Premier League final day clockwatch – live! – The Guardian

So there we go: it took a while, but the 2019-20 Premier League is in the books.We’ll see you for more, er, tonight, when Juventus play Sampdoria, again for the Championship play-offs, and again for the start of next season. It’s been (extremely, unprecedentedly) emotional. Ta-ra, mates.

James Redknapp has just called Ziyech “Zye-etch”. Of course he has.

“Even if Mourinho was joking (and I can’t be the only person who suspects an undercurrent of ‘hahaha but seriously guys’),” says James Humphries, “then in all fairness he is still tedious in the extreme, so, y’know, riff away.”

I actually think Mourinho really needed this. For a bit it looked like we were seeing his cycle on warp, and as a consequence, Daniel Levy would have a decision to make. My guess now is that he’ll think he doesn’t, which might not be a great long-term situation, but if he can find his old genius and enthusiasm, you never know.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is happy. He says to get to third from where they were is a “wonderful achievement” from his players. They didn’t play well today, he says, but learning to win games like this is an important staging post. He had to stick with his team because he had to for it, and his team looks more like “a Man United team”, who he says “just go for it”.

“We need to step it up,” he says of being the Champions League, and notes that he can’t rotate in that competition as he did in the Europa, and his players need to “get fitter, stronger and more robust”.

The club – they know what I feel we need,” he says, noting in unspoken parentheses that it’s not what the Glazers feel they need.

“As an Atlanta United supporter,” tweets @MiddleAgedSpidey, “I’m going to claim ‘the Skip’ for King Josef.”

Harry Maguire tells Sky United dipped so much from good to bad performances in the first half of the season, noting how bad his team were at defending set-plays. He says they’ve improved a lot at that, though still messed it up against Southampton, and also notes the arrival of Fernandes. He doesn’t note Pogba and Martial’s injuries, but those made a hige difference too.

Let’s have some reports…

“Southgate must be dropping Pickford now,” tweets Bobby Moore, “especially with both Pope and Henderson consistently doing well. He might be good enough for mid-table Everton, but surely not for an England side aiming for the business end of tournaments?”

Yup, agree. If his best was better, maybe, but it isn’t, which makes him a liability.

“What a joyful league table for the mathletes,” says Lars Bøgegaard. “Number three ends up with excactly 2/3 of the points of number one. Bravo!”

And an embarrassment for everyone but number one.

Arsenal 3-2 Watford

Burnley 1-2 Brighton & Hove Albion

Chelsea 2-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers

Crystal Palace 1-1 Tottenham Hotspur

Everton 1-3 AFC Bournemouth

Leicester City 0-2 Manchester United

Manchester City 5-0 Norwich City

Newcastle United 1-3 Liverpool

Southampton 1-3 Sheffield United

West Ham United 1-1 Aston Villa

Wolves’ failure to take anything from Stamford Bridge is yet another example of Mourinho’s omniscient genius. Wolves, meanwhile, have to hope Chelsea beat Arsenal in the cup final.

A squad with players this good ought to be above this fate, but here we are.

That’s a great result for Chelsea, who now have a cup final to look forward to (and a trip to Germany, in order to overturn a 3-0 first leg deficit.

Schmeichel, who was out of his goal trying to score a minute ago, rolls a careless one to Lingard, who punishes home his first of the season!

Well! Who picked that two weeks ago?

99 points for the champions. Imagine their joy of they’d got one more.

Too little, too late by the looks of things.

Villa have two minutes to survive, to survive….

Marooned on the ground, he introduced studs to shin, matter of principle stuff really. McTominay is down, but will be fine; he’s gone, and he can’t really argue with that.

“The original skipper in the peno run up was john Aldo Aldridge!!” says Anto O’Connell. “As the young people say YouTube it!”

I’m old enough to remember watching it, but that was a stutter, for mine.

At the KP, we’re into the second of five minutes of injury time….

Norwich do not escape with a light 4-0 dusting.

That’ll teach them for taking the lead.

I’m sure in thefullness of time, this will be an own goal, but whatevz; Yarmolenko shoots from just outside the box, it flicks off a defender’s leg, and describes a perfect parabola, looping over Reina and in! Can Villa hold it down?

JACK GREALISH HAS DONE IT! JACK GREALISH HAS DONE IT! THE CAPTAIN HAS DONE IT! He takes a square pass just outside the box, left of centre, drags the ball down the side of the defender, enough to make space and angle for the shot, then flings everything he’s ever been, everything he’s ever known and everything that exists in the world into a rising, screeching cry for freedom, and Villa are staying up!