The Premier League title race that no-one seems to *want* to win

Is it fatigue? Is it nerves? Or is it simply that it's now more difficult for any team to win a Premier League match than ever?

Sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I take as much pleasure from rival teams losing as I do from my own team winning. On the Thursday night of this strangely elasticated Christmas to New Year perineum, Spurs went to Brighton in the Premier League. Now, I have company this week, and as such night after night of televised football has been largely off the menu, but I did have something of a sense of foreboding as they travelled south to Sussex for the match.

The Everton game had not been riveting, a scrambled win from an early position of dominance, a shroud of shrugged shoulders permissible afterwards because few of their rivals had managed to win either. And on the evening of this particular match I had a familiar feeling of premonition come over me. Spurs kicked off at 7.30 while Arsenal started their game at home to West Ham 45 minutes later. I've seen this movie before. Spurs take a kelping, and then Arsenal rub it in by winning their game a little later in the evening.

And such is the nature of modern football that they might even offer up some false hope en route. The bigger clubs have had a tendency to fall behind early on in their matches this season but as both Manchester City and Manchester United had already proved this week, going behind doesn't feel as though it means as much as it used to any more. Spurs were already two down by the time that Arsenal kicked off. Arsenal even had the common decency to offer up an early deficit to come back from.

I spent most of the evening checking the scores. Eeny meeny miney mo, 4-0 to Brighton. A season-worst performance felt like the right backdrop for Arsenal's comeback, except… it never came. Spurs managed a couple of late consolation goals to make their score, well, if not quite ‘respectable’ then at least not completely abject, while at The Emirates Stadium Arsenal continued to labour against West Ham, who added a second goal and ended up winning that match with some degree of comfort. And like I say, the fact that it likely says something both profound and disturbing about the state of my own mental health throughout 2023 doesn't alter the fact that losing a football match is considerably more tolerable when your rivals have done exactly the same thing.

We reach the end of the year with the top end of the Premier League looking in some degree of flux. Liverpool stay top, but the suspicion remains that they've been snatching too many wins this season. It's entirely fair to say that title-winning teams can be fuelled by winning without playing well, but this doesn't alter the fact that something has felt slightly off-kilter about them. Arsenal remain a convincing goalscorer short of a title charge. Manchester City were stuttering before they jetted off to the Middle East to be crowned as The Champions of the World. Aston Villa remain in the top four as if by default, despite an extremely sudden downturn.

Of course, it doesn't end there either. Drop a little further down the table and there doesn't seem to be anyone there who can put much consistency together either. Newcastle's form has dropped off a cliff, and their home defeat to Nottingham Forest showed precisely no signs of improvement. Chelsea beat Crystal Palace without ever really convincing, days after having lost at Wolves, while Manchester United did the about most Manchester United thing they could have done in coming from two behind to beat Aston Villa at Old Trafford, just enough to get chests puffing out with hubris again before the next inevitable calamity.

If this season in the Premier League has had one defining characteristic (beyond being packed with conspiracy theorists and seemingly every single game being notable for some VAR related snafu or other), it's been that lack of consistency. Every run of results which any team has managed to put together has quickly ground to a halt again. For all the talent on display, individual mistakes seem to have characterised a lot of what's been going on. It's been a strange season, in which everything has felt interrupted, as though no-one can quite get their engines running to full effect.

Injuries certainly haven't helped. Practically every club has a sob story to tell on this subject to some extent or another, with precious few resources being given over to understanding why this should be, as though the incremental closing of the break periods that players used to get can simply be glossed over as an irrelevance. It's perfectly clear that player welfare is pretty close to the bottom of the list of priorities for those setting the schedules. Drop a World Club Cup into the middle of the summer? Sure, why not? Make the Champions League group stages even bigger? Might as well! Add an extra quarter to the length of every match in stoppage-time? Recovery periods are for losers!

But that doesn't quite feel like the entirety of it. There's also been a skittishness about teams this season. There have even been points at which it's felt a little as though Spursiness has become contagious. The pace of the modern game doesn't help much, either. When you know that high-pressing opponents will not be giving you any time on the ball, nerves may start to jangle and that crucial first touch feels just a touch more difficult than it feels during training.

Many of us continue to hedge our bets that Manchester City will come good again, and that by the end of the season they'll end up winning the title because no-one else could really be trusted to get their shit together. There were certainly signs of this during their win at Everton, but if there's one thing this season has been very good at, it's been making a fool out of those who seek to make sweeping statements off the back of one or two decent performances. The feeling remains that City's summer loss of Ilkay Gundogan has hurt the shape and structure of their team more than has been acknowledged.

The upshot of all this is that it feels like no-one really wants to win the Premier League this season. Now, obviously this isn't true. Every single person involved in this occasionally undignified stampede would happily clamber over their own grandmothers in order to get some of that sweet, sweet lion wearing a crown action come the end of this season. Just look into Mikel Arteta’s eyes and you can see that pleading hunger.

But the nerves and pressure, the tiredness, the seemingly random distribution of injuries and the furious pace of matches, when combined, certainly seem to give that impression. And it just so happens that, even when watching elite level athletes practising their discipline, all that some of us want is for them to be tripping over their own bootlaces and otherwise making fools of themselves, rather than playing to the fullest of their abilities. Well, I do, at least, and that certainly says more about me than it does about any of those who are actually taking part in it all.