Premier League 2025-26 Week 16 Updates: Salah Helps Liverpool Over The Line; Chelsea Cruise; Arsenal Ride Their Luck

Arsenal scrape through against Wolves as form signals a dip 

AGAINST THE LEAGUE'S BOTTOM SIDE at home, Arsenal were everything you’d expect them to be — dominant, threatening and capable of producing the audacious. Ironically, they were also everything that a team holding together a dip in form looks like. Mikel Arteta’s boys squandered chances, missed the goal when it would have been easier to score and often got in each other’s way. For their opponents, tragically though, Wolves scored all three — two own-goals — goals of the game, out of which they deserved at least a point. For this particular edition of throw-every-dice-you-can-find, Arsenal’s luck turned not once but twice off of familiar set-piece routines. But as was evidenced against the 10 men of Chelsea, not every squad can be opened up with long hopeful punts hurled into the box. Arteta has all the world’s attacking talent at his disposal, but he needs to reinvent how he uses them against teams intent on blocking them rather than responding. A dip in form seems imminent, and Arsenal’s title charge could rest on the manner in which a supremely talented squad overcomes a tricky period.

Salah returns to help Liverpool (one last time?)

And so the king returned. Hauled on with roughly a quarter of the game gone, Salah’s premature introduction at Anfield was met with confused applause. In what the Egyptian had teased as his last game, Salah ran around the pitch as a man on a mission. He helped set up Hugo Ekitike’s second goal, and looked like one of two things: a man determined to get on the good side of his fans and the club he has so ably served, or a man trying to put on one last show for the faithful who’ve regarded him as the legend he so obviously deserves to be called. The little family parade that followed the final whistle left much to be debated by conspiracy theorists. Either way, Arne Slot will be pleased that the conversation can now return to the football, as opposed to the politics transpiring off the field. As for events on the field, Brighton, on another day, could have put 3 or 4 past Liverpool. Though a stalwart of his frontline is nearing the exit door, it's the problems at the back that Slot needs to address.

WATCH | Mo Salah's winning goals in the Liverpool vs Brighton match, here on OTTplay

Chelsea welcome back Cole Palmer in routine win

Chelsea must be the most frustratingly decent team in the league. One week they nullify title-chasing Arsenal with a man less, and the next they get rolled over by a busy, physical Leeds side set for a relegation scrap. In the Champions League in midweek, Chelsea offered another limp display, offering more proof that this young team of talented individuals can’t be trusted to put together any run of form. Against a solid Everton side, though, Chelsea won comfortably and could welcome the return of the maverick they have sorely missed in recent games. Cole Palmer took his first goal in months, with the kind of aplomb you expect from a player of his class. Most players who are critical to their team’s success are either industrious or jaw-droppingly unpredictable. Palmer, on the other hand, is a sliver of programmed calm; they deserved at least a point, an ingredient that Chelsea’s unpredictable form and fortune could use. Not for the first time, Enzo Maresca has a chance to forge some momentum. But will his youngsters deliver?

Man City now within sniffing distance of a title challenge

Crystal Palace are one of the hardest away games in the league at the moment. Even though the Seagulls have struggled of late, they are a team not known to roll out the red carpet for the so-called bigger clubs of the league. City found that out the hard way as they struggled get a grip on the game in the first half. The writing was on the wall — Palace were bouncing, and a goal seemed imminent. City’s in-form duo, however, had other ideas. Both Haaland and Foden got on the scoresheet and turned a potentially tough game into a canter by the end. Palace would be ruing all of their missed chances — especially in the first half hour — but Pep Guardiola can sense his season finally coming together. If he can find some solidity at the back, his attacking players are beginning to write the cheque he can dream of encashing at the end of the campaign.

Watch the match highlights here

Sunderland cap promotion with dominant victory over rivals Newcastle

The first Tyne-Wear derby in the Premier League in almost a decade served little in the way of animosity or entertainment, but offered clinching evidence of the remarkable season newly promoted Sunderland have had so far. The football wasn’t pretty, but the black cats punched their esteemed opponents into submission, in a game that seemed to always teeter on the edge of being eventful but never quite purged into one. An own goal settled the tie, and cemented Sunderland’s position as a club that probably won’t be worrying about relegation any time soon. On the other hand, Newcastle’s Eddie Howe would be worried that his superior squad couldn’t even make a contest out of what is easily either club’s most important game of the season. 

WATCH | Sunderland vs Newcastle match highlights here

Postscript:

Messi’s India tour as Indian football lurches in the cold

In the footballing universe, there are leagues, tournaments, and then there are confusing prestige events that address neither. Lionel Messi is in India — and so are Luis Suarez and Rodrigo De Paul, by the way — but what that amounts to is neither product nor progress. At a time when the world’s greatest ever footballer is walking around stadiums that aren’t even known for hosting his sport, India’s two premier football leagues — ISL and IPL — sit in limbo, on the desks of administrators unwilling to ignite them into existence. Messi’s presence could catalyse funds, movements and plenty of other things, but what it has instead done is deepen unrelated pockets, platform clueless politicians and relegate India’s beleaguered footballers to the background.

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