City eating well at the top table
THERE is more than one way to win the Premier League title.
Sir Alex Ferguson tried to ensure United were ruthless against teams in the lower half of the table to afford them some slip-ups against the better sides, although City famously clinched their first title at the Reds’ expense on goal difference having won their two meetings by a score of 7-1.
Antonio Conte and then Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp have raised standards over the past five seasons by simply beating everybody in sight, turning draws into bad results because of the need to keep accumulating three points.
The most obvious way to jump ahead of your rivals remains to beat them directly, ensuring that you push yourselves up while keeping them down. Win the mini-league of big teams, and you give yourself an excellent chance of winning the whole thing come May.
A mini-league used to consist of the top four, which became the Big Six and now probably has to consist of the top eight teams. West Ham have shown their sixth-placed finish last season was no fluke, while Leicester have finished fifth under Brendan Rodgers for two successive campaigns. They deserve to join City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, United and Tottenham.
The Blues have played more of these teams than anyone else with just West Ham missing from their list and, with the exception of Arsenal, all have been away from home.
It wasn’t a good start for Guardiola’s side, losing to Tottenham on the opening weekend of a season that has already seen Nuno Espirito
Santo depart. Since then, though, the Blues have been excellent, with victory over United confirming they have only dropped points in one of five subsequent games - a 2-2 draw at Anfield.
That gives City a more than respectable average of 2.17 points per game in the mini-league, a total bettered only by West Ham’s three wins and a defeat from four matches (2.25 points). Chelsea (1.75 points), Liverpool (1.25 points), and United (1.2 points) have all done significantly worse, although Chelsea hold a three-point lead.
With West Ham visiting the Etihad on November 28, City have a run of five games without playing one of the top sides before facing Leicester and Arsenal after Christmas. The plan for December has to be to make sure their efforts in the mini-league are not in vain.