The 1st game week of 2022 in the premier league was as enticing as it could be. In two consecutive days, Arsenal hosted City and Liverpool visited London to face Chelsea.
The top 4 of the Premier League faced each other, the premier league fans couldn’t ask for a better start to the year.
Both the matches went as expected for the top sides. It took a lot of work for City, who are thought to be the best side in the league by some distance, to defeat Arsenal.
Although City dominated the stats, a controversial penalty in the 57th and a very late winner from Rodri stole the win for the Citizens.
In the other game, Liverpool looked like they were thriving as they were 0-2 up, within the first half an hour, thanks to their lethal duo Salah and Mane.
Chelsea looked clueless and sloppy against Liverpool’s speed and counter-attack strategy. Liverpool looked sloppy too and Chelsea had some really good chances. But they were not as clinical as their counterpart.
It was until the 45th minute when a wonder-strike from Kovacic put Chelsea back. And minutes later, Pulisic put them back in level with a cool finish.
The 2nd half was full of attack, counter-attack and goalkeeping heroics as the game ended 2-2.
On paper, there was 1 winner, 1 loser and 2 teams at equal. Although, Chelsea might see themselves more as a gainer than Liverpool.
Still, there was only 1 winner in those couple of matches, that is Manchester City. The rest of them lost the games as it seems.
Before this game, City were already ahead by 8 points from 2nd placed Chelsea, 9 points (with 1 game more played) than 3rd placed Liverpool and 15 points (with 1 game more played) than 4th placed Arsenal.
So the other three had a chance to reduce that deficit and give them a real chance to be back in the league. But all of them sank and only City thrived.
It turned out that the goals of Kovacic and Pulisic did more good for City than for Chelsea.
As things stand, with these two games, City are currently 10 points ahead of Chelsea, 11 and 18 points ahead of Liverpool and Arsenal (with 1 game more in both cases).
Half of the season ended and City are already in a commanding lead. This game week was a huge leap forward in the title race for them. Hard to see anyone stopping them now.
