Boxing Day Premier League scores: Bob Bradley is already leading the sack race

The Premier League relegation race will go down to the wire, but one or two of the places at the bottom might be decided before May rolls around. At present, the big favorite to stay glued to the bottom three is Swansea City, who lost their third straight Premier League match on Boxing Day. They’ve looked particularly hopeless in those games, putting Bob Bradley under fire less than three months after he was hired.

At the top of the table, there wasn’t much movement on Boxing Day. Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Arsenal all won their games. Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool will play their holiday fixtures over the next couple of days.

Boxing Day scores

It wasn’t just that Swansea lost to West Ham United on Monday. It was the complete non-effort turned in by their defense. West Ham found the back of the net four times, and this set-piece goal was probably the worst of the bunch from a Swans perspective.

Bradley is now the heavy favorite to be the next Premier League manager sacked, with some bookmakers currently offering 1/1 odds, meaning a bet on Bradley will make you absolutely no money. The bookies seem to think Bradley is roughly six times more likely to be the next to lose his job than Hull manager Mike Phelan.

Up next for Swansea is a very winnable game: at home against Bournemouth on New Year’s Eve. If Swansea fails to show significant improvement in that match, Bradley could be shown the door.

The Blues’ 3-0 victory over Bournemouth looked very, very routine. As We Ain’t Got No History noted in their recap, Chelsea’s 12-game winning streak is a new record for the club, and just one away from the all-time Premier League record. They’ve scored 28 goals while conceding just two during that winning streak, and they’re currently seven points ahead of second place. They’re absolutely running away with the league. Something catastrophic for them or historically spectacular from another team would need to happen for them to fail to win the league.

West Brom was minutes away from a classic Tony Pulis draw before Giroud powered a header past Ben Foster to win all three points for Arsenal. It’s been an especially clutch season for Giroud, even though he’s struggled to find playing time.

By no measure, other than the table, is Burnley a decent team. Their goal differential is poor, their Expected Goals differential is worse, and their wage spending suggests that they have one of the weakest squads in the Premier League. But they found a winner against Middlesbrough on Monday, sending them up to 14th place, six points clear of the drop zone. If they can pull this off a couple more times, it won’t matter that they should be one of the Premier League’s three worst teams. They’d have enough points to survive any kind of natural regression.

In protest of Jamie Vardy’s three-game suspension for a poor tackle, Leicester City handed out Vardy masks to their fans on Boxing Day.

But while Vardy was missed, the players Leicester really couldn’t cope without were Christian Fuchs and Robert Huth. Without them in the lineup, Leicester’s defense was badly bullied by Kevin Mirallas and Romelu Lukaku. Both Everton goals featured Toffees attackers using their strength to hold off challenges by Wes Morgan, Marcin Wasilewski, and Ben Chilwell. And with this home loss, Leicester sinks down to 16th, just three points clear of the drop zone.

This, by Henrikh Mkhitaryan, is the best finish anyone’s made all season in the Premier League.

It also should have been ruled out, with Mkhitaryan very clearly offside. Sorry to be a highlight truther, but this isn’t particularly close. It’ll be interesting to see if the controversy excludes it from goal of the year votes at the end of the season.

While Crystal Palace won’t be happy that they threw away points against a beatable opponent at home, their performance was a massive improvement from the perspective of a team that needed to cut down on chaos in order to stay in the Premier League. They consistently had enough numbers in the center of midfield, held Watford to nine shots, and their back line looked solid, save for Damien Delaney’s individual error to concede a penalty. Palace’s decision to get rid of Alan Pardew already looks like a good one.

Hull was probably the more organized team against Manchester City, with the better game plan. Then Andrew Robertson did this.

And that was that. Hull had to open up after that and City took advantage to the tune of two more goals, and that’s how Man City’s quality won out.

Liverpool hosts Stoke City at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday, then Tottenham Hotspur travels to Southampton at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday. Both games are on NBCSN. Both of those games can be seen online at NBC Sports. For listings from other countries, check out Live Soccer TV.