{"id":974410,"date":"2026-05-24T19:33:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T17:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/?p=974410"},"modified":"2026-05-24T19:33:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T17:33:29","slug":"palinja-sacuvao-totenhem-vest-hem-ispao-oprostaji-salaha-i-pepa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/sport\/palinja-sacuvao-totenhem-vest-hem-ispao-oprostaji-salaha-i-pepa\/","title":{"rendered":"Tottenham retains Palinja, West Ham relegated, Salah and Pep say goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Arsenal greeted the day as the new champions of England, with the trophy already ready for the hands of Mikel Arteta's players, but behind that festive image was another, much rougher battle. At one end of London, Tottenham were trying to preserve the status that had seemed a given for decades. At the other, West Ham were catching the last train for survival, aware that even victory meant nothing to them if Everton did not do what they were supposed to do for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He didn't do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tottenham beat Everton 1-0, with a goal from Joao Palinha towards the end of the first half, and thus ended a season that often seemed like a collective walk on the edge with at least one scene of relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It wasn't a big game day, nor a day to wash away all that had been previously missed, but it was a day in which the north London club survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a season where the word \"survival\" sounded almost unreal when put next to Tottenham's name, it ended up being the most important word in the sentence. Heading into the final round, Tottenham had two points ahead of West Ham, and West Ham needed both a win over Leeds and a defeat by Everton to save themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83d\udea8\ud835\udc01\ud835\udc11\ud835\udc04\ud835\udc00\ud835\udc0a\ud835\udc08\ud835\udc0d\ud835\udc06: Tottenham have woken up from a nightmare with Roberto de Zerbi <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OArQNuGaRE\">pic.twitter.com\/OArQNuGaRE<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Goals Xtra (@GoalsXtra) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GoalsXtra\/status\/2058596640211046607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May 24, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">West Ham did their part, but football can sometimes be particularly cruel to those who start to resemble themselves too late. A convincing 3-0 win over Leeds was not enough. While the London Stadium people were catching every sound from Tottenham's stadium, the news they needed never arrived. West Ham finished below the line, behind Tottenham, and left the Premier League after 14 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Tottenham, it was a sigh of relief, but not a celebration. Surviving a season like this is not a reason for fireworks, but for serious conversation in a room where the noise of the stadium cannot be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A club that once sought the Champions League, was a finalist, won the Europa League last season, was now counting the minutes until survival. Roberto de Zerbi can talk about character, the players can hug each other after the final whistle, the fans can sing because their hearts have finally left their throats, but this is not the end of the problem. This is just a catastrophe avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things were much better at the top, at least for the reds of north London. Arsenal finished the season with a 2-1 win over Crystal Palace to take their tally to 85 points, enough to lift the trophy with a sense that a long search had finally made sense. Gabriel Jesus and Noni Madueke signed another championship afternoon deal, while Max Dauman, at 16 years and 144 days, became the youngest starter in Premier League history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Arsenal's title was not a final-day explosion, but a calm confirmation of what the season had already said. Arteta's team endured the race, endured the doubts, endured their own downfalls and finally reclaimed the trophy they had been waiting for since 2004. When you wait that long, the trophy is no longer just metal. It becomes proof that a generation was not just a pretty story in the making, but a team that had learned to get the job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the day didn't just belong to the champion. It also belonged to those who were leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mohamed Salah bid Liverpool farewell with an assist at Anfield. In his final appearance in the red shirt, the Egyptian set up Curtis Jones' goal in a 1-1 draw with Brentford, before leaving to a standing ovation that is not just about numbers, but about the years in which he has become a benchmark for an era. Salah was much more than just a goal-scoring winger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"pt\" dir=\"ltr\">Mo Salah's farewell \ud83e\udd7a\ud83d\udc4b<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/DAZNPremier?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#DAZNPremier<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/X1nHaWfwoS\">pic.twitter.com\/X1nHaWfwoS<\/a><\/p>\u2014 DAZN Portugal (@DAZNPortugal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DAZNPortugal\/status\/2058588370536735207?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May 24, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was a constant in a time when football was changing rapidly, the face of Liverpool's renewal, a player who made big games his backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that's why that assist felt like a fitting end. Not spectacular, not staged for a poster, but Salah-like usefulness. Another action-changing touch, another pass that leaves a mark, another moment in which Anfield had every right to stand up and say thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the Etihad, the farewell was different, harder and somehow quieter despite everything surrounding the game. Pep Guardiola was in charge of Manchester City for the last time, and Aston Villa did not give him a fairy-tale ending. City lost 2-1, Ollie Watkins turned the tables on the visitors, and Guardiola left with a defeat on a day in which the result could not have been higher than what was closing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ten years, 20 trophies and a change in the entire language of English football cannot fit into one defeat to Aston Villa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Guardiola left the Premier League different from the one he came into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He made opponents learn new words, coaches change habits, clubs look differently at full-backs, centre-backs, goalkeepers, the spaces between the lines and every ball returned to the back line. His end was not cinematic, but perhaps that is why it was footballing. Great eras rarely go the way the screenwriter would have wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pep was late coming out to the pitch ended up jogging on. The reception for his last game, man. The noise. The gift from Unai Emery and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AVFCOfficial?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@AVFCOfficial<\/a> . Wow. Just legendary. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5dU1tpiSfU\">pic.twitter.com\/5dU1tpiSfU<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Geronimo Morgans (@GeronimoMorgans) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GeronimoMorgans\/status\/2058569614087409815?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May 24, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aston Villa retained fourth place with the win, and the complicated scenario in which England could have six teams in the Champions League did not open up. For that outcome, Villa would have had to drop to fifth place, and Liverpool would have jumped ahead of them with a win over Brentford. Instead, Villa won at the Etihad, Liverpool played 1-1, and Bournemouth remained sixth without the prize they dreamed of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Manchester United finished the season with a 3-0 win at Brighton and third place, with another record from Bruno Fernandes, who reached the 21st assist of the season. Sunderland reached Europe with a 2-1 win over Chelsea, and Xabi Alonso left the Blues to build from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The super-rich team from London will have no European commitments next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fulham defeated Newcastle 2-0, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest played out a 1-1 draw, while Burnley and Wolves, two teams that had previously lost their Premier League status, drew with the same result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus ended a season that, in its final moments, had everything that English football loves to sell to the world, but also everything that really makes people return to the stadiums. Arsenal won the cup, Tottenham got the air, West Ham got a penalty, Salah got applause, Guardiola got one last look at the Etihad. Some will remember this by the table, some by the assist, some by Palinja's goal, some by the silence of the West Ham fans when it became clear that victory no longer had the power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Premier League has brought down the curtain both without tenderness and with a lot of emotion at the same time. Just as it usually does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Premier League rarely ends quietly. Even when the champion is already known, even when part of the destinies are drawn in advance, the last day of the season always leaves a few open doors through which enter nervousness, hope, farewells and that strange football justice that never asks who deserves a quiet life.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":974415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[14670,33260,15846,860,443,4715],"naslovna":[],"class_list":["post-974410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-mohamed-salah","tag-palinja","tag-pep-gvardiola","tag-premijer-liga","tag-totenhem","tag-vest-hem"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Totenhem-Tottenham-Hotspur-Facebook-.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974411,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974410\/revisions\/974411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/974415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974410"},{"taxonomy":"naslovna","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naslovna?post=974410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}