How long is a piece of rope? It’s one of those questions that seems impossible to answer definitively, but one thing that can be said is that many teams have been inconsistent.
Between second and 12th place, Manchester City, Arsenal, Brighton, Fulham and Newcastle are the only teams to have won consecutive games more than once all season, while nine of them have at some point gone three games without a win. .
Many of the teams we would expect to compete for a Champions League place have underperformed this season.
Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Manchester United have fewer points at this stage than last season.
Aston Villa, in the Champions League this season, has one win out of seven, but is still just four points behind second place. Third-placed Chelsea have two wins out of six, and fourth-placed Arsenal have one out of five. Manchester City have lost their last three and remain second.
Meanwhile, it would be fair to argue that Brighton, Nottingham Forest and Fulham are exceeding many people’s expectations, with significantly better points tallies than this time last season.
Only five teams have won three games in a row: Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.
As we enter the busiest period of the season, there will be many teams still imagining their chances of advancing to Europe.
