It’s that time of the year again: a lot of
festivities, a lot of rain, a lot of happiness and a hell lot of football. Its
Christmas time!
Obviously, if you ask the players and
managers, it’s not a very merry time for them: they have to play more than 2
games within 8 days at times in England – when you take in to account that some
teams have to play Premier League games along with Champions League and Capital
One Cup games. But it’s something they cannot avoid and it’s something that has
a very important relevance for English Premier League Teams.
Sticking to English Premier League, most of
the team roughly plays 6 to 7 league games in the month of December and how they
stack up in the league’s table can be very crucial. It goes without saying that
their position has a lot to do with how they have been playing since August,
but with so many featured games in one month, how they perform in these games
can actually change a lot of fortunes for them.
Interestingly, how they end up in the league
table at Christmas may just decide their position at the end of the full season.
For English Premier League, since 1993, the teams who finished 1st
at Christmas has gone on to win the League 10 times. And only once, they
finished below top 4. Since 2010, 4 times,
teams finishing Christmas as league leaders has gone on to win the
league eventually.
With one more weekend in the Premier League to
go before Christmas, games for Chelsea and Manchester City may hold huge
significance, as they are currently separated by 3 points only.
What about the teams down the table then? It’s
bad: only once since 1993, a team in bottom 3 survived from the Relegation. Now
this makes the matches involving QPR, Hull and Leicester very interesting and
actually pivotal.
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