Leandro Trossard scored the winner as Arsenal defeated West Ham on Sunday, a victory decided after late VAR drama that saw a West Ham equaliser ruled out on review.
The goal and the overturned equaliser left Arsenal edging closer to Premier League title success: they can win the title if they win their last two games, and may not need the full six points from those fixtures depending on how Manchester City do in their remaining three games.
The week had already brought brighter headlines for Arsenal. Before the West Ham match they beat Atletico Madrid in a close tie and, in doing so, secured their first Champions League final in 20 years.
That sequence — a narrow knockout win over Atletico Madrid followed by a tense domestic finish against a side fighting for survival — turned Sunday into another marker in a long campaign. Pep Guardiola had framed Arsenal’s spring earlier when he said, "Alongside Bayern Munich and maybe Barcelona as well, [Arsenal are] the best team in Europe." The club’s progress on two fronts now makes that claim feel less speculative for supporters.
The weight of the result sits in the numbers and the scenarios. Two games remain; six points are available in the Premier League, and Arsenal control a straightforward path to the title: take both and they are champions. Manchester City still have three games to play and could complicate matters, but Arsenal’s fate is in large part in their own hands after Sunday’s win.
For West Ham, the reversal was a cruel twist. Their equaliser was wiped out after VAR review, denying them a point that would have been valuable as they try to secure Premier League survival. The club arrived at the match desperate for a result; instead they left with the kind of late agony that can decide seasons.
The tension in the game — the collision between what the scoreboard briefly showed and what officials ultimately ruled — is the story’s friction point. A match that looked headed for a draw and a hard-earned outcome for West Ham turned into another narrow victory for Arsenal, a swing that amplifies both sides’ trajectories: Arsenal inching toward a title and West Ham still scrambling to stay up.
The win added to a week that already changed Arsenal’s trajectory. Beating Atletico Madrid to reach a first Champions League final in 20 years was a separate milestone; closing out West Ham at home kept the Premier League objective very much alive. Together those moments have pushed the club to the brink of ending a more than two-decade-long wait for a league title.
Still, nothing has been decided. Arsenal’s remaining two games are the immediate tests that will determine whether the club finally ends that wait. If they take the six points available, they will be champions. If they fail to do so, how Manchester City perform in their three remaining fixtures will be decisive.
For now the human picture is simple: Trossard, the scorer of the late winner, has delivered another decisive moment for a club carrying huge expectation. The VAR intervention that erased West Ham’s equaliser left players and supporters shaking their heads, an uncomfortable reminder that margins are slim. Arsenal have built a season of fine margins into a genuine title run; win the next two games and the debate over how it happened will matter far less than the title itself.
