The Premier League title race that is dividing the country – and where loyalties really lie

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Saturday morning, Crystal Palace and, on Park Road, four young Manchester City fans have just got off the bus they boarded at 6am to get to Selhurst Park for a lunchtime kick-off.

They would not miss it. This three-way Premier League title race does perhaps justify the slogan; it does mean more.

Aiden, Tom, Jack and Will are 20 and 21 and, as one of the quartet is studying physics at university, the discussion on the 220-mile journey south from Wythenshawe has been about probability. City, they conclude, will probably win the Premier League again, for a fourth time in four seasons.

If it happens, it would mean City being England’s champions six times in the past seven years and that monopoly is part of the reason why a first three-way tussle in a decade, involving Arsenal and Liverpool too, is gripping chunks of the country. In fact, chunks of many countries.

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“Can you ever get bored of winning?” is the Manchester lads’ collective response to the idea another City procession would be dull. To them, this season’s situation makes it “more scary, not more exciting”.

At least the sustained challenge from Liverpool and Arsenal has introduced some stimulating uncertainty — not that the lads think that way.

“You’ve got to think of the probability of every single game,” they argue, 28 hours before Liverpool travel to Manchester United, “and Liverpool will drop points tomorrow and at Goodison.”

As Saturday becomes Sunday and Liverpool draw 2-2 at Old Trafford, the City physicists are proved correct. The Monday morning table shows, with 82 per cent of the Premier League season gone, one point separating three clubs. City remain favourites.

But if they do not win it again, all four lads would prefer if Liverpool do.

“The way Liverpool have managed to keep on winning despite their injuries shows their character. Arsenal? Their fans are so cocky without ever winning anything. At least Liverpool come to us and play football. Arsenal absolutely bottled it when they came to us.”

English football is a pyramid system with, at its apex, four divisions featuring 92 clubs spread across England and Wales. The term division also applies to rivalries ancient and modern with some stemming from nothing more than being next door.

But City’s dominance and foreign, state wealth, plus, most importantly in a season when Everton and Nottingham Forest have been docked points, 115 as yet tested charges hang over the club and its external perception.

“Oh yeah, no one likes us,” the lads say. “We’re the ‘dirty little cheats’.”

Palace fans pose under the Wilfried Zaha mural outside Selhurst Park (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)

A short walk up to Holmesdale Road brings swift confirmation. Noel, a Palace fan who has been attending games at Selhurst Park since 1972, and Chris, 34, immediately raise the 115 number.

“I’m neutral and it is exciting,” Noel says “but I don’t like it when clubs like Forest and Everton are deducted points — I get that — but what about the 115 charges for Manchester City? That’s a disgrace, it undermines football.

“They’re a brilliant team to watch and we’ll see some good football today, but I feel it’s wrong. So I’d like Liverpool or Arsenal to win it. I’ll say Arsenal. Spread the love.”

Palace have never been England’s champions, though they did finish third in 1991. UEFA did not give them a European place, which still rankles, having ended Liverpool’s exclusion from their competitions early after the Heysel disaster ban. Liverpool finished second and qualified for the UEFA Cup.

This gets mentioned on a Saturday morning in 2024 beside a Wilfried Zaha mural, just as Anthony Bunn, former editor of the Stoke City fanzine, ‘Duck’, refers to a refereeing decision in the 1972 FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal when explaining Stoke’s antipathy towards the Gunners.

“Yeah, oh yeah, the rivalry’s genuine,” Bunn says. “People think it’s all modern-day but, no, it goes back to the 1970s. We were on the wrong end of an infamous decision. It’s always grated. Then with what happened with the Shawcross-Ramsey incident, it festered.”

In the Tony Pulis-Arsene Wenger era, Stoke City-Arsenal was a culture clash. In 2010 Ryan Shawcross broke Aaron Ramsey’s leg in a tackle that seemed to sum up the difference.

“I’m not bothered who wins it,” Bunn adds, “as long as it’s not Arsenal. For any Stoke fan, Arsenal would be the third choice of the three by a massive margin.

“It’s a little bit pantomime as well. But I did enjoy them bottling the league last season.”

Back on Holmesdale Road, Noel and Chris are reminiscing about ‘Crystanbul’ and the night in May 2014 when Liverpool’s title charge was undone at Selhurst by a 3-3 draw when the Reds had been 3-0 ahead. They hope something similar can happen against City — or Liverpool whom they face this Sunday — and laugh at themselves: “The logic of a supporter”.

The Premier League run-in

Seven miles and half a world away, Sutton United are also fascinated by a three-way struggle with serious consequences. The fight to survive at the bottom of League Two, to remain in ‘the 92’, includes Sutton, Colchester United and Forest Green Rovers.

Last month Sutton were 92nd but they have rallied to get to 90th. Still, slipping back into non-League is a real possibility. On Saturday, the visitors to Gander Green Lane were Stockport County, Manchester City’s neighbours and wealthy (in comparison to other League Two clubs, if not City).

Stockport beat Sutton 8-0 in December and score in only the third minute. By half-time, it is 3-1 to County, Sutton are 91st in the ‘As It Stands’ table and are being taunted by the 1,000 travelling Stockport fans with the chorus: “You’re going down with the vegans,” a reference to Forest Green Rovers’ vegetarian, ecological ethos.

Listening on the old terraces Sutton have used since 1912 is Mike Dowling, 50, who runs the Sutton United podcast.

“No, I have very little interest outside what happens to Sutton United,” he smiles when asked if he saw the Palace-City match on TV. “There’s a few who were talking about the scoreline, so I know it, and there are some Sutton fans who support a Premier League side as well. I personally am not overly gripped by the Premier League.

“A few years ago I could name you seven or eight of each team, but now there’s players being signed for millions who I don’t know at all. So there’s a bit of a disconnect. Here, you’ve got a chance of seeing the players in the high street. It’s more real.”

Sutton United are striving to remain in the Football League (Rhianna Chadwick/PA Images via Getty Images)

This is not Abu Dhabi or America, although the businessmen who own the majority of shares in the club are not all local. Fans, however, still own individual shares and cherish the stake it gives them in Sutton’s future — Dowling has four.

The level of interest, or disinterest, in the Premier League title race could be seen an hour after Sutton’s loss left them with three games to save themselves. A fan in the middle of the busy Ambers bar is urging others to book a seat on the 6.45am bus to Harrogate Town on Saturday, shouting “the Great Escape is still on!”

Supporters roar while, above their heads, the screen is showing Arsenal drawing 0-0 at Brighton — until Bukayo Saka scored. No one is looking at it.

Sutton’s manager of four months Steve Morison, despondent and angry, is watching the title run-in. “Yeah, I watch it. I watch it with admiration.”

“The ability levels are just different. Look at Man City or Liverpool; they go down 1-0 in two minutes and they just keep bombarding you. We don’t have that ability.”

He is not appeased by the suggestion Sutton’s stress is greater than top-three excitement. “It’ll be even more stressful if we’re not in the League.”

Pressure, he says, “should be for tyres”.

Who does he think will win it? “Liverpool.”

Opposite number Dave Challinor is a Liverpool fan whose playing career began at Tranmere Rovers. “I will absolutely watch Liverpool tomorrow,” he says, “but then you can’t not notice what’s going on — it’s on television that much.

“We’ve got Liverpool, Arsenal and City fans on the staff, so there’s definitely interest. I hope Liverpool win it, but I don’t see Man City losing another game and Liverpool have some tough ones. Tension can bring shocks.”

Jurgen Klopp knows this, of course. Pep Guardiola last week, when comparing winning the Premier League to the Champions League, said the Premier League “is just the nicest because it’s more difficult”; and in his programme notes for Sheffield United last Thursday, Klopp wrote of “moments when our heart rates are 180 or 200 or whatever”.

Klopp added: “But if we want normal, we could all do something else.”

When Sheffield United equalised in that game, his heart rate may well have skipped upwards and the words of Pete, when stood outside the away end before kick-off, return — “I’m a Sheffield United fan and our season is pretty much over. Hopefully we can be a season-wrecker for somebody. That’s the thing we’ve got left.”

Then Alexis Mac Allister strode in.

Mac Allister belts Liverpool back into the lead against Sheffield United (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

Not that Pete was too upset. “It does make it more exciting, doesn’t it?” he says of the run-in. “Hopefully this will go down to the last day of the season. I’d probably go for Liverpool to be honest. I’ve always liked them as a club and Jurgen Klopp is a good personality in the game.”

He is not the first ‘neutral’ to raise, unprompted, Klopp’s departure. At St James’ Park before Newcastle United host Everton, Andrew, 36, is with his sons Anthony and James. “I’ve backed Liverpool,” Andrew says, “since Klopp said he was going.

“I think the Klopp factor will get them over the line. Whereas it would have been a building season for Klopp, it’s one last hurrah and that might just get them over the line. Possibly.

“But City are just a machine, they could win all their games. The other two don’t have that ruthlessness.

“I liked Klopp — originally. I thought he was quite refreshing when he first came in. But I think he’s soured a little bit in the last couple of years and maybe that’s why he’s retiring, because it’s hard graft to do what he’s done.”

His sons chorus “City” when asked who’ll win.

Palace fans greet Phil Foden and his Manchester City team-mates at Selhurst Park (Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

Down the road at Sunderland, fans Adam and Chris are having a concourse beer at half-time in a 5-1 defeat to Blackburn Rovers. The last time Sunderland were top of the top flight was 1980.

“Probably Liverpool,” Adam says when asked for a preferred winner, “for Klopp in his last season. I hope all three can maintain and it goes down to the last day of the season.”

Chris is the opposite: “Anyone but Liverpool, I don’t like Jurgen Klopp.”

Outside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before the Luton game, Matt Mantle and his son Jack also bring up Klopp. “My preference is for Man City,” Matt says. “But it’d be nice for Klopp, a big sign-off would be brilliant. Away from the cameras, he seems like a nice bloke.

“Having said that, I don’t really like Liverpool fans. We have a big rivalry with Arsenal and Liverpool, but City, I don’t have the animosity towards them. You almost become numb to Man City.”

As with Klopp, this view of City is repeated. Because variety is an issue.

By the thronged Liverpool club shop, Matt, 31, and Malcolm, older, are anxious pre-Uniteds, Sheffield and Manchester.

Good to have variety? “No. We just want to be runaway leaders. I was just looking at Man City’s fixtures in the pub and they won’t lose another game.”

Palace might get a draw? “No chance.”

Are you excited? “No. I’d rather nobody was near us.”

If not Liverpool, who? “Maybe City, because nobody’s arsed about them winning. The league does need variety.”

The Premier League may be booming and clubs now routinely advertise kick-off times around the world, as Manchester United do on Sunday for Los Angeles, Lagos and Kuala Lumpur among many other places. But there are discordant voices regarding predictability and the local/global tension.

At Sunderland, Blackburn supporters Jeremy and Robert Webster are outside in the mist.

“I think it’s great, good for the league that Manchester City are not way above everybody else,” Jeremy says. “That’s good and there’s competition for the European places as well. It keeps it going.”

Who does he want to win it?

“Anyone but Arsenal; because we’re from the north. I feel that I’d support northern clubs.” Robert is less sure.

Rovers’ fans of a certain age know the run-in feeling. Since the inception of the Premier League in 1992-93, only seven clubs have won it and Blackburn, like Leicester City, are a smaller club who, having done it once, may never do so again.

A comparison could be made with a golden age of competition from 1959 to 1972 when 11 different clubs, from Wolves to Derby County, won the 14 titles. Next season will be the 30th anniversary of Blackburn’s title and Jeremy was at the penultimate game in 1995 when Rovers beat Newcastle 1-0 via Alan Shearer’s 33rd league goal that season.

“I was there,” he says. “Shearer was the one who won it. There were a lot of nerves. Manchester United were behind and creeping up.”

Shearer and the Blackburn chairman Jack Walker celebrate winning the Premier League in 1995 (John Giles – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)

Harry, 32, and James, 29, are Luton Town fans on the way into Tottenham.

“I’m not being funny, but the big story of this Premier League season is Luton,” Harry says. “There’s nothing else.

“When you consider the charges against Man City, charges against Everton, Forest, Leicester, it’s a mockery. The fact Luton have got here through grit and determination proves it can be done, but that’s where it stops. The aspiration for any club coming up through the leagues can’t be much more than what Luton have achieved. It’s not possible.

“It’s all fixed — well, not fixed — but it’s all geared up for the big clubs to win. Luton will never win the title.”

After saying they would like Liverpool to triumph — “for Klopp” — James points out his neighbour is a Queens Park Rangers fan. And outside Loftus Road, pre-Birmingham City, long-suffering QPR supporters Phyllis and Julie stand where the latest edition of the club fanzine, A Kick Up The Rs, is on sale.

“I’ve been coming 41 years,” Phyl says. “I’ve been coming since 1966,” Julie says.

“I’m glad that it’s going to go to the wire,” Phyl says of the title race, “but I prefer my little team. I just want us to stay up this season, I don’t particularly want to go to the Premier League.”

Julie agrees: “The truth is I’m not that interested in the Premier League. For me it has no realism, no values. We haven’t got the money at QPR to go up and compete, so why go up, get the floor wiped with you and come down again?”

Who does she want to win the Premier League? “I don’t much care — as long as it’s not Chelsea.”

Pete, the Sheffield United fan, shares the sentiment. “If you haven’t got the money of the top six clubs, what’s the point? We have made money this season, but if I’m honest I’d rather have stayed in the Championship. If we could win the Championship every year — and stay in the Championship — I’d do that. There’s something to fight for.

“It’s no fun watching your team lose week in, week out.”

Fans arrive at Loftus Road in January (Warren Little/Getty Images)

With a record of W9 D8 L14, it’s not been quite that way for Everton, but it’s been a traumatic season at Goodison Park nonetheless. It does not stop twentysomethings Luke and Tony making a 350-mile round trip to Tyneside on a Tuesday night, even though their scepticism regarding the Premier League is pronounced.

“The Premier League is a closed shop,” Luke says. “It’s been this way for 10 to 15 years, the top four has become a top six and it’s to protect the brand for a worldwide audience.

“We’re not a fashionable club, these (Newcastle) aren’t, it’s the top six and that’s it. Most fans in the Premier League outside the top six think that, even some Kop-ites.”

And the title race, which involves Liverpool?

“It doesn’t concern us, does it?” Tony says. “I’m an Everton fan, not a football fan. When you look at it like that, it doesn’t really concern Everton. If we go down, relegation will have a big impact on the club and the city.

“I think Man City will win it, they’ve got the strongest squad. We’ve Arsenal on the last day, but I think the title will be done before then.”

As they prepare to go through the turnstile, Luke adds: “There’ll be Premier League games in Saudi Arabia or Texas in three years.”

Fifteen years ago, such a proposal was known as the 39th game.

Sunday afternoon and, as the world tunes into watch Manchester United-Liverpool, on the hushed mews of London’s Knightsbridge there is a place oblivious to it. It is the pub bought by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS company, the Grenadier. Ratcliffe is at Old Trafford and there are no screens here. Maybe next year.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s pub, The Grenadier pub, in London’s Belgravia (In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)

Less than a mile away, though, above Victoria station, up the stairs past a George Best poster, is a sports bar with umpteen screens and a couple of hundred punters.

Two of them, Bish and Neil, are wearing United tops — Bish has ‘Mount’ on the back. It is half-time, Liverpool lead by a goal and it could be three.

“As a Manchester United fan, it’s difficult,” Bish says. “I don’t want Liverpool to win and I don’t want Man City to win, especially a fourth in a row. A few of my best friends are Arsenal fans and I’ll never hear the end of it.” He sighs.

Neil’s fan logic is similar: “I’d probably rather have City win it because I don’t know any City fans, so there’s no noise. When City won the treble last season, there was no noise. No one was talking about them. United won the treble in 1999 and we’re still talking about it.”

Besides them sits Ash, an Arsenal fan. “We still have Tottenham, Man United and Chelsea, we’ve got the toughest run-in,” he says, “but I think we’re the best team in the league right now.”

GO DEEPER

The Premier League title race: Every fixture analysed

In the club shop at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, there is a video run-down of the club’s top 10 goals. Somehow Michael Thomas’s at Anfield in 1989, in arguably the most thrilling climax to a season ever seen, is not No 1.

By the Gunners’ cannons at the door, season-ticket holders Martin and Lisa are with their grandsons hoping to buy an Ian Wright replica jersey.

Martin has been going to Arsenal for 50 years and was there that night at Anfield when Arsenal won the title with the last kick of the last match of the season. But just as Mikel Arteta talks of being told to “play Lego” with his children, Martin is also distracted — by thinking about last season when Arsenal were eight points clear as April began.

“I’ve been here before with the club so I’m very low-key about it,” he says. “We should have won it last year.

“Yes, I am excited, we’ve played some fantastic football, but we’ve got to keep it going. You never know. One player, Declan Rice, has made so much difference, made us more solid. We look a better team.”

Fans file into the Emirates stadium (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

And if Arsenal don’t win it? “I don’t care about the other two.

“I was at Anfield in ’89. That’ll never happen again. On a Friday night, two teams who could become champions? We missed about 15 minutes at the start, trains were cancelled, so we had to get coaches and it was a Bank Holiday. You can imagine.”

He then motions a pen on paper: “Last minute; last game of the season; in front of their crowd?

“It’s tick, tick, tick, ain’t it?”

Tick, tick, tick, indeed — the sound of a countdown.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design Eamonn Dalton)