West Ham was relegated and Tottenham survived on an emotional final day of the Premier League season when Pep Guardiola and Mohamed Salah made tearful exits after record-breaking spells in English soccer.
West Ham beat Leeds 3-0 but that wasn’t enough to climb out of the relegation zone because fourth-to-last Tottenham also won, 1-0 at home to Everton, to stay two points clear of its London rival.
That meant West Ham’s 14-year stay in the Premier League was over and Tottenham, which won three of its last five games under recently hired coach Roberto De Zerbi, will be in the top division for a 49th straight season.
“We shouldn’t be in the position we’re in but we’ve found ourselves in it and we’ve not done enough to stay up,” West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen said. “Hurt is the only thing.”
Guardiola’s decade-long tenure at Manchester City — which has included six Premier League titles among 17 major trophies — ended with a 2-1 loss to Aston Villa that featured a mid-match guard of honor for first Bernardo Silva and then John Stones, two of Guardiola’s stalwarts.
Guardiola wept on the sideline as Silva left the field and was given his own guard of honor by players and staff after the match.
“We lived an incredible period,” Guardiola said. “If I had energy, I would stay here (but) a new person has to do this job.”
Salah started and was given a standing ovation — before he kissed the Anfield turf — during his second-half substitution in his 442nd and last game for Liverpool, in which he grabbed an assist in a 1-1 draw with Brentford. The Egypt winger finished his nine years with the Reds with 257 goals and received his own post-match guard of honor, which he walked through in tears.
Arsenal had already clinched the title in midweek and closed its first championship-winning campaign since 2004 with a 2-1 win at Crystal Palace. The players finally got their hands on the trophy about an hour after fulltime at Palace’s Selhurst Park stadium, with coach Mikel Arteta and the team wearing jerseys with “Champions 2026” on the back for the occasion.
In the final shake-up for European qualification, Bournemouth and Sunderland finished sixth and seventh, respectively, to get into the Europa League and Brighton was eighth to reach the Conference League.
Brighton lost 3-0 at home to Manchester United, for whom Bruno Fernandes scored and got a record-setting 21st assist of the season.
Sunderland, which beat Chelsea 2-1, will be in Europe for the first time in 53 years — a remarkable achievement for a team in its first season back in the top division and which was in the third tier as recently as 2022. The team’s players huddled around a cell phone to see their Europa League qualification confirmed and broke away in delight.
Chelsea, on the contrary, missed out on European competition entirely after finishing in 10th place — 10 months after winning the Club World Cup.
Add 2026 to 2003 and 2011 as years when West Ham lost its Premier League status.
The big difference this season is that the team is now playing its home matches in the vast Olympic Stadium, so that 68,000-capacity arena will be staging games in the second-tier Championship against the likes of Wrexham and the two clubs that had already been relegated from the Premier League before Sunday — Wolverhampton and Burnley.
“This club deserves to be in the Premier League,” said Bowen, who scored and set up a goal against Leeds. “Our aim now is to get this club back into the Premier League.”
A top-flight ever present since 1978, Tottenham was heading out of the Premier League before the club hired De Zerbi in what has proved to be an inspired appointment.
Three wins and two draws later — along with two losses — and Spurs have managed to avoid dropping into the bottom three in what would have been the most unlikely relegation since the Premier League was founded in 1992.
Joao Palhinha scored Tottenham’s winner against Everton in the 43rd minute, forcing in a rebound after initially heading against the post, and Spurs defended stoutly to stop Everton scoring the two goals that would have kept West Ham up.
“After a bad season like this one, we showed up as a collective and had amazing support from the fans,” Palhinha said.
“The club will grow up with this season and we know what we have to do in the future.”
Tottenham, one of the biggest clubs in Europe and the Europa League champion last season, has now finished one place outside the relegation spots in successive seasons. (JapanToday)
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