PsychicSykes wrote:Preezy wrote:Curls wrote:It's truly amazing they're sat 22 points ahead. Especially considering how close last season was. No idea how it happened.
Combination of them being great and everyone else being absolute toilet.
Chelsea, Spurs and Sheffield United are below the average point totals you'd expect for their positions in the table, but just about every other amount a team has is more or less in line with the average points from the previous five seasons.
The average for second and third place across that sample is only one point better off than Man City and Leicester's current points at this stage. Plus, there's the fact that both European finals last season were all-English affairs.
The league isn't that much different than it has been recently, overall.
(There's an argument City are unlucky to have as few points they do have too, but that's a whole other conversation.)
All good points. I did think that maybe the 2nd-6th place teams have been really poor, but city and leicester have 2 points per game roughly, which isn't enough to win the league, but about average for those positions. You could perhaps argue that the league is even stronger - if City have struggled after being so incredible last season. Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U and some extent Spurs were always likely to struggle considering their managerial changes. And don't forget, Liverpool are reigning European and World Champions - it's clear that they should have a large lead.
Another thing, with regard to the injuries. I think as a manager you have to populate your squad with enough players in each position to provide replacements if a key member of team is injured, and also you need to be a bit ruthless with your injury prone players or be smart about it and only think of them as reserve players (Lallana, Shakiri, Lovren/Matip, Sturridge and whoever else i've forgotten). You cant build a team around injury prone players. Good management takes these risks out of the equation.
