It's not over, but it sure feels like it's just a matter of time before this season's Premier League title race draws to a conclusion.
Many predicted or had hope that the weekend was going to serve a potential twist with Manchester City travelling to Goodison Park to face an Everton side battling for survival. However, Ilkay Gundogan inspired the visitors to a comfortable 3-0 win and just like that all the pressure was back on Arsenal.
Knowing victory against Brighton & Hove Albion was the only result to keep the title race alive - if only for another week or so - losing 3-0 at home has all but ended the Gunners' chances of being crowned Premier League champions as the wait is set to stretch into a 20th year.
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As a result, Man City can win their third Premier League title in a row, fifth in six seasons, by beating Chelsea at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon. In fact, they will be champions before kicking a ball if Arsenal lose to Nottingham Forest 24 hours prior and a draw at the City Ground would also be great news for Pep Guardiola's side due to their superior goal difference.
Naturally, the north London outfit's form in recent weeks has come under the microscope with Sky Sports pundit and former Manchester United defender highlighting where things went wrong for Mikel Arteta's side: "Arsenal have dropped 12 pts in 7 games! Won 9pts from a possible 21. All the characteristics of it being too much have appeared," he tweeted.
"Loss of form, giving up leads, energy and legs going, making unforced errors not seen earlier in the season, young players becoming tense and losing their freedom of expression and others showing too much emotion when calmness is needed.
"However in a high-performance environment and at the elite level we must still recognise when the pressure has taken its toll. That league table below was only 7 games and 5 weeks ago. I hope these Arsenal players are there again one day (if it’s not United) and can see it through."
The table Neville is referring to is the standings following Arsenal's 4-1 win over Leeds United when they matched City's result against Liverpool to maintain an eight-point lead at the top, albeit having played a game more.
Now, to Neville's point, Arsenal winning twice and drawing three from the subsequent seven games has ultimately proven costly in the title race. But in truth, the damage was done after the Liverpool, West Ham United and Southampton fixtures despite not losing any of them.
After the March international break, the target for the Gunners to win the league was 26 points from the final 10 games, which in the dream scenario, worked out to be eight wins and two draws. Simply put, whilst they didn't need to be perfect, they could only afford to drop as many as four points.
So after dropping four points against Liverpool and West Ham - having been 2-0 up in both games - Arsenal had lost their security blanket. Furthermore, with Man City racking up some big scorelines, the goal difference went from being +3 in their favour to +6 in the space of two weeks and it now stands at +20.
Arsenal had to be perfect after drawing against West Ham to remain in control of the title race but failing to beat Southampton can be pinpointed as the exact moment when things turned, the defeat at Man City dented those hopes even further and they could be put out of their misery this weekend.
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