With three jornadas left in the 2025-2026 season, Arsenal sit top of the Premier League on 76 points after 35 matches and Manchester City trail on 71 with one match in hand that, if won, would move them to within 2 points of the leaders.
Pep Guardiola addressed the moment openly after City’s recent results, saying simply, "no era su tarea decidirlo." The comment underlines how slim the margin has become: Manchester United are third on 64 points, while Liverpool and Aston Villa are tied on 58 points and still fighting for the final Champions League berth.
The numbers give weight to the tension. Erling Haaland leads the Golden Boot race with 25 goals and Igor Thiago sits second on 22, while Bruno Fernandes tops the assist chart with 19 and Rayan Cherki has supplied 11. At the wrong end of the table, Wolverhampton have 18 points and Burnley 20, and West Ham and Nottingham Forest are positioned to remain in the league.
Context sharpens the picture: Manchester City have surrendered 12 points from winning positions since the start of the year, a statistic that has converted what looked like routine control into a genuine title fight. That run has elevated every dropped point into potential championship-defining moments as the calendar runs out.
The Everton match that precedes Guardiola’s remark illustrates the confusion and frustration that surround City now. Reports of that game contain starkly different accounts: one sequence notes that Doku scored, City held the lead, and Everton then came back to make it 3-1; another entry records that, in the 97th minute, Doku scored City’s 1-1 goal. Before halftime in that game, Keane made a hard challenge on Doku and referee Michael Oliver showed only a yellow card, and the challenge required Doku to receive considerable medical attention.
That contradictory timeline is the sort of friction that separates simple narrative from real stakes. It is both a symptom and a cause of the scramble at the top: when match reports and match endings appear inconsistent, the margins that decide championships feel both smaller and more fragile. City’s pattern of dropping points after being ahead, and the unclear accounts from key fixtures, give Arsenal’s cushion an outsized importance.
Guardiola’s terse phrase — "no era su tarea decidirlo" — resists being read as resignation and yet acknowledges the limits of a manager’s control in the final days. The most consequential unanswered question is concrete: can Manchester City convert its game in hand into a victory and then stop surrendering leads over the remaining three jornadas, or will those 12 dropped points and the strange episodes in matches like Everton prove decisive?
The answer will arrive quickly. With three rounds to play and a single match still to be scheduled, every decision on and off the pitch will be magnified; Guardiola’s side must win the pending match to cut Arsenal’s advantage to two points and then sustain results the rest of the way. For now, Arsenal hold the initiative, City hold hope, and the season will be resolved in the weeks those facts allow.
