Hope Springs Eternal For Hammers & Spurs Today

This week marks one year since the launch of the EPL Talk site. It’s interesting to compare how the Premiership fares then versus today.In January of this year, I wrote about the state of the Premiership and placed the 20 teams into three buckets on my blog: masterful, mediocre and anti-soccer. Four were placed in masterful, and four fell into anti-soccer. The remaining 12 were mediocre. I’ll wait until January before I weigh up this season’s Premiership clubs, but I will say this:After yesterday’s matches on television, this appears to be one of the weakest Premiership seasons in recent memory.Manchester United is, without a doubt, the most entertaining side in the Premiership. But the teams that are the ones jostling for third or fourth spot (Bolton and Portsmouth) have been paid a very revealing lesson as both clubs were clobbered by a Man United who were leap years ahead of them in skill, tactics and pace.This time, more than ever before, Premiership sides outside of the four horse race have less of a chance of winning the league than ever before. If Arsenal wins today against West Ham, and the Gunners win their game in hand next month, and if Chelsea defeat Spurs, the gap will start to widen at the top.Let’s see if todays matches can have any impact on the Premiership race. Can a Tottenham who do so well in Europe with Dimitar Berbatov scoring goals translate that into a point against Chelsea? Can a Hammers side buoyed after their win against Blackburn play a tight, physical match against the Gunners and stop Arsenal from playing their match? If so, a point or even three points is on the table.But if Chelsea and Arsenal do win, the gulf between the top clubs and the rest of the league is going to be more apparent than before. Let’s hope that both matches will at least be two-sided.