegaard to Gyökeres, who sealed off Archie Gray (Gymsharkeres!) and still managed to thump home the shot past Vicario.

Arsenal are again five points clear.

Newcastle were coming off back-to-back-to-back-to-back away games including the longest away trek in Europe midweek. I figured they would be on fumes at this point, but this match was high tempo and competitive.

Nico O’Reilly had a pair for City, the better of which was a floating header created off a Haaland cross that we usually see in reverse.

The Lewis Hall goal came off a deflection through traffic on a Newcastle corner.

The sequencing of the run-in will be interesting. City have a fairly soft schedule coming up until they face Chelsea and Arsenal in back-to-back weeks in April. Arsenal have it much tougher until May, when they have the easiest run of the final month. Numbers and models say the Gunners should cruise home, but if that points gap gets to zero, anything could happen.

I have praised Emi Martinez a bunch this season, so it’s worth noting he got caught cheating far post just a little bit too much on Anton Stach’s opener for Leeds. Now to be fair, it’s 28 yards out and he can see the flight of the ball the entire time, which means he probably thought he had everything direct covered.

He did not.

Stach walloped it with curve into the near post top bin and Leeds were in the lead after 31 minutes.

Villa had a couple of good chances of their own this side of half time, including a double save from Darlow where he blocked an Onana shot with his body and then the ball clawed off Watkins’(?) foot.

Leeds had 1 shot from the 33rd minute to the 70th, which doesn’t feel like great process, especially given how troublesome Calvert-Lewin had been during the first 30, but it took a Tammy Abraham knee off a corner in the 88th minute to make this 1-1.

Villa have had a rocky last six matches, but they are somehow still six points clear of Chelsea, and three of United (who play tonight).

I dodged a Burnley bet this weekend when I clearly should have lumped in on Chelsea being far too chaotic for their own good.

The Portugeuse Petes connection (Joao, Neto) put Chelsea ahead in the fourth minute and this match looked like a foregone conclusion. But that’s not what the Premier League delivers. A red card for Wesley Fofana (Chelsea’s sixth of the season!) in the 72nd and just an absolutely inability to generate and finish frequent high quality chances cost the Blues another three points. It was both similar and very different to the bombardment of Leeds at the end of that match.

There’s talent in this team, but apparently rakes sown over every square inch of the Stamford Bridge pitch.

I did not watch this match, so I was blindsided by the stats when I looked.

19 shots to 10… in favour of Forest?!? And Liverpool with the hilarious deflected winner at the death? That feels like it would only happen if Liverpool scored early and Forest had to chase the whole match.

The good news is that minus the Hudson-Odoi chance to open the match, none of the other Forest chances were greater than 12% to go in. But that is a lot of shots to concede against a relegation candidate for a team that rarely finds defensive solidity.

Liverpool’s commitment to fans and analysts alike this season is to be endlessly weird.

James Milner, whose face has somehow become more square and Lego-like with each passing year, broke Gareth Barry’s all-time appearance record in this match with his 654th PL appearance. Do we care? Eh, not really. Longevity is a thing, but excellence over time is a much bigger thing and PL historians can endlessly debate which one had the more meaningful career.

Brighton’s first goal came from Diego Gomez, who got a rebound off the crossbar after Brentford left Kadioglu both acres and ages to line up a shot from just outside the box. The second was Datboy Danny Welbeck, putting it away near the goal after Nathan Collins made one of the more amateur-looking non-clearances of the year.

Brighton mostly stopped attacking after the second (again NOT RECOMMENDED given the way PL teams can score this season), and Brentford failed to score despite a flurry in the second half.

Wolves are supposed to be DGF but they aren’t playing like it. Expected goals in this match were basically dead even at 1.55 to 1.58, and 14 shots to 12 despite a second yellow Ladislav Krejci at minute 61 (and perhaps more importantly a missed HORRIBLE penalty by Tolu Arokodare in minute 43).

Palace are still a mess, but they are a mess with a small run of form, having only lost one of their last four, admittedly to Burnley. No, I don’t know what any of that means.

You know those times in the past where Sam Allardyce or Alan Pardew teams would be safe from relegation, and then see out the rest of the season in the most drunken fashion possible?

It feels like Sunderland are there.

However, check the underlying stats and this was neck and neck, if a little frantic. It’s only Sunderland’s second loss at home this season while Fulham keep doing their midtable-and-a-bit-boring thing every season.

Normally we make fun of bad teams who put up scoreless draws, but West Ham DOMINATED this match. 2.42 xg to .56 for Bournemouth. I was absolutely on the wrong side of this bet. The Hammers might be legit now — Forest (and Spurs?) should be very worried now.

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