Premier League best bets: Will Man City fall at the final hurdle?

Welcome to Matchday 37 of the Premier League season. It's been a long road, but we're finally here: just two games separate England's best from their fates.

Well ... sort of. Six teams — Manchester City, Spurs, Newcastle, Chelsea, Manchester United and Brighton — have an extra game to play to make up for the weekend they missed in cup play. They'll contest those matches in the middle of next week so that the whole league is on equal footing for the final day of the season.

Plenty has been decided already; we know that Sheffield United is relegated, that Liverpool is third, and that we'll all forget about Crystal Palace regardless of where it winds up finishing. But the most important variable of all, the title, remains up for grabs. Man City is in pole position, one point ahead with a game in hand, but Arsenal can snatch the advantage if City slips up. You know the story. It's been the same for weeks on end.

This weekend, followed by City's midweek makeup fixture against Spurs, represents its last chance to err before Decision Day. If City can hold its nerve through these next two games, it won't matter what Arsenal does in its own matches, and the title will be decided before the last game of the season. If it doesn't, though? Then we're in for some final-day fireworks.

Where are all the best bets in this intriguing final stretch of the season? We think they're here:

Fulham vs. Man City, Saturday, May 11, 7:30 a.m. ET — The most important game of the weekend is also the first one on the schedule —our condolences to all the West Coast fans getting up at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday to catch this one live. Plucky, lovable Fulham has already done City a huge favor in the title race by beating Arsenal back in December. With nothing left to play for in its own season, it's hard to see Fulham doing anything but giving City another one this weekend. (Especially when you remember that City won the return fixture 5-1 last September thanks to an Erling Haaland hat trick.)

The odds agree: City's at -500 to win this one outright. But who will shine against the Cottagers? We've got our eyes on Julian Alvarez to score at +150. The Argentinian attacker found the back of the net in his last match against Fulham and is likely to get plenty of game time as City rests the likes of Haaland and Foden for the midweek match against Spurs.

Nottingham Forest vs. Chelsea, Saturday, May 11, 12:30 p.m. ET — These two must be thanking their lucky stars that Man United collapsed so spectacularly this season: if the Red Devils hadn't imploded, both Forest and Chelsea would be getting a lot more stick for their poor attitudes and underwhelming performances. While Chelsea is higher in the table — seventh to Forest's 17th — it tends to perform poorly against lower-tier opposition. (Case in point: Chelsea lost to Forest in the return fixture back in September.) Forest is on a high after beating Sheffield 3-1 to all but secure its safety from relegation; Chelsea is dangerously full of itself after back-to-back results against West Ham and Spurs. We like the idea of Forest winning this one at +250.

Aston Villa vs. Liverpool, Monday, May 13, 3 p.m. ET — This fixture has thrown up some wild results in the past: it's averaged a whopping 3.4 goals per game across the past decade. (Real ones remember the wildest result of all, relegation-threatened Villa's unbelievable 7-2 win over defending champion Liverpool in October 2020.) Liverpool has Villa's number and we think it will win this one easily. The odds agree, setting Liverpool at -143 to take the W, but we can play with the goal-fest nature of this pairing to make those odds a little nicer. Betting on a Liverpool win with more than three total goals scored in the match is far more compelling at +187.