Is the title race 'over'.....?

We all thought it might be such a thrilling battle for the Premier League crown this year! 

Liverpool had finally broken City's long and rather tedious dominance of the top spot, and looked like they should have a good chance of defending the title in style. The young Chelsea squad seemed to have taken a massive step forward with their impressive triumph in the summer's Club World Cup tournament. City, of course, were not to be written off, despite a few teething troubles as Pep laboured to reconstruct their approach to the game. And Arsenal keep relentlessly getting harder and harder to beat each year. Perhaps even Manchester United, after their summer acquisition of a daunting new attacking trident of Cunha, Sesko, and Mbeumo, might be able to start challenging the top of the table again? And a few other teams had shown themselves capable enough last season to at least be able to nibble at the heels of these big boys, and perhaps nick a Champions League qualifying place off any of them who faltered from their highest standards - Bournemouth, Palace, Villa, Newcastle....

But it just hasn't panned out like that. Chelsea, unsettled by critical injuries (Colwill, perhaps, just as big a miss for them as Palmer), have been weirdly inconsistent, and have suffered a rancorous managerial departure in mid-season. Manchester United shackled themselves to the millstone of Amorim's perverse tactical rigidity for six months longer than they should have done, and are only just now starting to show what they should have been capable of all along. City, struggling with so many different issues of tactics and personnel, are once more very good - but not quite consistent enough, or robust enough in defence, to mount a powerful challenge. Liverpool miserably failed to integrate any of their expensive new signings, and are only slowly starting to find their feet again in mid-season. And the chasing pack have disappointed too: after promising starts, Bournemouth and Palace have slowly fallen apart, as their best players are progressively stripped from them; Newcastle continue to be plagued by injuries and inconsistency and weak away form; only Villa, recovering impressively from a dreadful start, had briefly threatened to break into the outer fringes of the title scrap - but they were probably punching above their weight somewhat during that extraordinarily successful run, and are likely to fall back quite a way, now that they've suddenly lost their entire central midfield - Tielemans, Kamara, and McGinn - to long-term injuries in January.

At the moment, Arsenal are looking set to win the title by default - not because they're incomparably brilliant (they are pretty damn good; but they have a lot of flaws too), but because none of their expected rivals have been able to step up to the challenge so far.

I - and most neutrals, I'm sure - would like to see a closer battle: one or more of the rivals pushing the presumptive Champions right up to the final weekend. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Arsenal under Arteta have become notorious for suffering a 'winter wobble', a significant, sometimes calamitous dip in form at some point around the turn of the year. And they've just had another one this year. But we hardly noticed. 

They lost each of their preferred starting defenders for a spell, and, on occasions, the back-up players in those positions too - so that, through December and January they were rarely able to field a settled back-line. For a team that depends so heavily on its defensive cohesion, this lack of continuity could have been disastrous; but it wasn't - they had a few struggles, but somehow they came through. 

It's been in attack where they've often looked to have more serious shortcomings lately. And even their fans are starting to fret about their low number of chances created, the extreme shortage of goals from open play. But they've repeatedly found a way to power through: games they looked like they could lose, they somehow managed to win after all; games that they were losing, they somehow saved a point from. During what might, to their fans, and probably to Mikel Arteta, have seemed like a fairly terrible run of games over the past two months, they lost to Villa at the beginning of December and to a rejuvenated Manchester United in that great game the other week, and were held to draws by Liverpool and Forest.

That was this year's 'winter wobble': they dropped 10 points.

All of their rivals dropped as many or more.

I feel City's rather pitiful second-half collapse against Spurs last weekend may prove to have been the decisive moment of the season. Pep's men were so comfortably on top in the first half, they really should have been ahead by a landslide by the interval. But they somehow got pegged back to a draw - allowing Arsenal to stretch their lead to 7 points.

Now, 7 points isn't that much of a gap, with just over a third of the season still to be played.

But Arsenal are so good defensively this year, it's difficult to imagine where they might drop points. Most of their tougher opponents for the second half of the season are already behind them. Only a visit to The Etihad in mid-April looks likely to be a major test of their confidence. And even if they are feeling under a bit of pressure by then, or start to feel it because of a good result for City in that game, their run-in to the end of the season is one of the softest we've ever seen: they have a sequence of fixtures in May that they probably ought to be able to win with their youth team.

And City, Chelsea, Liverpool, alas, are just not looking strong enough to be able to mount a sustained challenge. At this point, if I were going to bet on anyone else to win the title other than Arsenal,.... it would be Manchester United! They're 12 points behind, which is a very big ask. But I have a feeling they might just about be capable of making up that ground now; the others, I'm afraid, don't look like they are.

But yes, it is silly to talk of the season being 'over' when there are still 14 games to play for everyone (that's why I used the inverted commas). Arsenal might get hit by multiple injuries to key players again (they're rather more vulnerable in other areas of the pitch than they are in defence: Rice and Zubimendi are pretty much irreplaceable). Nerves might get the better of them, if someone manages to close the gap going in to the last few gameweeks. The physical and psychological toll of going deep in three or four different competitions might gradually overwhelm them.

But it is going to take something pretty damn drastic for them to lose that lead now. And I doubt if it's going to happen.

But we'll see.....