The Premier League’s relegation battle looked over at Christmas. Now, it’s wide open.

There’s precisely one thing worse than having a foregone conclusion at the top of the Premier League, and that’s having a foregone conclusion at both ends. Well, and stubbing your toe. And treading on Lego. And reading out the wrong film name at the end of the Oscars. But let’s not drift from the point.

For much of the beginning of the season, two of the Premier League’s three relegation places looked like sure things. Hull City, despite their amusingly decent August, quickly assumed a position appropriate to a club with barely any squad, a sticking-plaster manager, and simmering contempt between owners and fans. Meanwhile Sunderland’s start to the season wasn’t just bad; it was historically appalling. Add to that Swansea City’s disastrous dalliance with Bob Bradley, and you’d have been forgiven for writing the whole thing off before Christmas.

But oh, how wrong you’d have been. A combination of improvement from the doomed trio, plus persistent and intriguing incompetence from those above them, has meant that our relegation battle has survived winter and is ready to gambol into spring. And just as well, really. There’s only so much excitement to be had from the race for fourth.

Furthermore, the collective refusal on the part of Hull, Sunderland and Swansea to collapse entirely has meant that this season lacks a truly terrible team. Plenty of bad ones, of course, but no Derby 2008 (11 points), no Sunderland 2006 (15). Or to put it another way, every club that might go down also has something about them that could keep them up.

Two of those hopeless cases first. The arrivals of Paul Clement at Swansea and Marco Silva at Hull were greeted very differently by certain elements of the British press. This can be explained by the fact that Clement is English, and arrived to reclaim a managerial position from an American who tried his best but was always on the point of saying “soccer”. Whereas Silva is Foreign — Portuguese, specifically — and as such his arrival in England represents yet another hammer blow to the cause of British exceptionalism. As noted managerial expert Phil Thompson put it:

“It’s totally astonishing that they have plumped for someone like this. It’s baffling. When there are a lot of people out there who know about the Premier League, about what’s required to dig in.”

Awkwardly for the Brexit brigade, Silva appears to know exactly what is required to dig in. Even more importantly, he seems to be able to let his players know too. Without spending a huge amount of money, and despite selling a couple of important players, Hull have gone from conceding more than two goals per league game to just the one. They’ve taken eight points from six games (as opposed to 13 from the previous 20) and even found time to beat Manchester United in the League Cup semi-final second leg.

Meanwhile, Clement’s seven games in charge at the Liberty Stadium have brought three predictable losses to Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal, but four valuable wins against less capable teams: Southampton, Liverpool and relegation rivals Crystal Palace and Leicester City. Though far from safe, the Swans are now at the giddy heights of 15th place.

The other two troubled clubs to have sacked their managers are Crystal Palace and Leicester. In the case of the troubled champions, it’s probably a little early to make any definitive judgements about whether getting rid of notorious monster Claudio Ranieri has solved all their problems, even in the wake of their surprising, amusing victory over Liverpool.

But before the game, Craig Shakespeare was keen to stress that they were going back to the basics that worked so well for them the previous campaign. Not all teams will be as obligingly witless as Liverpool, of course, but if Leicester can rediscover that functional core — a deep, stout defence, with accurate long passing to pacey attacking players — then they’ll be fine.

Palace are a more interesting investigation of the new manager principle. Sam Allardyce has never been relegated and, we can be sure, is intensely proud of that fact. Yet there has been no bounce: Palace have so far failed to muster any of the defensive organisation or resilience that earned him that distinction. Instead, he’s managed just one league win and, until last weekend, just a single clean sheet.

Hope comes from the fact that this was the first start for Mamadou Sakho, latterly of Liverpool, who is precisely the kind of assertive central defender that Palace have been crying out for. His long term future may not lie at Selhurst Park, but a few months of decent performances would be mutually convenient for all parties: Sakho gets to re-establish himself as a reliable footballer, Palace get to stay in the league, and Allardyce gets to maintain his self-regard.

Alternatively, we might note that this clean sheet arrived against Middlesbrough, who are perhaps the least threatening team in the Premier League. Indeed Boro, who are teetering on the brink of the relegation zone, are a bit of a oddity all round. Only five teams have a better defensive record — Chelsea, Spurs, both Manchesters and Everton — and their goal difference is markedly superior to the teams around them at the bottom, which may be important come the end of the season. Not getting hammered is an excellent habit to get into.

But they don’t score. No team in England’s four league divisions have scored fewer than their 19 league goals. So while their defensive solidity has earned them unexpected and valuable points at home to Everton, say, or away at Arsenal, their attacking impotence means that they rarely threaten to win games, and or get back into them once they fall behind. If the former can earn more points than the latter costs, then they’ll be fine. But only four league victories all season is a bleak haul.

With a nod to Bournemouth’s terrible form, which puts them in prime position for the unwanted distinction of ‘getting dragged into it’, this just leaves Sunderland. It’s a very peculiar time at Sunderland. As the team flounders, the club’s PR department rolls out vaguely Orwellian bromides. Unity Is Strength, apparently. Well, something has to be, and it isn’t defending.

Meanwhile David Moyes, in inimitable fashion, gathers his aging former lieutenants around himself and mutters darkly about the forces ranged against him. Other teams are too good. Expectations are too high. And these players, his players, aren’t actually very good. What fool brought them in?

So, hope? It’s pretty much just Jermain Defoe. But just Jermain Defoe isn’t completely hopeless. He’s scored 14 this season, and while Sunderland were eventually well beaten by Everton at the weekend, Defoe came within a crossbar’s width of squaring the game up. Ifs and buts won’t keep Sunderland up, but a decent goalscorer who manages from time to time to escape the dross behind him? He just might.