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How the mighty have fallen in the Premier League

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A look at the Premier League standings has a certain familiarity to it. Liverpool and Manchester City are the top two, and Chelsea and Arsenal are close behind.

What is different this year, though, is that clubs including Burnley and Crystal Palace are ahead of two of the so-called big six.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have won 45 of the past 48 Premier League and FA Cup titles.

Only Leicester City, who famously won the league title in 2015/16, as well as Wigan (2012/13) and Portsmouth, the winners of the 2007/08 FA Cup, have denied the big six their domination of English football since 1995.

After finishing second in the Premier League in the 2017/18 season and making it to the Champions League final last season, Spurs were hoping for even better things this time around.

They invested more than £100 million (R1.857 billion) in bringing Tanguy Ndombele, Ryan Sessegnon, Giovani Lo Celso and Jack Clarke to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and notched up some impressive results in pre-season friendlies – beating Real Madrid and Juventus, and holding Inter Milan and Bayern Munich to draws.

Their start of the Premiership season was equally inspiring as they held Manchester City to a draw at the Etihad after beating Aston Villa in their opening fixture.

But, since then, things seem to have unravelled. Mauricio Pochettino’s men have lost four of their past five matches, and the past week has arguably been the worst for the club.

First Serge Gnabry inspired his Bayern Munich team-mates to an emphatic 7-2 win over Spurs in the Champions League, with the Arsenal reject scoring four goals during the rout. A few days later, Brighton outplayed them in a 3-0 league win.

A week before the Bayern debacle, they had been bundled out of the League Cup by fourth-tier Colchester United.

Read: United and Spurs expected to throw punches at Wembley

Several players were on the verge of leaving the club before the start of the season, with star attacking midfielder Christian Eriksen seeking a big-money move to Spain.

In the end, all of the players stayed with the club, and that is one of the reasons Pochettino put forward to explain the poor start of the season.

He said it would take some time to achieve unity again as several of the players had “different agendas”.

Eriksen, who is a far cry from the player he was in the past, told Danish media that such matters played no part in their poor start to the season.

“It doesn’t matter at all. Everyone is professional and there is talk of players going away in all clubs. That side of the matter has no bearing on how we have performed so far this season.”

Eriksen added that expectations were much higher now.

“We have to win every time, and it’s the same feeling we have as players as well. But the reason for our results is actually hard to answer. We can’t close the matches, even though we are ahead. But we have also been unlucky,” he said.

Manchester United sit even lower than Spurs – in 12th place – just two points above relegation.

They have taken just one point from their past three league games, losing at West Ham and Newcastle.

In the League Cup, they needed a penalty shoot-out to beat Rochdale after 16-year-old Luke Matheson equalised for the third-tier club.

Unlike Spurs, where few fingers are being pointed at Pochettino, the knives are being sharpened and pointed at United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who was only given the job permanently earlier this year after remarkable success while he was interim coach.

The optimism that greeted his appointment is all but gone and United fans have already come to terms with not being able to compete for the league title.

What is left for Solskjær to keep his job are cup runs and good results in the league.

Next weekend, the Reds are away to Liverpool, and a heavy defeat could well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and lead to Solskjær being shown the door.


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