The Premier League season has crossed half way point for most teams and the league table is starting to find shape. It is looking like Manchester City are running away with the top spot, but the most interesting situation can be found on places 2-7, where the second placed Chelsea and seventh placed Manchester United are separated by 11 points, with Manchester United having two games in hand. Fight for the top 4 will be hard, as those places give you the wanted Champions League places.
Source: Premierleague.com
Liverpool can take the second place away from Chelsea, when they play their game in hand on Sunday against Brentford. Tottenham, who already have three games in hand compared to Chelsea and West Ham, were slated to play Arsenal in the North London derby on Sunday, but that game got postponed after Arsenal’s request due to having less than 13 outfield players available for the match, partly due to having five players leaving the club to go play in the African Cup of Nations.
A lot can happen with Covid, with all teams having already games postponed, but let’s not take that into account, as that is something we can’t predict.
It feels like Chelsea and Liverpool are a class above the others, but they are not clear either. Liverpool are due a hard month or so with losing both Mo Salah and Sadio Mane to the African Cup of Nations, whilst Chelsea will lose starting goalkeeper Eduoard Mendy to the tournament.
All four other teams have doubts about them. West Ham are lacking in depth and starpower, with being especially depleted at centreback, where they are expecting Kurt Zouma make an early return from his hamstring injury, whilst other regular starter Angelo Ogbonna will miss the whole season with injury. Arsenal have turned their awful start of the season, but as said, they have been suffering a lot with players missing and they have played their last Premier League game on New Years Eve. Same can be said about their local rivals Tottenham. They might be caught up later in the season with a lot of matches in short span of time. Manchester United have been lackluster all year. They lost to Wolverhampton just in their first game of the new year and drew against Aston Villa this week. They are especially vulnerable in the middle of their defense, where their centrebacks Victor Lindelöf, Raphael Varane and Harry Maguire haven’t impressed, alongside holding midfielders Fred and Scott McTominay.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season will turn out with high stakes at play.
