One contender stumbled while another one suffered a potentially devastating blow despite securing three points. But, the biggest story from this past week in the Premier League was the fall of mighty Chelsea, which suffered its first league loss of the season. The Blues stumbled their way through a sloppy performance at Newcastle before ultimately conceding a 2-1 loss. Because of that defeat, they stood pat in the standings table with 36 points. Meanwhile, Manchester City has closed the game as they are now up to 33 points. Right now, it looks like a race between those two teams as West Ham is far off in third place with 27 points followed by Southampton with 26.
For Chelsea, while manager Jose Mourinho might have been quick to dismiss the defeat as nothing more than bad luck, there is definitely more to it. Here’s more about that and the other things we learned from this week’s EPL action.
Blues Can Be Beaten
Although it’s hard to believe, Chelsea is not in fact invincible. They lost. Mourinho was quick to blame everyone from the officials to the ball boys and then bad luck as reasons his team fell short against Newcastle, but there’s nothing wrong with losing once every 15 games.
The chief reason why they faltered was that their explosive pace and relentless attacking style was limited at times by the Magpies and when Papiss Cisse scored the second of his two goals, it was enough for them to sit back and protect the lead until time was up. Looking at the bigger picture, Mourinho has never won at St. James Park, so it’s not that shocking that his team slipped up there again. And while we have become accustomed to their dominance, the Blues showed lapses in this loss. It happens. Nobody expected them to go undefeated this season.
Chelsea is still the class of the Premier League but this week’s loss cut in to their lead atop the table. It’s clear they are certainly vulnerable regardless of how good they have been to this point.
It’s A Two-Horse Race
Manchester City should be the team with the best chance to beat out Chelsea for the Premier League crown but that’s only if Sergio Aguero is healthy. Right now, he’s not. City is just three points back after beating Everton 1-0 but the far bigger concern is how long Aguero will be out after he injured his knee and was forced to leave the pitch in tears. Aguero wasn’t available for the Champions League game against Roma and the extent of his injury is not known at this time. While they are clearly the most dangerous team in regards to challenging Chelsea, that is only true if their star striker is healthy. If he’s out for any extended period of time, that would be a major blow to their title hopes both at home in the EPL and in Europe.
Arsenal Is In Trouble
For as bad as a potential injury would be for Aguero and City the Gunners have more grave concerns after a 3-2 loss to Stoke City over the weekend. Arsenal is sitting in the sixth spot in the Premier League table but they just gave up three points that many thought they should have had and manager Arsene Wenger was booed off the pitch. Mark Hughes said he knew his team had the game won when he saw Wenger’s lineup. While that might be posturing, the inadequacy of Arsenal’s defending was proof that they were vulnerable before the game even began.
Stoke dominated the play for the first 45 minutes and held on for the win. While that might not have change our perception of them, it was a lesson to anybody that believed Arsenal was good enough to challenge for a Premier League title. You can forget about that as it’s clearly not the case.
