The End is Here: This Weekend In The Premier League

If the Premier League season is a magnificent drama, the last lines of its epilogue are about to be delivered. The curtain is about to fall on domestic football, and the leading players are about to make their final bow. The audience will applaud, the applause will die away, and then everyone will shuffle off to watch Wimbledon and the Olympics. Meanwhile, the football writers of this world will be left alone in the auditorium of solitude, clapping intermittently while trying to choke back a desolate ocean of tears.

With the bright lights of the top flight now growing dim, let us bask in the last of their warm rays. Here are five reasons to watch the footie this weekend, before the Premier League exits stage left.

In a fitting end to their magnificent season, Leicester play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. The game feels somewhat symbolic, and not only because the new Premier League champions are ending their victorious campaign at the home of their direct predecessors.

In many ways, Leicester are the antithesis of the current Chelsea team. The Foxes were assembled at the fraction of the price, while they have no international superstars of the caliber of Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas and the rest. Nonetheless, they have an abundance of the team spirit that Chelsea so conspicuously lack. Leicester aren't particularly marketable, they aren't particularly glamorous, but they do have a sense of camaraderie – and that's something money can't buy.

There's no price on camaraderie, see. It's an abstract concept, and even Roman Abramovich's billions cannot purchase it. Claudio Ranieri – a man Abramovich sacked as Chelsea boss back in 2004 – is clearly capable of cultivating it, given the right circumstances. The fact that Ranieri returns to Stamford Bridge with a Premier League winner's medal is wonderfully, gloriously apt.

All in all, Leicester are the people's champions in the way that Roman Abramovich's cohorts can never be. If Leicester's title win is an imaginative masterpiece, Chelsea's season is an Ikea manual with half the relevant instructions missing.

While the demise of Newcastle's season might look like a blessing in disguise for Tottenham, it would be a mistake for Mauricio Pochettino and co. to ignore their opponents' death throes. The Magpies relegation may be confirmed at this point, but that doesn't mean they'll be completely lifeless come Sunday afternoon.

With almost every member of the squad now playing for his future at the club – bar perhaps the privileged few who'll be in demand this summer – Newcastle could still provide a backlash of sorts when Spurs arrive on Tyneside. Wounded by their own failings, playing for their self-respect and walked all over by north-east rivals Sunderland, the players might finally muster up enough bile and rancour to really damage their opponents. Lest it be forgotten, a loss for Tottenham could see them finish behind rivals Arsenal in third.

Forget Magpies, Rafa Benitez's men are half-crushed scorpions at the moment. While they might look like their insides are about to run out, they could still have a nasty sting in their tails.

We'll be sorry to note Roberto Martinez's absence from Goodison Park on Sunday. Inevitable as his departure was in light of recent results, it's hard not to feel that the Premier League has lost one of its more likeable characters.

Martinez was an idealist and, like all idealists, he found himself beaten down by the crushing cynicism of human existence. He tried to reinvent Everton as the league's most stylish side and, consequently, everyone decided they were shite and demanded he be sacked forthwith.

The people don't want a purist Roberto. They don't want a romantic who acts with integrity and relies upon his ideals. They want someone who wins incessantly, is prodigiously successful and who defecates on everyone else in the process. That's the sad reality, pal, and the sooner you get your head around that the better.

When Pep Guardiola was announced as Manuel Pellegrini's successor in early February, he doubtlessly thought he'd be taking over an established Champions League club. Worryingly for him, Manchester City now find themselves in a situation where – should they lose to a resurgent Swansea on the last day of the season – Manchester United could pip them to the fourth and final Champions League spot.

It's entirely possible that Pep Guardiola could be managing in the Europa League next season. That would be some step down for perhaps the most sought-after coach on the planet. Though we're sure he's acting with complete professionalism in reality, we like to imagine that Manuel Pellegrini is deliberately fucking with his successor at this point. That, having been unceremoniously discarded by the club, Pellegrini has decided to take his dastardly revenge and plunge Guardiola into the turgid mire of Europe's second tier.

We like to think Pellegrini has turned up to the Etihad in flip flops all week, watched the side's training sessions from a deck chair and spent his team meetings chugging back piña coladas. We hope he plays a 2-2-6 formation on the weekend, with Martin Demichelis and Eliaquim Mangala as a pair of defensive sweepers. Because, why not?

As Swansea score their third goal in the first twenty minutes, we want to see Pellegrini turn to the nearest television camera and mouth "Y-O-L-O" into the lens. Whether or not he goes that far, City will still have Guardiola biting his nails until the final whistle.

And so, we bid the Premier League adieu. The title race ended weeks ago, the relegation battle was decided with a game to spare and, as such, the majority of games this weekend are dead rubbers with almost no bearing on the final standings.

Meanwhile, La Liga goes into its last day with both the top and bottom of the table liable to change. Spain's final set of domestic fixtures is bound to be engrossing, exhilarating and altogether euphoric for the teams who come out on top. While Serie A and the Bundesliga already have their champions, both will bear witness to a gripping, visceral scrap for survival at the bottom of the division.

But the Premier League is still the best league in the world. Don't ask questions, it just is, alright.

@W_F_Magee