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REUTERS: The most astonishing set of results yet, in an already highly unpredictable Premier League season, and the different environment in which the English top flight operates have raised the possibility of unexpected champions.
With Manchester City having conceded five home goals for the first time in 438 matches at the Etihad Stadium last weekend against Leicester City, champion Liverpool continued the trend of extraordinary results at Aston Villa.
In their remarkable 7-2 defeat on Sunday, Liverpool became the first reigning top flight champion from England to send seven goals in a league game from Arsenal against Sunderland in 1953, but the goals flowing this season are anything but abnormal.
The result came hours after Manchester United suffered their toughest Premier League defeat to Tottenham Hotspur, a 6-1 thrashing, and both games contributed to a total of 41 goals in a single round of league matches. Premier League.
He is just three short of the Premier League goal record in a single week of play, which was set last month. This season has been anything but predictable, but it has only increased the excitement.
“I want the Premier League to be a little bit more like this season,” former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports. “When you talk about 95 points to win the league, it’s remarkable, but it kind of kills the Premier League.
“I’d like to go back to when winning the league was in the mid-80s. It just means you lose more games and there’s more excitement, and the teams that finish fourth, fifth and sixth aren’t that far behind.
“I think this season could be unique.”
With no fans in the stadiums to add pressure as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions, home advantage is not as important this season as home teams win fewer games, on average, than in any of the last five seasons.
Furthermore, with less time to fit in matches, clubs go from match to match, with little time to regroup, ensuring that matches in empty stadiums have a distinct feel of play on the training ground, which has helped increase the volume of goals.
Carragher believes that if teams like Villa, who barely avoided relegation in the Premier League last season, can humiliate Liverpool like they did on Sunday, with Everton at the top of the table, we could have more surprises to come.
“There was no preseason, it is a condensed league to put in all the games,” Carragher added. “There is no time for coaches to work with their teams on training ground to resolve defensive weaknesses, as we have seen with almost every team this season.
“We could get a season in Leicester (they won the Premier League title in 2015-16) and get new champions, and even a rare top four, and I think that bodes well for the Premier League this season.”
(Reporting by Peter Hall, Ed Osmond editing)
