And Then There Were Three

Your Weekly Premier League Update

By Jonathan Gault

Though you can’t definitively say anything about this year’s Premier League, this weekend seemed to be the one where the most wide-open title race of the Premier League era morphed into a three-way battle between Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea. Just two points separate those three, and they’re six points up on fourth-place Liverpool, who was lucky to escape with a draw at home to Aston Villa on Saturday.

Liverpool isn’t totally out of it. Daniel Sturridge has seamlessly returned to the team—all five of its remaining games against the top six are at Anfield, and Luis Suarez might actually be a superhero. But overhauling three teams will require Liverpool to play near-perfect football, home and away, while hoping that its rivals slip up. It’s just not happening.

One thing worth paying attention to with regard to the title race: the Champions League. The top three all progressed to the knockout rounds, but because of their mistakes in the group stage, Arsenal and City must deal with Bayern Munich and Barcelona, respectively (Chelsea plays Galatasaray). There is a silver lining here, though. If Arsenal and City fall in the round of 16, they save themselves from playing a potential four extra games, including two midweek trips to Europe and back (the final will be played two weeks after the Premier League concludes).

This line of thinking would upset Manuel Pellegrini, who stated that he wants to win four trophies in his first season in Manchester. But for Arsene Wenger and silverware-starved Gunners fans (their drought is at nine years), an early exit in Europe might be a blessing in disguise. Arsenal have a large stable of attacking players, but Theo Walcott is out for the season and Aaron Ramsey, Nacho Monreal, Tomas Rosicky and Olivier Giroud have all been banged up in recent weeks. Holding midfielder Mikel Arteta has missed the last two games and captain Thomas Vermaelen has been out for most of the season. Arsenal need time to rest up, but it’s hard to do that when you’re playing two games a week.

Now a few thoughts on this weekend’s games:

·       Spurs beat Swansea 3-1 on Sunday and might feel insulted that I mentioned Liverpool as an outside threat for the title and not them. It’s a fair criticism, since the two are level on points. But as well as Tim Sherwood has done in charge (16 of a possible 18 points), I think that comes to an end very soon. Spurs’ next three are Man City, Hull away, Everton and Newcastle away. After that, they get two Europa League games against Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (managed by old friend Juande Ramos), a distraction Liverpool don’t have to endure. The re-emergence of Emmanuel Adebayor has helped solve some of Tottenham’s scoring problems, but Liverpool still has a much higher upside than this bunch.

·       It’s been repeated by pretty much everyone who follows the Premier League, but Sunday’s 3-1 loss to Chelsea showed it: Manchester United simply don’t have the quality to contend for the title this year. United’s only legitimate stars are Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney, and both have missed chunks of the season, starting just seven games together. Without them, the Red Devils generally rely on Adnan Januzaj to generate chances, and while he’s performing at a level that belies his 18 years of age, Januzaj alone is not enough against a superior defensive team such as Chelsea. Danny Welbeck deserves credit, too, for scoring some fantastic goals of late, but the rest of the squad can be exposed (and have been).

·       Crystal Palace climbed off the bottom as Tony Pulis put one over on former club Stoke with a 1-0 win at Selhurst Park. Pulis’ squads are rarely pretty, but he deserves a ton of credit for turning Palace around this year. The club looked hopeless when it parted ways with Ian Holloway on October 23, but Pulis has the Eagles performing better on both ends. If you only counted games after Holloway’s departure, Palace would be tied for ninth right now. That’s a great, great coaching job.