Credit: Leicester City Football Club via Facebook.
As Leicester City proved with their monumental title-winning campaign last term, anything can and does happen in the English Premier League. However, with only eight weeks remaining in the current season, Chelsea have now opened up a 10-point gap at the top of the table and their lead looks to be unassailable.
Chelsea
Credit: Chelsea Football Club via Facebook.
Chelsea go into their last 11 matches of the season with not only a ten-point advantage over the other challengers, but a healthy goal difference of +37 as well – four goals greater than nearest rivals Spurs. Having recently triumphed in the FA Cup quarter-finals, the Blues are chasing the double for the first time since the 2009/10 season – but will their players be able to handle the extended workload as the gruelling campaign comes to an end?
If form is any indication, it would seem the London club has the quality and consistency to go all the way. Fans and oddsmakers certainly seem to agree, with bookmakers including bet365 Premier League betting listing Chelsea as heavy favourites at odds of -1400. This sentiment was shared in an ongoing poll by soccer magazine Goal, in which some 38% of readers have backed Chelsea to win the title.
Tottenham
Mauricio Pochettino's youthful Spurs side pushed Leicester all the way to the line last season, and were widely viewed as unlucky to slip into a third-place finish following a loss to Newcastle on the final day of the campaign. Tottenham had a spotty start to 2016/17, but have now managed to put together an unbeaten run of 11 games in the Premier League of their own, and find themselves sitting in second place, ten points adrift of leaders Chelsea.
Harry Kane and Dele Alli have had a masterful season between them, with the pair holding second and seventh spot respectively on the top goalscorers table for the current campaign. With Tottenham's odds of claiming the title sitting at around +2000, a continuation of its dynamic duo's effective interplay will need to happen for the club to have a realistic chance of catching Chelsea at the top of the ladder.
Manchester City
Credit: Manchester City via Facebook
Much like Chelsea, Manchester City have not been beaten in the league since a 4-0 drubbing to Everton back in January, and finds itself below Tottenham in the table only on the basis of a less favorable goal difference. With Sergio Aguero on target in each of the Sky Blues' four victories and German winger Leroy Sané finding the form of his life under influential boss Pep Guardiola, you'd be unwise to count City out of the title race quite yet.
The legendary Spanish manager is under no illusion as to the expectations of the club's army of fans. “If I have no silverware, I will not be here for a long time,” he recently conceded, and whether it is the EPL title – which City are second-favorite to win at +1600 – or the FA Cup, surely the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich chief knows how to find a way to add at least one trophy to the Mancunians' cabinet.
Elsewhere in the win-outright betting market, Liverpool is an outside shot for the title at +6600, with Arsenal at +10000 – but neither side looks capable of putting together the end-of-term run required to reduce the deficit between fourth/fifth and first place.
