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With the Big Four struggling, there's a new threat emerging between London and the North-West...
Winners
Aston Villa
The secret of Villa's success this season is a settled line-up. Their most highly-prized players - Gareth Barry, Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor - have all been ever-presents this season, as has their captain, Martin Laursen, and goalkeeper, Brad Friedel. In total, the eleven players who started against Bolton have made 154 starts out of a possible 187 with substitutes Nigel Reo-Coker and Nicky Shorey accounting for 24 of the remaining 33.
But for being temporarily deprived of John Carew, Villa have had it easy so far with injury and suspension. The Norwegian is one of only 14 players to have started a league game for Villa so far this season - to put that in comparison, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal have used 23, 21, 20 and 19 respectively - and was the only recognised first-teamer unavailable this weekend.
Ashley Young
Comparisons with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo remain, at present, exaggerated, but proper recognition of his talent is long overdue. Last season, only Cesc Fabregas provided more goalscoring assists in the league and Young's combined tally of assists and goals - 25 - was the equal of Wayne Rooney and bettered by only six other players (Ronaldo, Emmanuel Adebayor, Fernando Torres, Roque Santa Cruz, Dimitar Berbatov and Fabregas).
This season is proving equally impressive and equally productive. The winger's assist for Agbonlahor against Bolton was his twelfth of the campaign and was followed by his seventh goal. He remains the single most potent danger to Arsenal's hopes of a tenth successive season in the Champions League - an irony of sorts given that Young himself grew up an Arsenal supporter. Were he an Arsenal player, fourth place would be the bare minimum of their ambitions rather than the summit.
Middlesbrough
Unbeaten in five matches against Arsenal since being thrashed 7-0 at Highbury in January 2006.
Jeremie Aliadere
Boro's scorer in their two 1-1 draws with Arsenal - the Frenchman's former employers - this year has scored just two goals in his intervening 22 league appearances.
Newcastle United
To update last week's stat: Owen's last 18 league starts have produced 12 goals. His finish at Pompey was particularly good because his first touch was so bad.
Tim Cahill
Who needs strikers? The combined cost of the four used by City on Saturday - Robinho, Jo, Darius Vassell and Benjani - is approximately £56m but Everton's match-winner was a midfielder deployed as a lone frontman because of an injury crisis. He cost a mere £1.5m.
Steven Gerrard
Gerrard, too, is a midfielder by label who is gradually evolving into a striker. Because he has so many other attributes to his games, Gerrard's precision in front of goal is rarely commented upon but his chances-to-goals ratio must be one of the best around.
Earlier this month, Benitez predicted that the Liverpool captain would finish his career in attack and deployed him in the 'hole' behind Dirk Kuyt on Saturday. Aside from being a vindication of his manager's thinking, Gerrard's brace also meant that he has scored four of his team's last six goals. A one-man team they are not but he is the one player maintaining Liverpool's title bid above all others.
Fulham
At a crossroads after four successive draws. If they beat Middlesbrough next Saturday then they will be unbeaten in five. If they lose or draw, they will be without a victory since November 15.
Hull City
The scorers of seven goals on their trips to Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool. Such is their swagger that Phil Brown departed the league leaders on Saturday night bemoaning his "disappointment" at failing to win.
Heurelho Gomes
But any goalkeeper can make a save. What determines the quality of his goalkeeper is the number of mistakes he commits and Gomes has already conceded too many for his reputation - and Tottenham career - to be saved. Having praised Gomes' performance against the champions, Harry Redknapp's next sentence was confirmation that he remains intent on purchasing another goalkeeper next month.
Losers
The Big Four
It's probably little more than a temporary, month-long blip but their dominance has been on the wane for the past few weeks. As a collective, their last sixteen matches have produced just six victories - with Chelsea and Liverpool winning just one from four since mid-November despite playing three of those matches on home soil.
Cue a downscaling of the projected points tally needed to win the league - on current form, 84 will be sufficient - and plenty of regret: at the failure to extend their lead for Liverpool, at an opportunity missed for Chelsea and Manchester United, and, for Arsenal, depression at the realisation that a leading title challenge was theirs to be built for as little as £25m in the summer.
Blackburn Rovers
Paul Ince will, to near universal expectation, be sacked as Blackburn Rovers manager this week. If so, he will be the casualty of Rovers' premature folly in the summer and the Premier League's unique volatility - a product of the multi-million financial penalty to be paid for relegation which in turn has eroded the principle of patience as a virtue. Every manager whose side do not occupy a top-six place will be mindful, to varying degrees, that they are just a single bad spell from uncomfortable boardroom scrutiny. "Everyone needs time," argued Ince recently in his naivety. Time is the one luxury that the richest league in the world cannot afford.
