West Ham face Arsenal on Sunday from 4pm, with kick-off set for 4.30pm, and Tottenham travel to Leeds United on Monday from 6.30pm, with that match starting at 8pm. The two fixtures arrive with West Ham in the bottom three and Spurs one point ahead after a weekend that shifted the relegation picture again.
West Ham’s 3-0 loss at Brentford on Saturday left them clinging to survival hopes while Tottenham moved out of the bottom three the following day with a 2-1 win at Aston Villa. Opta’s supercomputer now gives West Ham more than an 80 per cent chance of going down, while Spurs are rated at 19.3 per cent, and the bookmakers have West Ham at 1/4 for relegation and Tottenham at 3/1.
That makes this week the sharpest test yet in a relegation fight that has three games left and is being described as the most competitive Premier League battle of its kind for two decades. West Ham are the sixth best team in the league since January 17, when they beat Spurs 1-0 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but that form has not translated into safety. Their relegation chances have more than doubled since the beginning of May, when Spurs were still viewed as having a 59 per cent chance of going down.
There is still no room for a clean decision in the next round of fixtures. West Ham can damage Arsenal’s day, Spurs can try to put more distance between themselves and the bottom three, but mathematically nothing can be settled yet. That leaves Sunday and Monday as pressure games rather than end points, with every result feeding into a scramble that is likely to run to the final week and beyond for at least one of the clubs.
For West Ham, the schedule now carries the weight of a season they cannot afford to let slip further. For Tottenham, the win at Villa changed the mood but not the danger. The table may have moved, but the relegation battle is still open enough to punish either side again before the campaign is over.
