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Tom Carnduff's Notebook: Liverpool's title hopes, Brentford buzzing, Saints struggling
We've just entered December and the Premier League is in unfamiliar territory.
Sitting on its throne as the world's elite domestic division, so often has it looked down on the uncompetitive nature of its European counterparts.
And yet here we are, around 13 games in across the board, and the lead at the top of England's top flight is the biggest of the major five leagues.
Liverpool's nine-point advantage is a commanding one (we'll look at that in full shortly) with Arsenal's recent poor run potentially very costly and Manchester City showing no signs of turning things around.
Such is the Reds' position, one or two results won't change a great deal. We're already at a three-game swing, which could grow further.
There's midweek Premier League action which sees this column return in a shorter format. It's also a sole focus on that division, with four talking points highlighted.
Game over already?
We're only a third of the way through the season and yet I'm already considering the Premier League title race done.
Liverpool are nine points clear at the top following Sunday's success over Manchester City and they've been cut into 4/7 across the board to win the league - a decent price to include in any accumulators for the rest of the campaign.
We have to keep in mind that (CLICHÉ TIME) there's still a long way to go but Arne Slot's side look absolutely superb.
They're winning games and winning them in good fashion. There's a sensible nature about this side, one that knows when it's time to attack and when it's time to hold back.
The Reds are in territory we're certainly not used to seeing so early in a campaign.
Arsenal were a point ahead at this stage last season, City the same in 22/23, with Chelsea holding that advantage the campaign prior.
In fact, it was in 19/20 when Liverpool last won the title when a team most recently held an advantage similar to this - they had 37 points to Leicester's (LOL) 29.
They may have trips to the other top sides to come in the second half of the season but they've already been to The Emirates and the way they've navigated a tough 10-game run gives plenty of confidence that they can gain the required points from these trips.
They dismantled the current champions with ease last time out. Although should we be surprised? This is a team going at a 100-points rate.
Plenty of football to be played but I was surprised their title odds weren't shorter.
Can Bees buzz into top-half?
Brentford's campaign has been mixed. At home they are excellent and away they struggle.
The fixture list could explain that though. The contests in front of their own supporters have all come against teams 13th or lower while five of their six away have been against those in the top half.
It leaves Thomas Frank's side sitting eighth in the Premier League table. They have the potential to stay there despite some underperformers sitting below them.
Defensively there is room for improvement but the attack hasn't suffered at all following Ivan Toney's departure in the summer - they've been the seventh-most creative team in the division according to expected goals (xG) data.
Bookmakers go 5/2 across the board that they retain their top-half spot at the end of the season. They have a tricky run of fixtures coming up but it may represent value if they can navigate that somewhat successfully.
Are Southampton improving?
Southampton looked good in their 1-1 draw with Brighton on Friday night - controversially denied victory by an 'interesting' offside call.
That followed a 3-2 defeat to Liverpool the week before. On the surface, that's two solid performances which should have delivered more points.
When we ask the question of whether or not they're improving, we should probably factor in that it can't exactly get any worse. They have five points after 13 games - they're currently on pace for 15 points at the end.
So they're battling with avoiding the tag of being one of the worst Premier League teams we've ever seen.
And not to sound like Yer Da here but they play themselves into so many problems. It can be viewed as a positive to stick to your preferred way but it's a huge weakness when you fail to adjust to quite glaring issues.
Brighton's own style gives them space to operate in and they may well have a positive outcome when they host Spurs in a few weeks but the fixture list doesn't exactly suggest they're going to get many games like that before the new year.
Saints are conceding chances at a staggering rate and that isn't exclusively to the better teams either. An average expected goals against (xGA) of 2.14 per game is the worst in the top flight and an alarmingly high number.
Goalkeeping issues haven't helped but this is a style-based problem. I really don't mind the look of the 11/10 on them to finish bottom still available with a couple of bookmakers.
Newcastle's striker 'crisis'
As an over 2.5 goals backer, you don't want to see a performance like Newcastle's in their 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Eddie Howe's side saw two shots all game, one of those on target (their goal coming via Palace defender Marc Guehi anyway) and it was a contest where I had to ask the tech team here if we'd had issues in our match centre before actually watching it back to see.
It didn't help that Alexander Isak was forced off through injury early on and that will become a major problem for them if it keeps him sidelined.
Callum Wilson has had injury issues of his own and incomings don't appear to be expected in January, based on Howe's post-match comments.
"That’s a difficult one. I don’t think so," he told his press conference.
"Fully fit Premier League strikers who can score goals will cost us an extortionate amount of money that we don’t have. We’ve got to back the players we do have."
Creativity is the main problem though. It's a shadow of what it was last season.
Their average of 2.03 xG per game was the fourth-best in the 23/24 Premier League. This season it's 1.40 - that puts them 12th in this metric.
So while they haven't matched that tally with actual goals, it's not particularly a striker problem when we consider the quality of chances.
With Liverpool up next - the league's best defence - it's likely to be another game where they fail to strike.
Odds correct at 1145 GMT (02/12/24)
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