In any other profession, such unfavourable volatility would spark sympathy. But football management is a unique profession and with an unparalleled generosity for perceived failure. Those who will say that Ince has been treated badly ought to onsider reports this week that Alan Curbishley has launched a £3m compensation claim against West Ham a few days after Kevin Keegan launched proceedings against Newcastle worth £8m. Departure has never been so lucrative.
And, in any case, even if Ince is the latest victim of the league's short-termism, his appointment owed everything to the short-sighted belief that a successful playing career is a guarantee of a successful managerial career. Just because you can drink a regular pint doesn't mean you can run a pub, but football - particularly English football, as the relocation of Gianfranco Zola aptly demonstrates - tends to think differently.
Ince served an apprenticeship in the lower leagues but it was brief and its value questionable. Managing Macclesfield and the Milton Keynes Dons is a world apart from bossing a Premiership club. To his credit, Ince has kept the Blackburn dressing-room onside but the identity of the players he has brought in betrays his shortcomings for the task of Premiership management.
Signing Paul Robinson after Friedel departed for Villa was sound, but Keith Andrews has, unsurprisingly, failed to make the leap from League Two and Ince's decision to offer Robbie Fowler a contract revealed a frightening misunderstanding of the modern-day Premier League.
The proximity to the January transfer window must be a factor in Ince's imminent demise because serious doubts remain about his knowledge of the higher reaches of the transfer market. But, having spent two years in the lower league, it was reckless - at best - of Blackburn to have expected any differently. Arsene Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson and Rafa Benitez have had years to build-up a portfolio of contacts and scouts. At 41, Ince should not be criticised if his circle of inside-information does not extend far beyond a list of his former team-mates and MK Don players.
A similar gripe was made by his detractors against Roy Keane given the regularity with which he recruited from Manchester United and Celtic. Tellingly, shortly before his own exit from Sunderland, Keane acknowledged his own difficulties in the transfer market: "You never know with signings until you get them into the club. I've bought players I was convinced were right for us but, after a week, I've thought, 'Nah you're not for me'."
With time at a premium, Premier League management has become the experienced man's game. Keane and Ince will, at some point in the future, return to management both richer and wiser. And they will be all the better for the longer they stay away.
Tottenham's Summer Escapologists
Warned to expect a "bit of grief" upon his return to White Hart Lane, Dimi Berbatov's failure to cause any bother to the Tottenham defence in retaliation was a louder post-match talking point than the booing which greeted his every touch. The scorer of just one goal in his past nine matches - and that the third in a 5-0 win over Stoke - Berbatov, like his strike-partner of last year, is in a slump from which the route to recovery is unclear.
Formidable as a pair, they seem lost apart and their struggles since separation have raised old doubts. Berbatov remains the one player with whom Keane has successfully dovetailed during his career but was that due to Berbatov's aloof style? It doesn't help the Bulgarian that his best position - is he a link-man or a target-man? - remains an unknown location and he drifted around the outskirts on Saturday night. Keane, meanwhile, was made conspicuous only by his absence as he sat brooding on the bench as Liverpool toiled for a winner against Hull. The 'step-up' of the summer has so far only delivered an over-priced comedown.
Rafa Benitez
Let's play multiple-choice for the following situation: You are the manager of a team that is top of the table but, with five minutes and one substitution remaining, your team is being held to a draw at home in what you have acknowledged is the "kind of game you have to win". So, do you...
a) Replace one holding midfielder with another who has yet to score a first-team league goal?
or
b) Introduce the striker you bought for £20m in the summer rather than make him sit on the bench for the entire 90 minutes even though your other 'star' striker is unfit and unavailable?
Liverpool
The statistic declaring that Liverpool are one of only two teams - Manchester United being the other - still boasting an undefeated home record is made meaningless by their dropping six points in their last three engagements at Anfield. Add in September's stalemate with Stoke and the deficit essentially amounts to two-and-a-half defeats. Put in comparison to the champions' record at Old Trafford last term - Played 19, Won 17, Drawn 1, Lost 1 - and, for the first time since the season start, there is tangible reason to doubt Pool's credentials.
Chelsea
The 14 points that Chelsea have dropped at home is as many as they squandered in the whole of last season and four more than Jose Mourinho lost in his first season in charge.
