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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Chelsea leads the Barclays Premier League

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Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero is the key to his team's success this season.

The Barclays Premier League is just past the one-quarter mark in the season, and it would have been difficult to foresee the teams that have emerged as contenders, or the ones that have struggled.

Chelsea leads Southampton by four points, and is six points ahead of title holders Manchester City. Chelsea looks likely to stay atop the table. Whether it involves scoring six goals, as it did against Everton, or shutting teams down defensively as it has done many times this season, Chelsea is built not only to win, but also not to lose. Its back four, anchored by captain John Terry, is not just the best in England, but perhaps the best in the world. The Blues also have one of the world's elite goalkeepers, Thibaut Courtois, as the United States discovered against Belgium at the World Cup. Chelsea probably would have won the league last season if it had a proper goal scorer, and manager Jose Mourinho solved this problem with the acquisition of Diego Costa for this season.

Chelsea is the favorite to take back the title, with Manchester City offering the best chance at spoiling the party. City does not appear to have clicked into full gear yet, and will do well to try to pace Chelsea over the course of the season.

The league title may be decided by the fitness of the two clubs’ star strikers. Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero and Chelsea’s Diego Costa top the scoring charts with 10 and nine goals, respectively. Both, however, have injury concerns. Agüero played in just 23 of 38 games last season, while Costa has been battling a hamstring issue on and off since this spring.

Southampton, meanwhile, is defying all odds not just by being in 2nd place right now, but by not being in the bottom three, which are the dreaded relegation spots. This summer, Premier League teams gutted Southampton, which was coming off of an over-achieving 8th place finish. Out went Mauricio Pochettino, the manager, along with no less than five starters, including captain Adam Lallana. Southampton replaced Pochettino with Dutch coach Ronald Koeman, a legend for the Dutch National Team. Koeman brought with him the Dutch system of technical and tactical soccer.

Southampton realized that buying from the Premier League at inflated prices was impossible for a club of its size. Instead, Koeman went back to the Netherlands to sign Graziano Pellè, a towering Italian who already has six goals, and Serb Dušan Tadić, who has six assists. The Saints have conceded just five goals all year, anchored by English goalkeeper Fraser Forster who was transferred from Scotland’s Celtic. All in all, Southampton made a profit of over $50,000,000 this summer, while becoming everybody’s second favorite team.

West Ham and Swansea, at fifth and sixth in the standings, have also bought well and are overachieving. All three of these clubs will find it hard to stay in the top-six, but Southampton in particular shows no signs of giving up.

The rest of the top half is made up of the usual suspects. Perennially fourth-placed Arsenal keeps dropping points, with five draws on the season. Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur are both struggling from the same problem: failure to replace a star. Liverpool sold Uruguayan biter Luis Suárez to Barcelona, while Spurs lost Gareth Bale to Real Madrid last summer. Both sides bought several players (Liverpool bought three from Southampton), but the changes in personnel have resulted in two substantially weaker squads. Liverpool’s attack, spearheaded by the mercurial Mario Balotelli, is struggling to keep up with a still-leaky defense. Spurs continue to be inconsistent and will not match last season’s 6th. Everton, across town from Liverpool, has the third-worst defense in England.

But perhaps the most interesting team in the Premier League is Manchester United. The Red Devils, England’s most successful club, finished seventh last year under one-and-done manager David Moyes. New coach Louis van Gaal, The Netherlands’ coach at the World Cup, spent millions on flashy attackers, namely Radamel Falcao of Monaco and Ángel Di María of Real Madrid. United is arguably the most exciting team in the Premier League, but it remains frail defensively. Van Gaal invested in just one centerback, Marcos Rojo, who has looked unconvincing. United added weapons when defense was a much more pressing necessity. After this weekend’s defeat to City, United sits 10th, its worst start to a league campaign in decades. Van Gaal, however, is notorious for starting slow, as demonstrated in his time with Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

At the other end of the table, there are half-a-dozen teams fighting to avoid the bottom three and relegation to England’s second division. If the beginning of the Premier League has told us anything, it is that this season is going to go down to the wire. The most interesting race may not even be for the title, for there are seven clubs fighting for the top four and a ticket to the lucrative Champions League.