Three matchdays. A five-point cushion. Budapest waiting at the end. Every remaining fixture — form, standings, rest — side by side.
Saka’s rebound on Tuesday put us in the Champions League final — first one in twenty years — and the league table did the rest. Goodison gave us the favour: Everton 3-3 City, and a two-point cushion became five. Three games to play, City have four, and the maths has gone from "do not slip" to "do not faint." Win at the London Stadium on Sunday and the trophy can be lifted at home, on a Monday, against a side already down. Eighteenth of May, N5, the Emirates floodlit — the kind of night you remember the weather of.
The danger isn’t City. The danger is the temptation to look past Sunday, past Burnley, all the way to Budapest on the 30th. West Ham at the London Stadium has been a thing of dread for this lot more than once. Cold heads, full XI, no peeking. We do this league the way we did Atlético — one half at a time.
The schedule has flipped this from "anxious" to "amusing." City play Palace at the Etihad on the 13th — fourteen days before any Conference League final in Leipzig. We play them at Selhurst on the 24th, three days before it. If we’ve done our jobs at West Ham and against Burnley, the trophy is decided before we make the trip south of the river — and Palace, with a European final on Wednesday and a manager who knows what bench rotation looks like, are the kindest possible last fixture you could draw.
If we haven’t finished the job by then, the maths still favours us. Five points clear with three to play, with goal difference now +41 vs +37, means City need to win the lot and somehow chip into the GD column too. Selhurst on the 24th becomes a coronation in waiting either way: if it’s already done, it’s a parade; if it isn’t, we’re facing a B-team with nothing left.
Atlético home and away, Fulham at the Emirates — all banked. We came out of the four-in-eleven with a clean sheet at home, three points against Fulham, and a trip to Budapest on the 30th. The European tax everyone was warning about? We paid it, and it paid us back. The legs that mattered held up.
A week ago we were level. After Fulham we were two ahead. Then Goodison happened — Everton 3-3 City — and the gap is five with three to play. Two wins and a draw locks it; even two-and-a-loss leaves City needing to run the table — and to do it through Brentford, an FA Cup final at Wembley, then Bournemouth two days later. The margin is real for the first time in this race.
West Ham first. Then Burnley at the Emirates on the 18th of May. Win those two and almost every permutation has the trophy lifted in N5, on a Monday night, against a side already down. The chance to do this at home — without waiting on a final-day Selhurst result — is right there.