25/02/2026

SPORTS WEDNESDAY | FEB 25, 2026

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Gyokeres hails perfect response to Wolves setback

Ű BY PHILIP DUNCAN

It was a good chat, we certainly enjoyed today, and now we’re going to prepare for a big game against Chelsea (Monday 12.30am Malaysian time).” Having avoided the Champions League play offs, Arsenal will not have a midweek game for the first time in more than two months. Arsenal’s title rivals Manchester City are also not back in action until this weekend – when they face Leeds at Elland Road on Sunday (1.30am) – and Pep Guardiola said he will allow his players to enjoy some cocktails in the coming days. But, in response to Guardiola’s plans, Arteta said with a smile: “Cocktails? I don’t drink cocktails. So, no, we will do our own thing.” – The Independent

against bottom-of-the-table Wolves. Speaking ahead of Monday’s north London derby, Declan Rice said the players spoke to each other in a “firm” way. And reflecting on the summit, Gyokeres contin ued: “It’s important sometimes just to say what you feel and to let it all out in the group. “Most of us spoke. Everyone can recognise how different people feel in the moment and you get a better understanding of the feeling. “When you speak in the group openly like that, you come closer together and it’s very important to do that sometimes. “If you’re not honest, I think it’s hard to improve.

And Gyokeres, who extended his League tally to the season for 10, said: “It’s always going to be difficult when you get a result like we had at Wolves, but it’s how you handle that, and how you respond to it, and today we showed that it in a good way. “To get this result and this performance, it was the perfect way to respond. So, it’s a good sign. The thing is, that we have to keep showing it in the next game and the game after that. There’s a lot of games to go. But if we perform like this, it’s going to be good, for sure.” Mikel Arteta’s title-chasing squad staged a meeting after they surrendered a two-goal lead

VIKTOR GYOKERES believes Arsenal’s statement derby win against Tottenham was the “perfect response” to silence the club’s critics. Gyokeres and Eberechi Eze both scored twice to secure a 4-1 triumph over Spurs just four days after Arsenal were rocked by a 2-2 draw at Wolves. The dropped points at Molineux led to ques tions about Arsenal’s title mentality. However, their performance against Tottenham – which took them five points clear of Manchester City at the top of the Premier League – went some way to silenc ing the doubters.

This Premier League season is the most competitive in years – and that’s very bad news for Tottenham Spurs sleepwalking into relegation

Ű BY MIGUEL DELANEY

A S Igor Tudor walked into the Tottenham Hotspur dress ing room after that defeat to Arsenal, he carried the air of a man realising just how big this chal lenge is. His message to the players was much the same as the one he relayed to the media: it’s time to look in the mirror. Because right now, that squad is staring at something that had still seemed impossible for so long. They’re in a relegation battle. Spurs, one of the Super League founders and currently among the wealthiest clubs in the world, could go down. Some Tottenham fans will no doubt be screaming that they’ve been warning of this for months, that the club has long been in real danger of sleepwalking into relegation. But it was hard not to think the squad simply had too much quality. The wage bill was too high, suggesting there was just enough individual class. Except the reality is that the situa tion has now gone far beyond that. This is no longer about quality. As Tudor rightly intuited, this is about psychology, about emotion, about the swirl engulfing the club. There is also another element, running parallel to Tottenham’s form, further squeezing the club. There is now considerable evi dence to suggest this is the most com petitive Premier League in a decade, since Leicester City’s title season of 2015/16. And we’re beyond simply a more difficult league. There’s more to it – something the Premier League should actually be delighted about. Its unique selling point is back, and has never been more evident. And that could yet cre ate more havoc. Taking the most immediate metric – and one that Spurs inadvertently contributed to – the 36 points between first place and the relegation zone is the lowest at this stage, after matchweek 27, since 2015/16. Back then, it was 32. Now, it would be 35, had Arsenal’s away match against Wolves not been brought for ward due to the Carabao Cup final. The nature of that 2-2 draw was rightly seen as a mini-crisis for Arsenal, to the point that Mikel Arteta spent a long time discussing it even after the 4-1 win over Spurs. But it can also be true that a draw away to the bottom team isn’t neces sarily the defining result in the way it

City’s recent matches. That only deepens the physical and mental fatigue caused by a con gested calendar. And it’s impossible not to see how this contributes to another telling statistic. City’s nervy win over Newcastle United was their third in a row, which put Pep Guardiola’s side on the long est winning streak in the Premier League. Only Liverpool are currently even on two wins in a row. The low stakes of these streaks have been a feature of the season. Stumbling Aston Villa – whose late equaliser against Leeds United might still prove crucial in the race to secure a Champions League place – have the longest streak at just eight. After that, it’s City on six, and Arsenal and Liverpool on five each. This only proves how difficult it is to generate momentum. Teams can’t put winning runs together in the same way as previous years. There’s a high degree of fallibility, which makes for greater unpredictability – anyone can beat anyone. The reasons for this are fairly clear, and almost mirror what happened after 2015/16. Then, much of the

would have been in previous seasons. Wolves are, after all, the 29th wealthiest club in the world. They might have only won one game so far this season, but they haven’t lost badly. Their worst defeat was 4-0 on the opening day, against Manchester City, before the managerial switch that stabilised the side. In a statistic that has conspicu ously barely changed, that game is one of only six Premier League matches this season to involve defeats of a four-goal margin or higher. This is astonishingly low for this late in the campaign, with 11 match weeks left. By comparison, even “the Leicester season” saw 20 such results, and the number was as high as 32 in 2023–24. This shows the gaps between teams aren’t as wide but it has another effect too. The top teams – especially those chasing the title – can’t take their foot off the gas. They can’t simply make four sub stitutions to rest players when cruis ing. They have to stay fully switched on, as witnessed in Arsenal’s draw with Wolves and in so many of Man

focus was on how wealthy clubs responded by appointing the biggest managers in the game, when Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte joined Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp, and Mauricio Pochettin o . But they were also doing something more signifi cant. They were involved in discussions that drove even more Champions League prize money to the wealthiest clubs, as the “Super League” group exploited the vacuum at Uefa and Fifa following the 2015 fall of Sepp Blatter. This directly paved the way for the Super League and influenced the new Champions League. The wealthy clubs got what they long wanted – but it might be too much. They may genuinely have bitten off more than they can chew – at least for now. The expanded Champions League has become an unintended balancing factor in European football. The greater number of games miti gates the effect of wealth, due to fatigue. In the Premier League, there’s been a further counterbalance from the massive influx of money over the past 13 years. Even clubs at the bot

tom have sophisticated coaching staffs and squads that could steamroll most of Europe. Wolves are difficult to break down. West Ham United have gained new respectability. Nottingham Forest have a solid mid-table squad. There’s even an argument that Burnley are performing better than Spurs. All of which is bad news for the one-time Super League club, even if they were always considered a junior partner. The sheer competitiveness of the Premier League could see them fall, sleepwalking into relegation as Middlesbrough did in 1997, West Ham in 2003, Newcastle in 2009, or Leicester in 2023 – but potentially on a much greater scale. The second half of that Arsenal defeat was alarming in that regard. Sunday’s trip to Fulham may now be the biggest fixture of the weekend, revealing what Tottenham can actu ally achieve under Tudor. The message from the rest of the League, however, is clear: you’ve never had to be sharper. – The Independent