Matchday 37 Awards
While there are two more games taking place tonight, with Palace taking on Wolves and City welcoming Bournemouth, the hosts of these two matches did play against each other in the FA Cup final on Saturday and we will be covering that here.
But what happened in the Prem over the weekend? Well, Arsenal has almost certainly secured second place after beating Newcastle, Liverpool showed their post-title hangover once more in a defeat at Brighton, while bottom sides Manchester United and Tottenham lost once again.
We also said goodbye to Goodison Park as a Premier League venue when Everton dispatched Southampton on Sunday.
As usual, you can click here to check out all our reports from this round’s action.
And you can visit our YouTube channel for previews of each matchday, as well as predictions and hot takes on current EPL topics.
But back to the task at hand: who earned our Premier League awards this time? Read on to find out.
Best Player
We could give this one to Everton’s Iliman Ndiaye for his brace against Southampton, but we here at EPLNews HQ love Jamie Vardy.
It was his 500th appearance for Leicester, marked with his 200th goal on his 13th anniversary at the club. And it came at the King Power, in his last ever for the Foxes. Does it get more poetic than that?
Take a bow, you mad legend!
Best XI
This section will include players from the FA Cup final between Palace and City.
GK – Dean Henderson (Crystal Palace)
RB – James Justin (Leicester)
CB – Nikola Milenkovic (Nottingham Forest)
CB – Jakub Kiwior (Arsenal)
LB – Neco Williams (Nottingham Forest)
CM – Tom Cairney (Fulham)
CM – Eberechi Eze (Crystal Palace)
CM – Brajan Gruda (Brighton)
RW – Iliman Ndiaye (Everton)
ST – Jamie Vardy (Leicester)
LW – Kaoru Mitoma (Brighton)
Best Goal
Even though Dominik Szoboszlai said himself that he meant to cross, not shoot, the fact of the matter is that we think there was no better strike this weekend than the Hungarian’s against Brighton.
Have a look for yourself: Szoboszlai 😱 – YouTube
We will go ahead and give a nod to West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen for that first touch though.
Best Game
Surely Brighton vs Liverpool, right? It was a mad bit of Premier League action, with the hosts falling behind twice and coming back to win, end-to-end action, 17 total shots on target, 4.45 xG, but a fairly clean spectacle, with only one yellow card shown.
HIGHLIGHTS | Brighton v Liverpool | Premier League
Thoroughly entertaining stuff!
Best Stats
It is now 12 games in a row that Tottenham have not kept a clean sheet. The last time they have been so porous was in 2010 under Harry Redknapp. 15 years and seven permanent managers have passed since then.
Thankfully for Spurs, their UEFA Europa League opposition, Manchester United, are not doing much better either. Since Ruben Amorim took over at Old Trafford, the Red Devils have only secured 0.92 points per Premier League game. Shockingly, that is lower than Paul Jewell’s average of 0.94 for Derby County in 2007/08. In case you need reminding, that was the worst EPL side ever.
Oh, and this will also be the first Premier League season in which Manchester United fail to win two games in a row.
Liverpool have become only the third Premier League side to score in all their away fixtures over the course of a campaign. The other teams to do so were Arsenal and Manchester, both in the 2001/02 season.
Best/Worst VAR Decision
Yes, we picked him as our Best XI’s goalkeeper because his performance was outstanding, but we will still point out the refereeing failure to send off Dean Henderson for handling the ball outside his penalty box in the FA Cup final.
It was as obvious as it gets and it was a clear goalscoring opportunity, regardless of what PGMOL says.
Also, even though the Semi-Automated Offside Technology has been implemented, it seems like the delays have not gotten significantly shorter. We can only hope for better, right?
Best Substitution
Hard to pick just one, right? So we’re picking two, meanwhile honouring the sheer intuition and inspiration of Fabian Hürzeler.
Kaoru Mitoma and Jack Hinshelwood both came off the bench with Brighton trailing Liverpool. And both scored to bring Brighton to the pole-position in the race for eighth place, which just might land them in the UEFA Conference League.
Funniest Moment
You don’t become a top manager like Pep Guardiola by taking a loss lightly. So when he made a beeline for Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson as soon as the final whistle was blown at Wembley on Saturday we knew we will be entertained.
We were. And now thanks to expert lip-reader Jeremy Freeman, we also know exactly what was said during this heated exchange. According to Freeman, via the Daily Mail, Guardiola approached the England goalkeeper during Palace’s celebrations and said: “You didn’t deserve that. Disgrace.”
Henderson replied: “You still had your 10 minutes,” referencing the 10 minutes of additional time at the end of the game.
The Palace keeper then repeated “10 minutes” three times, while Guardiola added: “It’s not fair play. You should not – it’s not fair.”
Fair or not, Crystal Palace have won their first-ever major trophy, will be playing in the Europa League and City end their season trophyless.