Everyone’s had a few festive Premier League games and we’ve (pretty much) got a wonderfully shock-filled FA Cup third round out of the way, so it seems an opportune time to see how the mood around the clubs has shifted since those far-off before times of November when it still didn’t really feel like a World Cup was actually about to really happen. But happen it did, and now so has a lot of other stuff.
So who’s cheerier and who’s feeling ever more gloomy? Here’s our best guess, with November’s rankings in brackets…
20. Southampton (16)
Hmm. Sacked Ralph Hasenhuttl, which was a shame but fair enough. Then appointed Nathan Jones, which was a lovely idea but probably one for a team not fighting for its very Premier League existence.
Three defeats in three games under Jones – the latest of which a catastrophically grim home defeat to Nottingham Forest – has put them in a tight spot. While there seven clubs separated by three points from 13th to 19th trying to get themselves out of the relegation scrap, Southampton first need to get themselves in it. There is already a significant chance that’s going to require a third manager of the season. Non-zero chance of a Wiganesque relegated-and-win-the-FA-Cup double, though. Something, innit?
19. West Ham (20)
Their plight is not currently quite so grim as Southampton’s, and a frenetic 2-2 draw at Leeds at least stemmed some of the bleeding after a five-game losing run but they still haven’t won a Premier League game since October and are outside the bottom three by a solitary goal. For a club that’s finished sixth and seventh in the last two seasons and then invested significantly in the summer it’s a hard fall, albeit one that their supporters were warning us about in comments on this feature months ago when we thought all was still relatively rosy for the Hammers.
Like many other clubs in the lower reaches of this list, the main cause for optimism (beyond a suddenly really rather wide open FA Cup) is the sheer number of teams that are just as bad as they are. It’s currently an eight-team scramble from which no team currently appears likely to straightforwardly extricate themselves from but that which, by definition, five will survive.
18. Chelsea (19)
Actually quite impressive to be the most shambolic of the Big Six this season given the efforts at Spurs and Liverpool, but Chelsea are currently winning handsomely. There were at least the odd green shoots in this week’s…
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