This season’s Premier League title race is the tightest in 14 years
With ten games of the season to go, the top three in the Premier League were separated by a single point. The last time there was a three-way race remotely comparable was 2010 when, in mid-March, Chelsea, having played 29 games, topped the table on goal difference ahead of Arsenal, who had played 30, with Manchester United a point further back after 29 matches.
On that occasion, Arsenal fell away with a draw at Birmingham and defeat at Wigan and were effectively out of it with three games to go, but Chelsea and United kept the race alive until the final day – although with both facing fairly straightforward home games, the sense was that a 2-0 win away at Liverpool the week before had sealed it for Carlo Ancelotti’s side. Perhaps the reason that it is not really remembered as a great climactic final day is that, while United beat Stoke 4-0, Chelsea wrapped up the title with an 8-0 win over Wigan.
The three contenders of 2023-24 all play high-tempo, high-pressing football. It’s almost impossible in the modern game to succeed without playing like that. All three play variants of 4-3-3. All three have to some extent experimented with having a defender step into midfield. But it would be misleading to suggest there is anything more than a surface homogeneity.
The impact of Pep Guardiola over English football has been extraordinary. Drop down the leagues, or watch youth football, and you’ll see teams instinctively playing out from the back (in which they have been aided by enormous leaps in pitch preparation). The success he has achieved with his modern interpretation of Cruyffian thought is remarkable. Yet what has been striking over the past couple of seasons is how he has amended his approach.
Last season, that was clearly extremely effective as City won the treble. But the concerns raised in the early months of that campaign about the knock-on effect of Erling Haaland have resurfaced. Haaland does not contribute to the game in the way that more obviously Guardiola-style forwards do. He does not drop deep or become an extra body, an extra angle, in midfield. What he does do is score lots of goals, which is obviously very useful. But there is a cost, which is that City have less control over games and that renders them more vulnerable to the counter-attack.
The three contenders of 2023-24 all play high-tempo, high-pressing football. It’s almost impossible in the modern game to succeed without playing like that
The vulnerability has worsened this season to the extent that only Crystal Palace in the Premier League have let in more goals to fast breakaways tha
