It's March and we've got not one but two teams still with a theoretical chance of a quadruple they won't win. So watch it, drink it in.
We’ve all enjoyed the semi-regular late winter sight of a Premier League team in semi-realistic pursuit of the quadruple before it all inevitably collapses under the sheer fixture-congesting weight of it all.
But 2025/26 is already spoiling us by having not one but two teams with everything still up for grabs well into March, and a fairly decent prospect of that remaining the case right up until one knocks the other out of contention in the Carabao Cup final.
So here, then, are the key upcoming dates in Arsenal and Manchester City’s concurrent and inevitably doomed to humiliating failure bids to join the ranks of the Quad Gods.
March 9: FA Cup quarter-final draw
Arsenal had a harder job seeing off Mansfield than Man City did dealing with Newcastle, just as everyone predicted. But that puts both of them safely into the last eight. It doesn’t actually matter if they’re paired together; by the time the quarter-finals are played one will have already knocked the other out of contention via Carabao means.
March 10-18: Champions League last 16
Arsenal will be warm favourites to get the better of Bayer Leverkusen, who are not what they were. Real Madrid aren’t what they were, either, but will surely pose a bigger problem for Man City here.
March 22: Carabao Cup final
The rare beauty of having not one but two quad-hunters at this late stage is that you’re looking at the prospect of a direct play-off between the two in the Carabao, where the death of one team’s hopes and the enhancement of the other’s will be given far, far more weight in the post-match fallout than someone or other winning a Carabao that sits right at the bottom of both teams’ priority list.
Fair to say Man City are by far the most at risk of being out of quad contention before we get this far.
They are also still playing catch-up in the league and are thus the only team that could really have f*cked themselves out of Premier League contention.
So it’s mainly on City to make sure we get what we all want: an actual major final that is viewed entirely through the prism of what it all means for events yet to come.
Otherwise there’s a real risk that it just becomes ‘Arsenal end their trophy drought’ and that won’t do.
April 4-5: FA Cup quarter-finals
Bonus points if it’s Arsenal and City going directly at each other again. Double bonus points for anyone who keeps a straight face while calling success here ‘revenge for Carabao Cup disappointment’.
April 7-15: Champions League quarter-finals
Bonus points if it’s Arsenal and City going directly at each other again. Triple bonus points for anyone who keeps a straight face while calling success here ‘revenge for Carabao Cup disappointment’.
April 12: Chelsea v Man City
A mighty significant game if City are still in contact with the Gunners – especially given what takes place the weekend after.
Because City’s run-in holds few obvious demons outside this game and the Arsenal six-pointer. Sure, City have managed to uncover demons where none appeared to exist, like they did against Nottingham Forest, but this still stands out as a key date.
April 19: Manchester City v Arsenal
Whatever has happened to these teams’ quadruple chances by this point, this one surely still has some relevance for the title race whatever happens between now and then.
There are still five full rounds of Barclays to follow it, so it surely cannot be officially and finally decisive but it seems absolutely certain that the result of this one will matter.
And at this point, the range of just how much it matters remains gloriously wide open. We could just about be in ‘all-but’ territory for the ‘champions-elect’ Arsenal if things have gone hilariously for Man City in the meantime. Certainly it could be there for a ‘giant stride toward’ the title and perhaps even to ‘have one hand on the trophy’.
Yet there’s plenty of scope for someone – and let’s be real it would have to be City – to ‘breathe new life’ into the title race, or perhaps ‘kickstart’ their challenge, or get it ‘back on track’. At the very, very least a City win here will ‘keep Arsenal honest’ or ‘on their toes’ or even give them ‘a scare’.
It’s all just tremendously exciting.
TBC: Man City v Crystal Palace
It might not be the end of the fixture shuffling required, but for now this is the conspicuous unconfirmed lurker in the run-in. This is the fixture that fell by the wayside for Carabao Cup final weekend, with Palace’s Europa Conference punishment-round commitments meaning, unlike Wolves v Arsenal, it could not be moved forward to a convenient empty midweek.
The earliest that now looks possible is the week commencing April 20, so that’s where we’ve shoved it in here for now.
And that would be a saucy little spot for it to turn up as well, especially if City have beaten Arsenal the weekend before and thus the potential of a six-point swing. Of course, the reverse is equally true if Arsenal get a result at the Etihad and then City fumble a fixture everyone will have spent the previous two months assuming they win.
But wherever it lands it’s going to matter, offering as it does the chance for City to snag three points to which Arsenal have no answer.
April 25-26: FA Cup semi-finals
It’s around about this point that you start to realise why nobody ever actually manages to do this. It just looks like an exhausting amount of hard work.
April 29-May 6: Champions League semi-finals
Were the Champions League knockout bracket fully seeded rather than just pair-seeded, the league phase outcome would have Arsenal seeded to meet Spurs in the last four. What a world. Could still happen, of course. If 2026 has taught us nothing else, it’s to rule nothing out.
May 16: FA Cup final
FUN FACT: Pep Guardiola has only ever bothered to win the FA Cup as part of a treble; domestic in 2018/19, continental in 2022/23. Maybe this time it’ll be for the quad?
May 24: Premier League final day
Man City host Aston Villa and Arsenal travel to Crystal Palace on the final day. If the title race is still alive at this point, that’s a really fun final day.
Possible, of course, that Villa still have work of their own to do in the hunt for Champions League qualification, but it does now appear that the only thing Palace will be playing for is a fitting farewell for Oliver Glasner now relegation fears have evaporated.
It often takes a circuitous route to get there, but these days it does feel like whenever we get a final-day decider it just ends up finishing as you were. For some reason, we feel it deep in our bones that this season will be different if it comes down to it. We fear for whoever’s leading heading into the final day, we really do.
May 30: Champions League final
If either City or Arsenal are still in with a chance at this point, fair play. It’ll be great fun for the rest of us to gamely try and make a season featuring a domestic treble into a disappointment and missed opportunity should they fall at this final and most difficult hurdle. We’re sure we can pull it off.