Luiz Felipe Scolari and Deco
The player Scolari needs to drop is the ageing cast-off he staked his reputation on pursuing in the summer. His protests against Mike Riley's decision not to award Chelsea a last-minute penalty for a trip on Frank Lampard were valid but, at home to modest opposition, Chelsea should not have required any assistance.
Having belatedly introduced Didier Drogba as a second-half substitute Scolari complained afterwards about his forwards' inflexibility. "I need them to understand they are not fixed in position," he said. "They need to come back and win the ball." Yet the stand-out feature of Chelsea's display was once again Deco's meagre contribution. After just two wins in their last five matches, someone has to give.
Manchester United
The scorers of just two goals in their last four league games and the winners of just one of their seven matches in the capital in the past twelve months.
Abou 'Diabolical' Diaby
He's not even average.
Arsenal
Evidence of "a better defensive balance" was the one consolation Arsene Wenger could take from an anaemic display at the Riverside. As Alex Song should be capable of filling in as a defensive midfielder and the under-rated Johan Djourou has the potential to be Kolo Toure's successor, Wenger ought to reconsider his priorities for the next transfer window and put a winger with a long history of good health at the top of his shopping list.
The wheels came off Arsenal's title bid last season when they travelled to Wigan in March without six wingers and a similar deficiency hurt them against Boro. There will not be many matches won with Abou Diaby and Denilson on the flanks and their lack of suitability for the position made Boro's plan of crowding out the centre of the pitch both simple and effective. The 16-year-old Jack Wilshere to start against Liverpool? Such should be Wenger's desperation, don't bet against it.
Mark Hughes
After five defeats from their last eight matches, who can blame City's Dubai owners if they are having doubts about their manager.
Bolton Wanderers
Have conceded eight goals at Villa Park in as many months.
West Brom
Adrift at the bottom of the table. The number of points they require just to match the points-tally of the side fourth from bottom is half as many as they have collected in their first seventeen matches.
The Manager Of The Month Award
Of the four winners so far this season - August's Gareth Southgate September's Phil Brown, October's Rafa Benitez and November's Gary Megson - three have then suffered defeat in their next match: Southgate's Boro at Pompey on Sept 13, Benitez's Liverpool at Tottenham on Nov 1 and Megson's Bolton at Villa this weekend.
Pete Gill
Winners
Aston Villa
The secret of Villa's success this season is a settled line-up. Their most highly-prized players - Gareth Barry, Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor - have all been ever-presents this season, as has their captain, Martin Laursen, and goalkeeper, Brad Friedel. In total, the eleven players who started against Bolton have made 154 starts out of a possible 187 with substitutes Nigel Reo-Coker and Nicky Shorey accounting for 24 of the remaining 33.
But for being temporarily deprived of John Carew, Villa have had it easy so far with injury and suspension. The Norwegian is one of only 14 players to have started a league game for Villa so far this season - to put that in comparison, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal have used 23, 21, 20 and 19 respectively - and was the only recognised first-teamer unavailable this weekend.
Ashley Young
Comparisons with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo remain, at present, exaggerated, but proper recognition of his talent is long overdue. Last season, only Cesc Fabregas provided more goalscoring assists in the league and Young's combined tally of assists and goals - 25 - was the equal of Wayne Rooney and bettered by only six other players (Ronaldo, Emmanuel Adebayor, Fernando Torres, Roque Santa Cruz, Dimitar Berbatov and Fabregas).
This season is proving equally impressive and equally productive. The winger's assist for Agbonlahor against Bolton was his twelfth of the campaign and was followed by his seventh goal. He remains the single most potent danger to Arsenal's hopes of a tenth successive season in the Champions League - an irony of sorts given that Young himself grew up an Arsenal supporter. Were he an Arsenal player, fourth place would be the bare minimum of their ambitions rather than the summit.
Middlesbrough
Unbeaten in five matches against Arsenal since being thrashed 7-0 at Highbury in January 2006.
Jeremie Aliadere
Boro's scorer in their two 1-1 draws with Arsenal - the Frenchman's former employers - this year has scored just two goals in his intervening 22 league appearances.
Newcastle United
To update last week's stat: Owen's last 18 league starts have produced 12 goals. His finish at Pompey was particularly good because his first touch was so bad.
Tim Cahill
Who needs strikers? The combined cost of the four used by City on Saturday - Robinho, Jo, Darius Vassell and Benjani - is approximately £56m but Everton's match-winner was a midfielder deployed as a lone frontman because of an injury crisis. He cost a mere £1.5m.
