How Early Can Premier League Titles Be Decided?
Part of what makes football so beautiful and why people in their millions don their team’s kit and join a sea of bright colours in the stands is just how unpredictable the game can be.
Because football is a relatively low-scoring game, anything can happen in 90 minutes, but this variability is a double-edged sword which delivers not only wire-to-wire championships but also complete and total routs.
This is why a league title can be decided weeks or months before the final day or could reach the very last moments of stoppage time.
Technically, the earliest and latest the Premier League was decided is the same year, 2019/20, depending on whether the metric used is matches before the end of the season (seven) or the actual date itself (25th June, delayed due to a global pandemic).
Outside of this unusual and impossible season, the earliest the Premier League was decided was 14th April 2001, when Arsenal lost at home to Middlesbrough, gifting the championship to Manchester United with five games to spare.
The runner-up to this was just one day later in 2018 when Manchester City would break multiple Premier League records and match United’s feat of winning the league with five games left.
The latest outside of Liverpool’s 2020 triumph was 16th May 1999, when Manchester United won the first part of their historic treble thanks to a last-day comeback against Tottenham Hotspur.
This was largely a quirk of scheduling, however, with the Premier League ending remarkably deep into May.
The latest in terms of time played was on 13th May 2012, after three minutes and 20 seconds of stoppage time, thanks to a comeback goal by Sergio Aguero that allowed Manchester City to win by goal difference.
There might never be a Premier League as dramatically decided, although there have already been suggestions that the 2025 Serie A season could be decided in a play-off match.