Premier League scores, Week 17: Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s decline was greatly exaggerated

After a long spell of bad results, things have finally turned around for Manchester United. They won their fourth straight game on Saturday, and most importantly, their last two wins are over the two teams directly behind them in the table. United now sit level on points with Manchester City and are just one behind Arsenal and Liverpool, though all three of those teams have yet to play their game in round 17.

United supporters will also be thrilled that Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s resurgence has been one of the biggest factors in their move up the table. He was one of the unluckiest finishers in the Premier League early in the season and is now scoring as often as Jose Mourinho and the United brass thought he would.

Meanwhile, Chelsea exists on a different plane than everyone else and could wrap up the Premier League title around March.

Saturday’s scores

Were you worried that Ibrahimovic had come to the Premier League a couple of seasons too late during his bad run of form? Well, he’s doing just fine. Ibrahimovic scored a brace against West Brom, including this header just six minutes into the game off a brilliant cross by Jesse Lingard.

During Ibrahimovic’s 600-plus minutes without scoring a goal, he had put only 48 percent of his shots on target for the season and was extremely unlucky, scoring on just 8 percent of his unblocked shots. For comparison, Sergio Aguero and Jamie Vardy both put about 55 percent of their shots on target last season while scoring on 22 percent of their unblocked shots.

Ibrahimovic was always going to turn it around. His shot on target and unblocked shots scored percentages are now just a tick behind the numbers that Aguero and Vardy posted last season, so his stats have evened out to what you’d expect from him. He’ll cool off from this run of seven goals in his past six games, but his season total of 11 in 16 is sustainable.

After Swansea pulled off a brilliant comeback win over relegation rivals Crystal Palace and smashed Sunderland —another team in the drop zone — two weeks later, it felt as though Bradley had turned their season around. But they’ve reverted to looking hopeless, and their 3-0 loss to Middlesbrough on Saturday was a terrible performance. Their defense made very poor decisions, and despite favorable possession and total shot numbers, they hit the target only twice.

Bradley took over a team that was struggling mightily, after an inexplicably bad transfer window. Expecting him to get this team to do a quick 180 is unreasonable. But if Swansea goes down, all history will remember is that they hired Bradley over candidates with more relevant experience, and he failed to get the job done.

The Black Cats won three big points against Watford, thanks to the heroics of their young goalkeeper.

Roker Report wrote about his best moments — and the crowd’s reaction — in its recap of the game.

“With the time running out Sunderland needed a couple of good saves from Jordan Pickford to keep their lead, first denying Daryl Janmaat and then Troy Deeney — the Sunderland supporters showed their love for the Washington-born stopper by singing his name in the minutes afterwards.”

The 22-year-old goalkeeper made four saves, all of them excellent. This is his sixth season playing regular first-team soccer, with his loans gradually moving him up the divisions, concluding with him playing well for Preston North End in the championship before he returned to Sunderland to make his first-team debut last season. With that much experience and a natural development path, he’s probably the real deal and should be a good starting goalkeeper for a long time.

This season was supposed to see Stoke City make a leap forward. They’ve finished ninth in three consecutive seasons but appeared to have all their ducks in a row to make a move up the table this season. Winter signing Giannelli Imbula would have a full training camp with the team, impressive reinforcements like Joe Allen and Wilfried Bony arrived, and they lost no key players. Instead, Stoke currently sits 11th in a league that’s wide open below the top six, and they’ve failed to win in three straight games.

Mark Hughes will be upset with the way his team threw away points against Leicester City. After Vardy got sent off and Stoke went up by two goals, Leicester fought back for a point with 10 men. Daniel Amartey grabbed the draw for his team with a header.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with Stoke. The team has no obvious weak points or a particular aspect of play they’re bad at. They’re just average at everything, and it’s unclear why they’re failing to click.

Don’t let the result fool you — West Ham did not play well enough to win three points. They allowed Hull to create a ton of chances, and the penalty they won was an absolute phantom call.

The answer to the question presented in the tweet above is Hull’s record signing Ryan Mason, by the way.

Crystal Palace turned in one of their best defensive performances of the season during Saturday’s early game. It didn’t matter. Costa is just too good.

This was Chelsea’s 11th straight win in the Premier League, and four of them have been by a 1-0 score.

Bournemouth takes on Southampton at 8:30 a.m. on NBCSN, followed by Manchester City vs. Arsenal at 11 a.m. Tottenham Hotspur and Burnley also face off at 11 a.m., but their game is only available online.

On Monday, Everton hosts Liverpool at 3 p.m. in the Merseyside Derby on NBCSN. All games can be seen online at NBC Sports Live. For listings for more countries, check out Live Soccer TV.