The nights are getting shorter, the wind is getting colder and England is heading inexorably towards Christmas. In most of Europe, Christmas means that football gets a bit of a break; on the strange and rainy island just the other side of the Sleeve, it means football gets very, very silly. Two games in three days! At least they don’t actually play on Christmas itself anymore.
Why every top 8 team will or won’t win the Premier League
We reckon the Premier League champions will be one of eight teams. Here’s why each of them will and will not emerge triumphant.
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Anyway, with the festive season looming, we thought this would be a good time to look at the state of the top of the Premier League. And, oh, the state of the top of the Premier League! There are eight teams within nine points, and while we wouldn’t normally pay any attention to anybody but the top four, the fact that Leicester City are on top means we need to consider all possibilities. Any of these eight teams could win the thing, for we are well off the map. Here be foxes.
Anyway, here’s why each of them will and won’t win the league. One way or another, we’ll be right come May.
1. Leicester City (32 points, +11 GD)
Why they will
Claudio Ranieri's entertainers have three going for them. The first the league table: they are on top of it, and so by the basic rules of conkers, the title is theirs to lose. What a sentence that is. The second is history: in seven of the last ten seasons, the team top after fifteen games have gone on to win the title. (Since you were wondering, only Liverpool and Arsenal have failed to see the job through.)
The last and most interesting one is how they play their football. Whatever happens to the sport, however sophisticated the tactics become, it remains true that three or four quick attackers barreling down the pitch into space is a complete bastard to defend against. Leicester’s team is built around this principle, and as long as their players can keep themselves fit and performing — particularly the estimable Riyad Mahrez — then there’s no reason to assume that anybody’s going to solve that problem in the next few months. After all, nobody has in the last couple of hundred years.
And why they won’t
Well. The obvious thing to do here is to try to imagine various members of this squad lifting the Premier League trophy. Danny Drinkwater. Wes Morgan. Marc Albrighton. And, of course, Jamie Vardy, who just two short years ago was playing in the seventh division of Lithuanian semi-professional volleyball. Think about it. Visualise it. SB Nation accepts no liability if your brain starts to dribble out of your ears.
More prosaically, there's the small matter of the fixture list. Leicester's next eleven league games include Everton (ninth), Liverpool (seventh, twice), Manchester City (third, twice), Tottenham (fifth), Stoke (10th) and Arsenal (second). Oh, and Chelsea, if they still matter. The heart likes to think that Leicester could gambol past that lot with the same giddiness that they've brought to the opening few months of the season; the head suggests that there's some kind of slump in the offing.
Still, a note of encouragement. Over the last 10 years, no team has ever been top after 15 games and failed to finish in the top four. Claudio Ranieri might yet get another crack at the Champions League.
2. Arsenal (30 points, +14 GD)
Why they will
They're the highest up the table of the assumed best teams in the league, so if you're not happy with the league being Leicester's to lose, then it's probably Arsenal's. They have a proper goalkeeper now, and while Mesut Özil is probably never going to win over the country at large — England is not a nation that will ever truly fall in love with a slender-framed, large-eyed German playmaker who doesn't show the slightest interest in putting himself about a bit — he's been pretty damn good.
Arsenal’s problem over the last few seasons has been the fact that there’s always at least one big team that’s lasted the course better than they have. But with one Manchester struggling to defend, the other struggling to attack and Chelsea slumming it down in the relegation zone, this could be their time. Nothing so glorious as a title by default.
And why they won’t
They’re Arsenal.
Tempting as it is to leave it at that, we should probably flesh out what being Arsenal involves. It involves a prodigious injury list allied to an alarmingly/amusingly thin squad, it involves inexplicably tripping over teams that any reasonable champion should be swatting aside and it involves looking a bit like a Premier League winning team for all of the non-important parts of the season, then sagging into irrelevance towards the end. Two out of three so far, and it’s only December.
3. Manchester City (29 points, +14 GD)
Why they will
If everybody's fit, then Manchester City are probably the strongest team in the country. Sergio Aguero is the Premier League's best finisher, David Silva arguably the best playmaker, Yaya Toure is still defying both age and his occasional bouts of mardiness and Vincent Kompany's importance is demonstrated every time Nicolas Otamendi, Eliaquim Mangala and Martin Demichelis try to get along without him. So if you're not happy with this being Leicester's title to lose (because they're Leicester) and equally unhappy with it being Arsenal's (because they're Arsenal), then City are sitting pretty.
