da betsul： They say the cream rises to the top, and in the Premier League this season, that’s what’s happening.
da roleta： After the Leicester fairytale of last year, the elite have tightened their grip on power, effecting repercussion upon last year’s champions, who now sit dangerously close to the relegation places.
The top six teams are nine points ahead of the rest, while Chelsea at the top are further 10 points clear. The gaps are quite something. And it creates an interesting paradox: the Premier League is, at the moment, both the most predictable it’s ever been, and the least predictable too.
Usually big gaps are a bad sign. It means that those at the bottom aren’t making the relegation battle interesting (we knew that Aston Villa would be relegated for most of the season), or that the team at the top are running away with the title – Leicester won the league by 10 points last season, and if it weren’t for the fact that they were such underdogs we probably wouldn’t have had much intrigue. It was only the fact that most people still expected a collapse right up until the end that made it interesting. If you only looked at the table over the last few weeks, you wouldn’t have said it was close.
This weekend we’re seeing exactly the sort of game that this season’s bunched up top six has created: Manchester United and Liverpool meet in a title battle – though Liverpool have more title ambition to lose than United – even though Jose Mourinho’s side find themselves in 6th place.
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Around this time of year, when transfer stories begin to emerge, you hear of players from other leagues linked to Premier League clubs. When that happens, you can be sure to see comments on how overrated he is, and how he only looks good because he plays in an uncompetitive league.
Even though the Premier League usually has some sort of title race, and even though the gap between the haves and the have nots is big this season, we still have the most interesting and competitive title race in years. Six teams in contention is not something we’re used to in 21st Century Premier League action.
What’s more, when Liverpool travel to Manchester this weekend, we’ll get to see what will surely be a better game than the one they served up last time. ‘Red Monday’ was a let down, but with Liverpool desperate to get back on track and record their first win of 2017, and with Manchester United suddenly right back in contention after an unbeaten run in all competitions stretching back 15 games to the 3rd November, we’re bound to see two of the country’s best teams. So long as the game lives up to its billing.
Big gaps reveal big gulfs in class. That’s the point of the league table, after all. But in the Premier League this year, even though we have a clear fracture between the best and the rest, the fact that the top six are all in some sort of contention means that there’s no gulf in class between them. And that makes this the most competitive Premier League in history.
It may be that Chelsea pull clear and run away with the league, such is the relentlessness of their manager and the fact that their squad is roughly similar to the one that won the league only two seasons ago. There’s a level of continuity and know-how there that none of the other clubs can claim to have for themselves.
But this weekend’s North West derby shows just how quickly things can change when teams are so close together: after the drab 0-0 between these two in October, the gap was three points. It got wider, of course, but victory for United this weekend would cut it back to two points.
And that should serve as a reminder to each and every member of the top six.
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