Premier League table after five matches: Man City need 97 of the last 99 points to clinch the title

Manchester City have won all five of their matches and the title is nowhere near settled. To clinch it on their own results, City need 97 of the 99 points still on their schedule, which is 32 wins and a draw from 33 matches. They are the only club in the division the engine will issue a title clinch number to at all.

That is the table as of the September 21 update. All 20 clubs have played five matches of 38, 50 fixtures in all, and all 20 have 33 left, worth a maximum of 99 points each. The round ended on Monday, September 21 with Fulham 1-1 Manchester United. Sunday brought Manchester City 5-3 Sunderland, Leeds 0-0 Crystal Palace, Bournemouth 0-1 Liverpool and Nottingham Forest 0-1 Coventry.

City have 15 points from 15, with 13 goals scored and 5 conceded, three of those five on Sunday against Sunderland. Arsenal are second on 12 with four wins and one defeat, and that defeat is the only time they have dropped a point: 0-3 at Brighton on September 19. Brighton are third on 10, with the most goals scored in the league, 16, against 5 conceded, for a goal difference of plus 11 that nothing else is close to. Brentford, Leeds, Liverpool and Everton follow on 9 points apiece, all four unbeaten on two wins and three draws.

The clinch line for a top four finish is 109 points, and only three clubs can still get there. Manchester City need 94 more points, Arsenal need 97, and Brighton need all 99 of theirs, which means winning 33 matches out of 33. All three numbers land on the same total of 109. The line sits there because of the four clubs on 9 points: Brentford, Leeds, Liverpool and Everton can each finish on 108, so 109 is the first total that leaves fewer than four rivals able to match it. The other 17 clubs have no top four clinch number at all. That is not a verdict on them. It says the schedule has not yet given them the power to settle the question with their own results.

Survival has a line too, and it is 103 points. Sixteen clubs would be certain of staying out of the bottom three the moment they reach it, which is why Manchester City, top and unbeaten, still need 88 more points before their own safety is arithmetic rather than form. Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Aston Villa, all on 4 points, need 99, meaning every point they have left. Four clubs cannot reach the line at all: Bournemouth and Coventry top out at 102, Fulham and Tottenham at 101. None of the four can guarantee safety by their own results today, and none of the four is anywhere near being relegated today either.

The relegation side of the ledger is the empty one. Only Fulham and Tottenham, level on 2 points, have a relegation tragic number, and it is 33: they would have to take nothing from all 33 of their remaining matches before the drop became certain. The other two ledgers are full. Thirteen clubs already carry a top four tragic number, and 19 carry one for the title, every club except Manchester City. The shortest tragic number anywhere in the table is 29, and it belongs to Fulham and Tottenham as well. It is a title number, not a survival one: 29 matches without a point and neither club can win the league even by winning the other four. Their top four tragic number, 31, is the shortest of those too.

Run all 20 clubs through the engine and the reachable rank range comes back identical 20 times over: best possible finish 1, worst possible finish 20. Tottenham can still win the league. Manchester City can still go down. Five matches into 38 that is arithmetic, not a forecast. The familiar names are lower down. Chelsea are tenth on 7 points and have conceded 12, more than anyone, three of them in a 3-0 defeat at Brentford on September 19. Newcastle are ninth on 8 with nine scored and nine conceded. Manchester United are twelfth on 5 after Monday's draw at Fulham, level on points with Nottingham Forest in thirteenth. Coventry are eighteenth on 3 with one goal in five matches, the fewest in the division, and their 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest is the only win they have. Fulham and Tottenham have 2 points each and no wins, and Tottenham have scored twice all season.

The next fixtures on the schedule are on Saturday, October 10, and two of the three clubs holding a top four clinch number are out that day: Arsenal host Leeds, and Brighton travel to Sunderland. The rest of that day is Ipswich against Fulham, Aston Villa against Brentford, and Chelsea against Bournemouth. Sunday, October 11 brings Manchester United against Tottenham, Crystal Palace against Nottingham Forest, and Hull City against Everton.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number is the smallest number of additional points that guarantees an outcome even if every rival wins every match it has left. A tragic number is how many more matches a club can take nothing from, while winning all the rest, before an outcome becomes impossible. A reachable rank range is simply the highest and lowest position still available in arithmetic. One warning about ties: a rival who can only pull exactly level with you still counts as a threat here, so a clinch shown on this site can arrive a day later than the official one, while a club merely level with you on points cannot eliminate you. Goal difference, head to head fixtures and the league's own tiebreakers are not part of the calculation. The live table is at, the fixtures at, the qualification and relegation rules at, every club's clinch and tragic numbers at, the method at, and lets you enter results yourself and watch the ranges narrow.