The last-gasp 4-3 win that Bournemouth enjoyed over Liverpool last Sunday may not be as surprising or unpredictable as you think. Couple it with the 5-4 thriller that was played out between Swansea City andÂCrystal Palace the weekend before and there is a clear indication that the once-formidable Premier League is getting more and more competitive.Ever since the beginningÂof the division as it is now in the 1992/1993 season, there has been a certain familiarity associated with the top tier of English football. While it would be wrong to compare it with the dominance that Real Madrid and Barcelona have held over La Liga (the TV deals in Spanish football heavily favour the bigger clubs) and Bayern Munich in Germany (their 26 titles in the Bundesliga is not remotely challenged by any other German side), there has been a general trend in the top tier of English football for certain teams to be there-or-thereabouts come May.Indeed, since the inception of the current league format, there have only been six different teams to win it. Freakish champions Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City make up for two of these, but,Âotherwise, the Premier League was held, in the 1990s, by Manchester United and Arsenal, while more recently there have been Chelsea and Manchester City also earning themselves silverware. This has led to an ‘elite club’ dominance at the top of the English table, with the term ‘the Big Four’ often being used to describe this phenomenon (the original use of this term actually related to Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea in the early 2000s, but it has since suggested a common structure to the finishing of the top four clubs in English football).But this dominance has been broken up in recent years. David Moyes’ unfortunate, and brief, reign in charge at Manchester United saw the champions defeated time and time again by lower-quality opposition as former manager Sir Alex Ferguson watched on from the stands. Losses to West Bromwich Albion and Sunderland at the previously impregnable fortress of Old Trafford were perhaps the start of the bad times, with the club finishing 7th in that 2013/14 season and remaining out of the top four in the two seasons since.Last term saw Jose Mourinho suffer similarly at Chelsea, as he was unable to harness the players he had just won his fourth league title with the campaign before. By mid-December, the London side were hovering just above the relegation zone with defeats to Stoke City, Bournemouth and Leicester City (at the time still considered outsiders for the title they eventually claimed) punctuating their form in the first part of the season. Mourinho was sacked and it was down to interim manager Guus Hiddink to guide the team to a tenth-placed finish.The Portuguese manager is probably a good interlude into looking at the thrilling scorelines occurring over the past couple of weekends. Mourinho plays a tactical approach to matches, preferring to win 1-0 then to risk everything for a bigger margin. Leicester City followed this trend last season, with over half of their wins in the league (23 in total) coming by the margin of a single goal. But the goals-per-game ratio hasn’t changed dramatically in recent years. Last year the average stood at 2.7-per-game for the Premier League, which is actually up on those of the earlier ’00s years when it was usually below 2.5-per-game.So what has changed? I believe the fear factor has gone from the league to some extent. While Manchester City playing Sunderland at the Etihad Stadium is unlikely to produce anything favourable for the Black Cats, there is more and more evidence coming forward that teams are willing to push themselves the proverbial ‘extra mile’ in some games in order to earn victory. Take a look at Swansea City vs. Crystal Palace. Two managers under-fire and needing results, as well as questionable defending statistics for their respective teams this season.The game went to plan for the first hour, with Wilfried Zaha’s early opening goal cancelled out by a wonderful, but by now expected, 20-yard free-kick from Gylfi Sigurdsson. But Leroy Fer scored twice in as many minutes, both from the far post as he was given too much space to operate in by the Palace defence. The 3-1 lead (coming from a goal down) would have given the American Bob Bradley some breathing space, but Alan Pardew responded in kind. First a goal from James Tomkins after the Swans’ defence failed to clear a fairly lacklustre corner, then a slightly fortunate goal as the ball came off Jack Cork and looped over Lukasz Fabianski, before Christian Benteke put the ball in the net six minutes from time to right an earlier wrong and win the game for his side, again helped out by some very poor defending from Swansea.But the game wasn’t, as Kevin Friend called for seven minutes of stoppage time, over and Swansea used that time wisely. The home side continued to press as the minutes counted down, and substitute Fernando Llorente was afforded the opportunity to score a brace for his side in just two minutes in stoppage time. While many Palace fans (and even the players) would have been eyeing a first win in seven games, it was the Welsh team who took all three points at the end of the pivotal game between two relegation threatened sides. But it was less the final result that counted, more that both played with nothing to lose in this thrilling encounter.And, just a week later, a high-flying Liverpool headed to the south coast to face Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth. With Arsenal and Chelsea both winning on theÂSaturday, it was imperative for Jurgen Klopp to win a game which, from the outset, seemed doable for the Reds. But, despite holding a well-deserved 2-0 lead from the first half of the match, the underdogs never gave up. Like Swansea’s revival the previous week, Bournemouth’s victory rested on a substitute. Fernando Llorente helped Swansea score their second with his first touch after coming on, and Ryan Fraser was similarly influential for the Cherries as he was brought down in the Liverpool area to give Bournemouth a penalty, and a way back into the game. Callum Wilson duly put an opening goal away from the spot for home side at the Vitality Stadium. Emre Can scored a third to once again put Liverpool two goals to the good, but the momentum was now with the underdogs. Fraser himself scored (his first Premier League goal) just 14Âminutes from time after a poor clearance from Liverpool, another staple of the previous game. And the substitute was then involved in the third goal, the equaliser, as he set up defender Steve Cook to fire home just two minutes later. But, even with the game at 3-3 approaching full time, Eddie Howe was pushing his team on to grab the winner. And while Liverpool were trying not to lose everything on the day, the final strike happened deep inside stoppage time as Reds’ goalkeeper Loris Karius made a mistake by spilling the ball, and Chelsea loanee Nathan Ake was on hand for Bournemouth to put itÂinto the net to finish the game 4-3.
As always there are two ways of approaching this data. With ten games played per-gameweek in the top tier, these matchesÂrepresent just 10% of the games played during the fortnight so it could be described as nothing more than an anomaly. Just like Leicester City’s championship win last season, games like this could be seen as just as insignificant in the grand scheme of footballing history. But it perhaps displays a ‘ninja’ trend, an underlying improvement that has managed to develop undisturbed due to the profligacy of the bigger clubs.
In fact, Leicester City’s title win last season benefited more than just the Midlands club; it served a healthy reminder to the other 14Âor so teams who would normally be considered too lowly for a top-of-the-table finish that anything is possible. This season we have seen Pep Guardiola’s Etihad Stadium lose its fortress status as they have kept just one clean sheet at home in the current campaign, while Jose Mourinho struggles for results himself on the red side of the city as he fails to live up to his ‘winning is everything’ mentality, all while the young-and-inexperienced Howe is able to pick up the points he needs to secure at least another mid-table finish.
Only time will tell whether this is a sign of the future of the Premier League. But, for the time being, it certainly keeps the league as the best in the world.
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