Premier League run-in: City top Arsenal, Chelsea fire Rosenior, Spurs at risk

What the video says

Episode 126 of Stick to Football, hosted by Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, and Jill Scott on Sky Bet’s The Overlap channel, runs through the closing weeks of the 2025-26 English Premier League season. The panel argues that Manchester City have overtaken Arsenal at the top of the table after a head-to-head win, that Chelsea’s season has fallen apart under the ownership of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, and that Tottenham Hotspur are now in serious danger of relegation.

The hosts also discuss Arsenal’s Champions League tie with Atlético Madrid, Leicester City’s drop into the third tier of English football a decade on from their unlikely Premier League title, and weigh several candidates for the Premier League Player of the Season. A number of specific financial figures are quoted on Chelsea’s debt, transfer outlay, and operating losses.

Checking the claims

Claim 1: Manchester City have overtaken Arsenal at the top of the Premier League

Verdict: TRUE

After 33 of 38 matches in the 2025-26 Premier League season, Manchester City and Arsenal sit level on 70 points and on goal difference (+37), but City lead the table because they have scored 66 goals to Arsenal’s 63, according to the Premier League’s own title-race tracker. The swing came on Sunday, April 19, 2026, when City beat Arsenal 2-1 in a head-to-head meeting, then followed up by winning 1-0 at Burnley in their match-in-hand on the Wednesday.

Each side has five Premier League matches left. If both clubs finish level on points and goal difference, City would win the title on head-to-head record, having taken four points from the two league fixtures to Arsenal’s one. The Premier League notes that this is only the second time in the competition’s history, after 1998-99, that the top two clubs have been level on points and goal difference with five fewer games to play.

Sources: - Premier League title race: How it stands and remaining fixtures - Supercomputer Predicts Premier League Table After Man City Leapfrog Arsenal (Sports Illustrated)

Claim 2: Chelsea have lost five league games in a row without scoring, and the manager is in trouble

Verdict: TRUE

Chelsea sacked manager Liam Rosenior on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, after a five-match Premier League losing streak in which the team failed to score a single goal, as reported by US outlets carrying the Associated Press wire. Chelsea’s club records identify the run as their worst losing streak since 1912. Rosenior had been in the job less than four months, taking charge of 23 games after replacing Enzo Maresca in January.

His final game was a 3-0 home defeat to Brighton on April 21. Assistant coach Calum McFarlane will serve as interim head coach for the remainder of the season; he previously took over briefly when Maresca left on January 1, 2026, per Sky Sports. Rosenior is the fifth permanent head coach to leave Stamford Bridge since Boehly and Clearlake bought the club in 2022.

Sources: - Liam Rosenior fired as Chelsea manager (AP via Local 10) - Enzo Maresca leaves Stamford Bridge (Sky Sports)

Claim 3: Chelsea’s owners have spent more than £1.86 billion on players and lost hundreds of millions

Verdict: PARTIALLY TRUE

The transfer-spend figure is broadly accurate. Since Boehly and Clearlake Capital completed their takeover in 2022, Chelsea have spent more than £1.5 billion (about $1.9 billion) on signings, with totals as high as £1.867 billion (about $2.34 billion at current exchange rates) reported when add-ons are included. On operating losses, Chelsea posted a £262.4 million pre-tax loss for the financial year ending June 30, 2025, according to a published-accounts breakdown by Football Talk. Revenue for the year was £490.9 million.

The hosts’ larger figures — £689 million in losses across three years, £1.4 billion of debt, and a daily loss rate of £630,000 — refer to the consolidated accounts of the parent group BlueCo, not just the football-club entity. Independent financial analysis published in April 2026 estimated the BlueCo group’s statutory loss before tax at around £700 million across the period; the precise day-rate quoted on the show is a derived figure rather than one published in any Tier 1 financial report. The figure of “two billion pounds and twenty-five million” mentioned for the original purchase appears to refer to the combined £2.5 billion sale price plus a £1.75 billion infrastructure-investment commitment that BlueCo made when acquiring the club — close to the show’s number but not an exact match.

Sources: - Chelsea’s record £262.4m losses explained (Football Talk) - Analysis: BlueCo’s £700 million parent-company loss (The Esk)

Claim 4: Leicester City have just been relegated, ten years after winning the Premier League

Verdict: TRUE, with one important detail

Leicester City were relegated from the second-tier Championship to the third-tier League One on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, after a 2-2 draw with Hull City at the King Power Stadium, per Sky Sports’ fall-from-grace feature. The detail to bear in mind is that Leicester were already relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2024-25 season — this latest drop is the second consecutive demotion, made worse by a six-point deduction earlier in the year for breaching the Championship’s profit and sustainability rules.

The 10-year reference checks out. Leicester won their only Premier League title on May 2, 2016, after starting the season as 5,000-to-1 outsiders under manager Claudio Ranieri. They will play in England’s third tier in 2026-27 for only the second time in the club’s history.

Sources: - Leicester City: From Premier League glory to League One (Sky Sports) - Leicester City relegated to League One, 10 years after winning EPL (NBC New York)

Claim 5: Arsenal face Atlético Madrid in the Champions League, and the tie could distract from the league

Verdict: TRUE — but it is the semifinal, not the quarterfinal as briefly implied

Arsenal and Atlético Madrid will meet in the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League semifinal. The first leg is at Atlético’s Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid on Wednesday, April 29, 2026; the second leg is at the Emirates Stadium in London on Tuesday, May 5, per ESPN’s match listing. Arsenal advanced past Sporting CP in the quarterfinal; Atlético Madrid eliminated Barcelona 3-2 on aggregate.

The two clubs have already met once this season, in the league phase in October, when Arsenal won 4-0. Whichever side advances will play the winner of the other semifinal in the final at Munich’s Allianz Arena on Saturday, May 30.

Sources: - Arsenal vs. Atlético Madrid — Champions League semifinal second leg (ESPN) - Atleti vs Arsenal — UEFA Champions League 2025/26 Semi-finals (UEFA)

Claim 6: Tottenham Hotspur could go down

Verdict: TRUE — and they are now statistically the favorite to be the third club relegated

Tottenham sit 18th in the Premier League with five matches left and have not won a league game in the calendar year 2026, according to ESPN’s relegation analysis. The Opta supercomputer model gives Spurs the highest relegation probability of any team still mathematically alive — between 57 and 59 percent depending on which version of the model is run — versus about 38 percent for West Ham just above them. Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers have already been confirmed for the drop.

Spurs’ remaining fixtures are Wolves on April 25, Aston Villa on May 3, Leeds on May 11, Chelsea on May 17, and Everton on May 24. Manager Roberto De Zerbi, hired in mid-season, has said publicly that he believes the side can win all five.

Sources: - Are Tottenham going to be relegated? What the stats say (ESPN) - Premier League relegation battle: How it stands (Premier League official)

Bottom line

Most of the podcast’s central claims about the Premier League run-in hold up. Manchester City have leapfrogged Arsenal at the top by goals scored, Chelsea’s losing streak is real and its historical scale (worst since 1912) is correctly cited, Leicester’s fall to League One is confirmed, and Tottenham’s relegation odds genuinely are worse than even money. The Champions League framing is slightly off — Arsenal-Atlético is a semifinal, not a quarterfinal — and several of the eye-catching financial figures on Chelsea’s ownership are grounded in published accounts but not all separately verifiable in mainstream Tier 1 reporting.

For viewers tracking the title race, the practical takeaway is that with five games left, the gap between champion and runner-up is currently zero, and the next nine days of FA Cup and Champions League semifinals will shape how much each contender has left in the tank for the league finish.