Liverpool claimed its second top-flight title since the Premier League’s creation in Matchweek 35 with a 5-1 battering of Tottenham Hotspur. Southampton, Leicester City, and Ipswich Town are all confirmed to play in the Championship next season. There’s not much left to play for over the final four weeks of English football, except to determine which three of Newcastle, Manchester City, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, and Aston Villa will play in the Champions League next season.
If you have any strong inklings, you can make your bets to at DraftKings Sportsbook. Here are my top betting picks for Matchweek 35.
First, let’s take a look at the full list of fixtures:
Manchester City 1, Wolves 0
Fulham at Aston Villa, 7:30 a.m. ET, May 3
Ipswich Town at Everton, 10 a.m. ET, May 3
Southampton at Leicester City, 10 a.m. ET, May 3
AFC Bournemouth at Arsenal, 12:30 p.m. ET, May 3
Manchester United at Brentford, 9 a.m. ET, May 4
Newcastle United at Brighton & Hove Albion, 9 a.m. ET, May 4
Tottenham Hotspur at West Ham United, 9 a.m. ET, May 4
Liverpool at Chelsea, 11:30 a.m. ET, May 4
Nottingham Forest at Crystal Palace, 3 p.m. ET, May 5
Leicester City-Southampton Draw (+260)
Wouldn’t it just be fitting if two of the worst teams in Premier League history drew in their second matchup this season? Both of these sides demonstrated that they clearly weren’t top-flight quality early on in the season and have done nothing to disprove it since. The Foxes and the Saints will each likely finish with fewer than 20 points — barring a Leicester win over nearly-as-awful Ipswich in Matchweek 37 — and will disappear back to relative anonymity in the second tier starting in the fall. With Jamie Vardy leaving the club, it’s not at all a guarantee that the Foxes will come straight back up.
There’s not much to say about either of these clubs. Besides a 2-2 draw against Brighton, in which Leicester produced just 0.5 expected goals worth of chances to the Seagulls’ 3.8, the Foxes haven’t scored a single goal in any competition since January, and it’s not like any of the games have been particularly competitive. A 1-0 loss to the championship-winning Reds in Matchweek 33 was their most impressive result on paper, but given Liverpool’s xG figure, they were unlucky not to concede more. Southampton has taken more points from its last five games and has at least scored in six of the past seven matches. The Saints’ better form will cancel out Leicester’s slightly more impressive roster, and Southampton will leave 2007-08 Derby County alone in history’s basement.
Newcastle Win and O1.5 Goals (+165)
This is one of the games on the slate that matters most, given that Newcastle currently leads a pack of five teams hoping to claim three Champions League spots and Brighton still has a chance of claiming Conference League football if it can pass Aston Villa over the remaining four weeks of the season. Both teams will be ultra-motivated and send out their best XI.
The Magpies’ best XI is simply better than the Seagulls’, and they’re in better form. Alexander Isak is one of the most in-form strikers in all of Europe, as he’s currently second in the Premier League Golden Boot race behind only Mohamed Salah, and Bruno Guimarães and Harvey Barnes are solid players as well. Newcastle did take a 4-1 throttling at the hands of Aston Villa two weeks ago before bouncing back the following week with a 3-0 win against the Tractor Boys. It’s won six of its last seven Premier League matches and claimed its first major trophy since the 1955 FA Cup by outlasting Liverpool, 2-1, in the final.
This just simply hasn’t been the season for Brighton, which had taken just two points from five league matches and been dumped from the FA Cup before snapping its losing streak in Matchweek 34 with a 3-2 victory over West Ham. In another season, that might’ve been somewhat impressive, but it’s been a disastrous campaign for the Hammers, who sit 17th in the table and are winless since February. A narrow win over a 17th-placed squad, in which the two teams tied by expected goals, is a sign of the Seagulls’ continued poor form. They’ve given up two or more goals in each of their last six league matches.
Ethan Nwaneri to Score or Give Assist (+150)
With respect to the Cherries, Arsenal surely doesn’t care about its match against Bournemouth at all. The Gunners will travel to France to take on PSG in the second leg of their Champions League semifinals tie next Saturday, and it’s all to play for, given that they trail 1-0 after the first leg. Arsenal has never won the loftiest prize in European football in its history, and with just 180 minutes of football between it and the trophy, it can put aside the Premier League for now. It would take an absolute disaster for the Gunners to choke away their place in the 2025-26 Champions League.
Right winger Bukayo Saka will be a necessary asset in the Champions League semifinal, and he’s had an injury-riddled season after missing more than three months with a hamstring injury earlier this winter. Mikel Arteta has played it cautious with his star boy since his return, as he hasn’t played more than 60 minutes in any Premier League match. He has started all three Champions League matches, though, and played the full 90 minutes against the French champions on Tuesday, logging one shot on target.
If Arteta chooses to rest Saka, 18-year-old Nwaneri will probably be in line to start. He’s started 15 different matches across all competitions this season and either netted or recorded an assist in seven of them. By non-penalty goals per 90 minutes, he ranks in the 94th percentile among wingers in Europe’s top five leagues, ahead of Saka. Amazingly, Nwaneri has had just eight shots on target in this campaign, but he’s turned four of them into goals.
