How many Premier League teams would you say are super happy with their season so far? I'd put the number at three. First there's Arsenal, which, aesthetic qualms aside, has to be giddy about its prospects of breaking the duck and winning the title. Then there's Aston Villa, already well positioned to nab a Champions League spot for the second time in three years, a remarkable feat for any club outside England's six or seven traditional and/or financial juggernauts. A little further down the table, you have Brentford, the league's one true little engine that could, the lowest-spending team in the competition which in the offseason lost its two best players and also its revered manager and is nevertheless on track for its best-ever EPL finish.
Besides those three, though, I don't think any other team's fans would say they have been totally thrilled by their guys' performances up to this point. This strikes me as a little odd! Success in the Premier League is, after all, wholly contextual. Two-thirds of the way through the campaign, I would've thought that more than just three teams could claim to be headed toward what counts for them as fully satisfying success. Sure, there hasn't been any real title race to speak of, and there likely won't be unless Arsenal starts choking at levels that would seem unlikely even for them. (Though, let's be honest, you can never say never with that lot.) But on the other hand, only two teams (the practically already relegated pair of Wolves and Burnley) are entirely devoid of hope, and with only two of the likely five Champions League places more or less locked up already, there are at least seven teams that can credibly claim to be contenders in what is sure to be another dogged fight for the coveted Arsène Wenger Trophy. So why, then, does this season feel vaguely unsatisfying for all but a couple teams? I'd argue this is because no one in the league is simply good.
Arsenal is, for certain, a great team, probably the best in all of Europe. Manchester City is very good, with a ceiling that could in theory reach greatness but also a low floor that the team has already collapsed onto multiple times this year. But other than those two, nobody else has been consistently good in absolute terms.
The biggest disappointments on that front have been the teams that by all rights should be some of the best in the competition. Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Newcastle United, and Tottenham all have expensively assembled squads with lots of outstanding players who nevertheless have not been able to get things going to the extent expected of them. What's especially frustrating is that almost all of them—with the glaring exception of Tottenham, which is enduring yet another nightmare league season—keep flattering to deceive. Every other week it seems like one or two of those teams is finally starting to put things together, building up some momentum, and going on a run that might cement themselves as a legitimately good team, only for the next week to come around and the team to go ahead and drop points inexplicably and have to start all over.
The most recent offenders of this have been Manchester United and Chelsea. The tumult at both clubs this season has been well documented, coming to a head when they both decided to shitcan their managers in January. After those changes in leadership, however, the two teams hit a strong vein of form that offered the promise of cleared air, better vibes, and belatedly realized potential. Both the Red Devils and the Blues carried four-game winning streaks into Tuesday's midweek matchday, where only a pair of relegation-threatened opponents stood between them and the credible sense that their ships had been righted for good. And right on time, both came up short.
Chelsea's 2-2 home draw with Leeds United was the less forgivable but also the less concerning of the two matches in question. The world champions enjoyed a second-consecutive great game from their heretofore injury-stricken superstar Cole Palmer, and completely dominated the match from damn near the opening whistle to the closing one, with the notable exception of one six-minute spell when a pair of unforced defensive blunders gifted Leeds a pair of goals from out of nowhere. The howlers were bad, and the team would do well to teach Moisés Caicedo, the culprit behind one of said howlers, not to mash the slide-tackle button several times per game, but otherwise the team looked pretty good and should still feel confident about its chances to finish in the top five.
United's 1-1 away draw with West Ham was the uglier performance against the worse opponent, but in light of how dark things had been in Manchester and how bright they've looked since Michael Carrick took over for Ruben Amorim, there's still plenty of reason for optimism. I'm actually annoyed that I even have to write this blog this way, since my original plan was to use what looked like an easy win to praise United's turnaround under Carrick. As befit the greater EPL season, the Red Devils instead turned pumpkin, pulling off their least impressive match in a month. What had been a flowing Mancunian attack was successfully dammed by the Hammers, who themselves have been on a potentially fortune-altering streak, collecting 10 points from their last five games and getting to within striking distance of the table's safety places. A last-gasp Benjamin Sesko beauty averted disaster, but this was still a missed opportunity for United.
Liverpool's situation has been similarly erratic. The reigning league champions romped to the title last year, had a dream of a transfer window, and were set up well to come into this season as presumptive favorites until the Diogo Jota tragedy cast a pall that, understandably, has yet to clear. An early string of roaring late comebacks threatened to mask what had been some sorry play, until the late goals dried up and the bad performances were laid bare. The underlying turmoil boiled over with the very public Mohamed Salah-Arne Slot beef, though for a while there it looked like the timing of it might have been perfect. Soon after the dustup, Salah left for the Africa Cup of Nations, and Slot, his position strengthened by the club's show of support, seemed to have turned things around. Liverpool won a crucial Champions League match against Inter in the first game without Salah, which kicked off a four-game winning streak that Reds fans could've convinced themselves was the overdue appearance of the real Liverpool. But—and stop me if you've heard this before—the turnaround turned right back around shortly after. Since that fourth consecutive win at the end of December, Liverpool has managed to win back-to-back games just once in 11 matches.
But the thing about so many of these big teams having up-and-down seasons (though in Newcastle's case it's been more downs than ups, and for Spurs it's basically all downs) is that, even in what would otherwise qualify as a bad year, the majority of them are still right in the thick of the race for the Champions League places. Remember, the atmosphere had gotten so rotten for both Man Utd and Chelsea that they fired their managers in the middle of the season, and yet currently both of those teams are in the table's UCL spots (England is overwhelmingly favored to again get five of them this year). Nobody would be shocked if Slot follows Enzo Maresca and Amorim out the door before the month is out, and yet even Liverpool is just two points out of fifth. And while Villa is one of the few teams that has to be extremely pumped about how things are going, all the advanced stats show that the Villans are wildly over-performing their underlying numbers. Should Villa start conceding goals more in line with what the stats would expect, it's entirely possible that they will start to sink like a stone down the table, opening yet another spot for an underperforming big boy to stumble into. Even 10th-placed Newcastle is probably only a hot streak away from getting right back into the mix for the top five.
What does all of this mean? I think it means that, outside of the top two, nobody in the Premier League is all that good. At the same time, it also means that there are too many big teams, which are all too talented, for that lack of goodness to have precluded their pursuit of their goals at this stage of the competition. The likes of Brentford and Everton (the latter of which doesn't even seem to be having an especially good season going by perceptions!) may be pretty high up in the table, but I don't think even the biggest Bee or Toffee fan believes either team can swing a surprise UCL spot. United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Newcastle have all benefitted from their rivals' down seasons and the lack of a serious threat from the class of clubs below them (excepting the tweener team, Aston Villa), giving each of them plenty of time to tinker with tactics, personnel, and coaches to find the right mix that might put them a nose ahead in this tottering jog for the Champions League places. It's not the most exciting race we've seen, but it'll have to do.