Steven Gerrard
Gerrard, too, is a midfielder by label who is gradually evolving into a striker. Because he has so many other attributes to his games, Gerrard's precision in front of goal is rarely commented upon but his chances-to-goals ratio must be one of the best around.
Earlier this month, Benitez predicted that the Liverpool captain would finish his career in attack and deployed him in the 'hole' behind Dirk Kuyt on Saturday. Aside from being a vindication of his manager's thinking, Gerrard's brace also meant that he has scored four of his team's last six goals. A one-man team they are not but he is the one player maintaining Liverpool's title bid above all others.
Fulham
At a crossroads after four successive draws. If they beat Middlesbrough next Saturday then they will be unbeaten in five. If they lose or draw, they will be without a victory since November 15.
Hull City
The scorers of seven goals on their trips to Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool. Such is their swagger that Phil Brown departed the league leaders on Saturday night bemoaning his "disappointment" at failing to win.
Heurelho Gomes
But any goalkeeper can make a save. What determines the quality of his goalkeeper is the number of mistakes he commits and Gomes has already conceded too many for his reputation - and Tottenham career - to be saved. Having praised Gomes' performance against the champions, Harry Redknapp's next sentence was confirmation that he remains intent on purchasing another goalkeeper next month.
Losers
The Big Four
It's probably little more than a temporary, month-long blip but their dominance has been on the wane for the past few weeks. As a collective, their last sixteen matches have produced just six victories - with Chelsea and Liverpool winning just one from four since mid-November despite playing three of those matches on home soil.
Cue a downscaling of the projected points tally needed to win the league - on current form, 84 will be sufficient - and plenty of regret: at the failure to extend their lead for Liverpool, at an opportunity missed for Chelsea and Manchester United, and, for Arsenal, depression at the realisation that a leading title challenge was theirs to be built for as little as £25m in the summer.
Blackburn Rovers
Paul Ince will, to near universal expectation, be sacked as Blackburn Rovers manager this week. If so, he will be the casualty of Rovers' premature folly in the summer and the Premier League's unique volatility - a product of the multi-million financial penalty to be paid for relegation which in turn has eroded the principle of patience as a virtue. Every manager whose side do not occupy a top-six place will be mindful, to varying degrees, that they are just a single bad spell from uncomfortable boardroom scrutiny. "Everyone needs time," argued Ince recently in his naivety. Time is the one luxury that the richest league in the world cannot afford.
In any other profession, such unfavourable volatility would spark sympathy. But football management is a unique profession and with an unparalleled generosity for perceived failure. Those who will say that Ince has been treated badly ought to onsider reports this week that Alan Curbishley has launched a £3m compensation claim against West Ham a few days after Kevin Keegan launched proceedings against Newcastle worth £8m. Departure has never been so lucrative.
And, in any case, even if Ince is the latest victim of the league's short-termism, his appointment owed everything to the short-sighted belief that a successful playing career is a guarantee of a successful managerial career. Just because you can drink a regular pint doesn't mean you can run a pub, but football - particularly English football, as the relocation of Gianfranco Zola aptly demonstrates - tends to think differently.
Ince served an apprenticeship in the lower leagues but it was brief and its value questionable. Managing Macclesfield and the Milton Keynes Dons is a world apart from bossing a Premiership club. To his credit, Ince has kept the Blackburn dressing-room onside but the identity of the players he has brought in betrays his shortcomings for the task of Premiership management.
Signing Paul Robinson after Friedel departed for Villa was sound, but Keith Andrews has, unsurprisingly, failed to make the leap from League Two and Ince's decision to offer Robbie Fowler a contract revealed a frightening misunderstanding of the modern-day Premier League.
The proximity to the January transfer window must be a factor in Ince's imminent demise because serious doubts remain about his knowledge of the higher reaches of the transfer market. But, having spent two years in the lower league, it was reckless - at best - of Blackburn to have expected any differently. Arsene Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson and Rafa Benitez have had years to build-up a portfolio of contacts and scouts. At 41, Ince should not be criticised if his circle of inside-information does not extend far beyond a list of his former team-mates and MK Don players.
A similar gripe was made by his detractors against Roy Keane given the regularity with which he recruited from Manchester United and Celtic. Tellingly, shortly before his own exit from Sunderland, Keane acknowledged his own difficulties in the transfer market: "You never know with signings until you get them into the club. I've bought players I was convinced were right for us but, after a week, I've thought, 'Nah you're not for me'."
