Premier league review 2014/15: Mid-January- March

Premier league review 2014/15: Mid-January- March

 

Since the last season update, things have changed dramatically in the Premier league. The race for top four has become extremely tight and the battle to stay in the Premier league looks to be truly scrappy until the last few games.

 

Race for Champions league

The race for Champions league has become extremely tight, with Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham, Liverpool and Southampton fighting for the three remaining Champions league spots. Manchester United have found some much needed form, beating Tottenham 3-0 at Old Trafford and Liverpool away 2-1 away from home. The away victory against Liverpool has sparked a lot of media controversy, such as Steven Gerard's sending off for a stamp on Ander Herrera and Martin Skrtel's stamp on De Gea.

 

Arsenal's form has changed dramatically and has down to Oliver Giroud's fine goal scoring form. Arsenal needed to move the pressure off summer signing Alexis Sanchez and have done when it mattered. Ronald Koeman and co seem to have an outside chance of Champions league and have proven so by scraping results when they haven't been playing good (1-0 away win over QPR springs to mind!). 

Sherwood saves Villa's rut

Tim Sherwood has officially stopped Aston Villa's rut. Although Villa are not officially out of the relegation scrap, Sherwood as come in to the club with passion and firm belief that they will not be playing in the Championship next season. He has helped Villa players such as Benteke, Weimann and Delph retain respect from the fans and I think that they will not go down, all thanks to Sherwood.  

Chelsea have the title wrapped up (unofficially)

It seems, in my mind at least, that the title race is unofficially over. Chelsea sit top, six points clear of Manchester City, and with a game in hand. City had a mini-crisis (which involved losing away to Burnley on 14th March) and practically every player at the club (bar Aguero, Hart, Zabaleta and Silva) are allegedly 'paying for their future'. City buckled at the key time and the title has unfortunately gone. Even with Chelsea missing their star striker Diego Costa to a continuous hamstring injury, they will breeze through the last nine league games to claim their first Premier league trophy since 2010.

Kane lights up the goal scoring chart
Everyone is talking about Kane. A few months ago, no-one had heard of Kane (except die-hard Tottenham fans) but now almost every in the footballing world knows about him. Kane has scored 19 Premier league goals (all of them coming after 1st November) and is one to win the Golden boot. For Tottenham, its another Gareth Bale situation, in the fact that another young player has taken the Premier league by storm. Kane's hard-work as Spur's front man was rewarded with his first England goal against Lithuania on Friday and happened just 79 seconds after coming on as a substitute. It seems that England may have finally found a modern-day hard-working clinical finisher.

Kane has scored 29 goals in club competitions this season, more than any other player in England's top four divisions.