And why they won’t
So far this season, City have been genuinely and properly thrashed three times: 4-1 by Tottenham, 4-1 by Liverpool, and 2-0 by Stoke. Each of those performances had plenty in common, too: their defence was shambolic and underprotected, their midfield was easily bypassed, and they showed absolutely no resilience in the face of disaster. They can be brilliant, but they’re exceptionally brittle.
As for those players, well, Kompany missed all three of those games. Toure was missing against Stoke, was taken off at half-time against Tottenham and didn’t make an hour against Liverpool. Aguero missed two, and was clearly unfit against Liverpool (though that didn’t stop him scoring, because he’s great). Whether their team should be so easily disruptable, given the money they’ve spent, is an open question. What isn’t is that without at least two and ideally all three of those players fit and performing, they’re unlikely to win the league.
4. Manchester United (29 points, +10 GD)
Why they will
Manchester United have the best defensive record in the country. Leaving aside questions of identity and tradition and football taught by Matt Busby, that’s obviously not a bad thing to be. They’re also fourth, three points off the top. Again, that’s an absolutely fine thing to be. Though they do give up chances, they’ve got a magnificent goalkeeper behind an excellent central defender, and they’ve usually got two defensive midfielders thrown in there as well. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, after all, and inducing it to skin itself out of pure boredom is perfectly acceptable.
And why they won’t
There’s no absolute rule that states that the Premier League champions have to be fun, but most have managed to score a few goals on the way to their triumph. And if United are going to bore their way to the title, then they need to get better at being boring. They need to turn the nil-nil draws, of which they’ve had four, into 1-0 wins, and they might not have the strikers to do it. Then there’s also the lingering air of tension around the club: the fans are grumbling and losing interest, and whispers of player unhappiness are starting to reach the newspapers. A miserable exit from the Champions League, and things might get exciting in all sorts of unhelpful ways.
5. Tottenham Hotspur (26 points, +13 GD)
Why they will
In a funny sort of way, of all the teams vaguely in the race, Tottenham make the most sense. They have their plan — lots of lovely high pressing; Harry Kane at one end and Hugo Lloris at the other; Dele Alli strolling about like a grown up — and it works, up to a point. They haven't lost in the league since the opening day, they thrashed Manchester City, and they can probably feel a little irritated not to have beaten Arsenal at the Emirates. Plus, they're so young. Wouldn't it be a lovely story?
Why they won’t
They’ve worked out how they want to play football, but they haven’t quite worked out how to win football matches. Eight games drawn is sixteen points dropped, and it’s difficult to see how they’d cope with an injury to Kane or to either of their first choice centrebacks. Plus, they’re so young. What if they’re the second coming of David O’Leary’s babies? We all know how that ended.
6. Crystal Palace (23 points, +5 GD)
Why they will
Alan Pardew thinks they will. Alan Pardew knows they will. Alan Pardew has spent every night for the last six months gazing into the bathroom mirror, working on his title winning speech. He will thank himself for inspiring himself. He will thank himself for making this all possible. He will thank himself for being brave enough to back himself in his every endeavour, and then he will modestly tell himself not to make a fuss, it was nothing. Then he'll graciously accept the applause of the crowd, and raise the trophy above his head.
Why they won’t
Well, Alan Pardew is sometimes wrong. Don’t tell him we said that.
7. West Ham United (23 points, +4 GD)
Why they will
Rather like Leicester up there at the top of the table, West Ham have embraced the concept of running really fast into the spaces left behind. Except where Leicester are a profoundly motley group of footballers, and so quite likely to fall apart as inexplicably as they came together, West Ham have got a little sprinkling of experience around the place. Victor Moses nearly picked up a Premier League winner's medal with Liverpool, while Alex Song won the league with Barcelona. Okay, neither was crucial to their sides' respective efforts, but whatever. They were near a really good team. That can only help.
Why they won’t
Look, we’ll level with you. We’ve only included West Ham because people seem to think Liverpool are in with a shot, and if we included them it would be rude not to include a team who are literally above them in the table. And besides, Dimitri Payet is injured for another couple of months, and they’re haven’t won in the league since October.
8. Liverpool (23 points, +1 GD)
Why they will
Jurgen Klopp is a magician who will take Brendan Rodgers' weirdly imbalanced squad and forge a gegenpressing machine that will, in this season of unpredictable results and unprecedented openness, clamber its way up the league table, chaining giddy victory to giddy victory until they've attained such momentum that they simply cannot be stopped by anything short of an armoured division. Daniel Sturridge will learn to cope with pain, Dejan Lovren will learn which boot goes on which foot, and Jordan Henderson will turn into Steven Gerrard but without all the slipping over.
Why they won’t
Jurgen Klopp is not a magician, and they just lost to Newcastle.
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