You Bet | History points to Chelsea for the title as holiday stats weigh in Blues’ favour
Antonio Conte’s men have had a strong first half in the Premier League and not many teams at this stage from the recent past have relinquished their lead
Chelsea’s lead in the English Premier League title race is a commanding six points and, with two home games to come before the end of 2016, their advantage looks more likely to increase than diminish over the festive season.
Being No 1 at Christmas is no guarantee of success in the long term, as several commentators have pointed out in recent days. In the 24 years of the Premier League era, exactly half of the Christmas leaders have gone on to take the title but the other half were overtaken and one of them, Aston Villa in 1998-99, faded so badly they ended up in sixth place.
But there are a couple of underlying stats that are highly encouraging for Chelsea. The first is that most of the failures for Christmas leaders came in the early years of the Premier League: in the first 12 seasons only three of them wound up as champions, but in the last 12 seasons there has been a complete turnaround and nine of the Christmas leaders were still top at the end of the season.
That reflects a change of approach among the top teams that stems back to Jose Mourinho’s entry into English football as Chelsea manager in 2004, which happens to be the mid-point between the start of the Premier League and now.
Mourinho set out to break the mould established first in the great Liverpool era and adopted by Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, whereby their teams steadily built up a head of steam and reached full power in the second half of the season. The classic example was United’s pursuit of Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle in 1995-96 when they trailed by nine points in early February but ended up winning by four after a storming late run.
Ferguson was forced to change his thinking by Mourinho’s fast-from-the-start approach, which in his first season saw Chelsea lead United by six points after 10 games and by nine at Christmas. This time there was no coming back for Ferguson’s side and Chelsea won in a canter with 95 points, 12 ahead of Arsenal and 18 clear of United.