Two over-confident draws from commanding positions is not a proper title bottling. Arsenal have form but even their implosions are not the most spectacular.
10) Chelsea 2013/14
Never doubt the power of Jose Mourinho’s PR. The Portuguese’s “little horse” shtick helped deflect attention from his trophyless first season back at Chelsea in 2013/14, admittedly with no little assistance from one of his oldest foes.
Mourinho and Chelsea took great satisfaction in halting the Liverpool title procession almost a decade ago, but their fabled 2-0 win at Anfield should have resonated even further. While it opened the door for Manchester City, the Blues could have been in a position to take advantage themselves.
Chelsea had been seven points clear, albeit with games in hand for the teams below them, by mid-March. Two red cards in a defeat to Aston Villa started a slide of three defeats in six matches from which they never recovered, also falling to Alan Pardew’s Crystal Palace and a Gus Poyet-managed Sunderland.
Mourinho’s side came third, the forgotten challenger who dropped 11 points in their last nine games and finished four and two points behind Manchester City and Liverpool respectively. They were just clever enough to mess things up earlier, gradually across different fixtures and far less hilariously.
9) Arsenal 2015/16
There must be something about three-way Premier League title races which makes it hard to accurately identify and subsequently point and laugh at the true bottlers. Popular opinion suggests the Tottenham side which never led the 2015/16 table made the most royal faff of preventing Leicester miracles, but their main hiccup amounted to a 1-0 defeat to an excellent West Ham side in their second game in three days, which was followed by March and April draws with Arsenal, Liverpool and Tony Pulis’ West Brom.
The implosion at Stamford Bridge, a rush to declare any and all things Spursy and the fact they finished third in their own two-horse race after losing their last couple of games, including a 5-1 thrashing by relegated Newcastle, does make them a neater candidate for the tag.
But in another case of slipping up sooner and less memorably, Arsenal’s botched run is often overlooked. It was they who Celebrated Like They Won The League™ when they beat Leicester with Danny Welbeck’s last-minute winner on Valentine’s Day, capitalising on those high spirits by then losing to a Man Utd side with a defence of Varela, Carrick,…
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