UNITED KINGDOM, Manchester – Manchester City have been crowned Premier League champions for the third successive season after title rivals Arsenal lost at Nottingham Forest.
The Gunners, top for the majority of the campaign, are four points behind City with only one game left to play after being beaten 1-0 on Saturday.
Pep Guardiola’s side have won the title in five of the past six campaigns.
They also have a chance to claim the Treble, with the FA Cup and Champions League finals to come next month.
Only Manchester United, in 1998-99, have previously achieved that feat – and it is their derby rivals whom City will meet at Wembley on 3 June, before facing Inter Milan a week later in Istanbul, where they will seek their first Champions League triumph.
City will lift the trophy after they play Chelsea on Sunday (16:00 BST).
Captain Ilkay Gundogan – who has scored four goals in the last two league games – said: “The Premier League is without doubt the most demanding and competitive league in the world, so that tells you everything about what an achievement this is.
“To have won this trophy three times in a row and five times in six years is incredible. That quality and consistency helps sum up what Manchester City stand for and ensures the club will continue to strive for success going forward.
“It has been a season I will never forget.”
City, champions for a ninth time in the club’s history, had trailed Arsenal by eight points on 7 April, although they had played one game fewer than Mikel Arteta’s leaders at that point.
It is only the fourth time that a team has been as many as eight points clear after at least 28 Premier League games and failed to win the title.
Only one team has ever had 69 points with 10 games remaining – as Arsenal did – and failed to win the title. That was Liverpool in 2018-19, when they finished on 97 points, one behind City.
But City have won 11 league games in a row – and dropped just two points from a possible 42 – to overhaul Arsenal and clinch the title with three games remaining.
City are only the fifth club to win three successive top-flight titles in England, following Huddersfield Town (1924-26), Arsenal (1933-35), Liverpool (1982-84) and Manchester United, who did it twice under Sir Alex Ferguson (1999-2001 and 2007-09).
It is also the third occasion Guardiola has managed to win three league titles in a row, having done so in La Liga with Barcelona from 2009-11 and in the Bundesliga from 2014-16 with Bayern Munich.
City’s Premier League dominance of five titles in six seasons was last achieved by Manchester United between 1996 and 2001 – a period where they also won the Treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League.
United also won seven titles in nine seasons between 1993-2001; as well as five titles in seven seasons between 2007-2013 – so City’s current dominance is not unprecedented.
Before that, Liverpool in the late 1970s and early ’80s enjoyed similar periods of league success.
