Following last year's upset in the Premier League when Leicester City went on to win it all both at Christmas and at the end of the season, this year we are back to watching top-flight giants battle it out at the top.
Christmas came and went with 18 out of the 38 total match days having passed. Chelsea came out looking stronger than ever during the first part of the season, leading the table six points ahead of Liverpool with Manchester City, Arsenal and Tottenham following.
With the current title holders sitting in 16th place and the likes of Manchester United not even in the top five, we could clearly see that we were looking at a highly competitive season of top-level English football. Antonio Conte's men may have won it all at Christmas time, but we were wondering what leading the race at Christmas would mean for their chances of winning the title. Here is what we came up with.
A Fifty-Fifty Chance?
Looking at the past seasons of the Premier League, the chances for the team who is sitting at the top of the table at Christmas to win the league in the end are about 50-50. Of course, this does not take into account how many points the teams were ahead by at Christmas or many other factors and is a fairly broad statistic.
Still, looking into the past is one of the best ways to predict the future. While many sides have managed to maintain their table lead from Christmas until the summer, many others have failed to do so. Probably the most notable story of a team losing out on their Christmas lead is the 1989-90 season of the Premier League when Aston Villa managed to top all other teams at Christmas and yet finished only sixth overall when all was said and done.
© SilverHub
Liverpool and Newcastle United both managed to finish fourth in seasons 1996-97 and 2001-02 respectively while many others finished second and third in seasons when they were at the top on Christmas Day.
Chelsea – The Masters At Maintaining The Lead
Of all the teams in the Premier League, Chelsea are the only one who have won the Premier League each and every time when they were at the pole position at Christmas. They managed to do so in 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2014, each time being number one at both crucial dates.
This impressive statistic, along with the six points they held at Christmas on their closest rivals Liverpool, definitely means that Conte's boys could very well go on to win the title for the fifth time in just over a decade. Still, there are plenty more matches to be played before all is said and done and there is no doubt that other great English football teams will be competing until their dying breath.
Do They Have What It Takes?
The big question is of course, does the current Chelsea side have what it takes to win the big show? Now with 16 league wins in 19 matches and only two defeats, the Blues are looking better than pretty much ever. It is this kind of form that had led them to a six-point lead despite other teams like Liverpool and Manchester City putting up quite a fight.
Looking at the scoring statistics, Chelsea come only fourth in the number of goals scored, but had conceded only 11 goals in the 18 matches before Christmas, which is a truly amazing stat. Liverpool in second for instance, had conceded as many as 21 goals and only Tottenham in fifth have a defense who can compare having conceded only 13 goals but drawing too many games to threaten the title in a serious way.
The Odds In Favor
The bookmakers are clearly also aware of all the statistics and are not giving much of a price on Chelsea to win it all at the moment. The humble 1.66 on Chelsea to go all the way won't be too appealing to most punters as a six-point lead with 20 matches to go surely doesn't guarantee anything.
You can keep an eye on the changing odds at http://openodds.com/ and place your bets as the odds change every single week. Make sure to check out all the bookies and find out what they have to say about the chances of every team to win the Premier League at the end of the year.