With time at a premium, Premier League management has become the experienced man's game. Keane and Ince will, at some point in the future, return to management both richer and wiser. And they will be all the better for the longer they stay away.
Tottenham's Summer Escapologists
Warned to expect a "bit of grief" upon his return to White Hart Lane, Dimi Berbatov's failure to cause any bother to the Tottenham defence in retaliation was a louder post-match talking point than the booing which greeted his every touch. The scorer of just one goal in his past nine matches - and that the third in a 5-0 win over Stoke - Berbatov, like his strike-partner of last year, is in a slump from which the route to recovery is unclear.
Formidable as a pair, they seem lost apart and their struggles since separation have raised old doubts. Berbatov remains the one player with whom Keane has successfully dovetailed during his career but was that due to Berbatov's aloof style? It doesn't help the Bulgarian that his best position - is he a link-man or a target-man? - remains an unknown location and he drifted around the outskirts on Saturday night. Keane, meanwhile, was made conspicuous only by his absence as he sat brooding on the bench as Liverpool toiled for a winner against Hull. The 'step-up' of the summer has so far only delivered an over-priced comedown.
Rafa Benitez
Let's play multiple-choice for the following situation: You are the manager of a team that is top of the table but, with five minutes and one substitution remaining, your team is being held to a draw at home in what you have acknowledged is the "kind of game you have to win". So, do you...
a) Replace one holding midfielder with another who has yet to score a first-team league goal?
or
b) Introduce the striker you bought for £20m in the summer rather than make him sit on the bench for the entire 90 minutes even though your other 'star' striker is unfit and unavailable?
Liverpool
The statistic declaring that Liverpool are one of only two teams - Manchester United being the other - still boasting an undefeated home record is made meaningless by their dropping six points in their last three engagements at Anfield. Add in September's stalemate with Stoke and the deficit essentially amounts to two-and-a-half defeats. Put in comparison to the champions' record at Old Trafford last term - Played 19, Won 17, Drawn 1, Lost 1 - and, for the first time since the season start, there is tangible reason to doubt Pool's credentials.
Chelsea
The 14 points that Chelsea have dropped at home is as many as they squandered in the whole of last season and four more than Jose Mourinho lost in his first season in charge.
Luiz Felipe Scolari and Deco
The player Scolari needs to drop is the ageing cast-off he staked his reputation on pursuing in the summer. His protests against Mike Riley's decision not to award Chelsea a last-minute penalty for a trip on Frank Lampard were valid but, at home to modest opposition, Chelsea should not have required any assistance.
Having belatedly introduced Didier Drogba as a second-half substitute Scolari complained afterwards about his forwards' inflexibility. "I need them to understand they are not fixed in position," he said. "They need to come back and win the ball." Yet the stand-out feature of Chelsea's display was once again Deco's meagre contribution. After just two wins in their last five matches, someone has to give.
Manchester United
The scorers of just two goals in their last four league games and the winners of just one of their seven matches in the capital in the past twelve months.
Abou 'Diabolical' Diaby
He's not even average.
Arsenal
Evidence of "a better defensive balance" was the one consolation Arsene Wenger could take from an anaemic display at the Riverside. As Alex Song should be capable of filling in as a defensive midfielder and the under-rated Johan Djourou has the potential to be Kolo Toure's successor, Wenger ought to reconsider his priorities for the next transfer window and put a winger with a long history of good health at the top of his shopping list.
The wheels came off Arsenal's title bid last season when they travelled to Wigan in March without six wingers and a similar deficiency hurt them against Boro. There will not be many matches won with Abou Diaby and Denilson on the flanks and their lack of suitability for the position made Boro's plan of crowding out the centre of the pitch both simple and effective. The 16-year-old Jack Wilshere to start against Liverpool? Such should be Wenger's desperation, don't bet against it.
Mark Hughes
After five defeats from their last eight matches, who can blame City's Dubai owners if they are having doubts about their manager.
Bolton Wanderers
Have conceded eight goals at Villa Park in as many months.
West Brom
Adrift at the bottom of the table. The number of points they require just to match the points-tally of the side fourth from bottom is half as many as they have collected in their first seventeen matches.
The Manager Of The Month Award
Of the four winners so far this season - August's Gareth Southgate September's Phil Brown, October's Rafa Benitez and November's Gary Megson - three have then suffered defeat in their next match: Southgate's Boro at Pompey on Sept 13, Benitez's Liverpool at Tottenham on Nov 1 and Megson's Bolton at Villa this weekend.
Pete Gill
The kind of player only Agooner would hype.
wrote: