𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The last true “title decider” in English football’s top flight came at the end of the 1988-89 season, when a game between champions Liverpool and challengers Arsenal had to be rescheduled following the Hillsborough disaster.

It ended up as the final game of the season, with Arsenal needing to win by at least two goals at Anfield to be crowned champions at Liverpool’s expense. It came down to the final seconds of the campaign when, with Arsenal 1-0 up, Michael Thomas — “charging through the midfield… it’s up for grabs nooooow” — scored the goal that ended Arsenal’s 18-year wait for a league title.

That was another era, a title-deciding game rescheduled in exceptional, tragic circumstances.

Across the previous 33 seasons of the Premier League era, how many times do you suppose the teams in first and second have faced each other this late in the campaign, while separated by as few as six points?

The answer — once you have disregarded the various dead-rubbers (like when Liverpool played Arsenal last May, having already secured the title) and those games when the leaders were more than six points clear — is just seven.

Even the last of those, three seasons ago, might be a questionable inclusion when you consider that Manchester City still had eight games to play (to Arsenal’s six).

Likewise, the game at Anfield in April 2014, by which time the real threat to Liverpool was not second-placed Chelsea, but third-placed Manchester City, who went on to win their four remaining games and secure the title.