Join Rob Smyth for updates from around the grounds on another busy day of football
season, that is. The next eight weeks will be a breathless orgy of drama, hyperbole, euphoria, despair, rage and contrived punditry rows. Each Premier League team has between 10 and 13 games to play before the whole thing concludes on 28 May. More importantly – perhaps uniquely – they all have something to playThe concept of mid-table mediocrity will doubtless reintroduce itself before the end of May.
The reason for this unusual situation is the cavernous gap between Aston Villa in 11th place and Crystal Palace in 12th . There was actually a similar gap between Wolves and Villa, but most of the mid-table teams had no realistic chance of European football or relegation. Usually by this stage, a few teams are drifting into what the Manchester United writer Richard Kurt called a “nihilistic nothingness”. He was talking about the 1988-89 season, when United went into a prolonged funk after going out of both the title race and the FA Cup. They scored only once in five games in April - and that was a Tony Adams own-goal.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying all today’s Premier League games are important, and all have different points of interest. Just don’t call any of them six-pointers, or we may fall out., who are tantalisingly close to one of the second most improbable title victory of the Premier League era, can make it seven straight league wins by beating