With another weekend of Premier League football soon drawing to a close, the status quo at the top of the table remains much the same.
Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea are setting a relentless pace, and are seemingly able to grind out results week after week.
Aside from West Ham managing to beat both of the latter two teams 3-2, surprising results in themselves and which have helped the Hammers to hang onto the coat-tails of the trio, three points have generally been the rule rather than the exception.
Indeed, the three teams have only lost five Premier League games between them in the 2021/22 campaign.
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It’s an astonishing show of consistency, and one has to admire how the likes of Pep Guardiola, Thomas Tuchel and Jurgen Klopp appear to get the best out of their squads week in and week out.
Even when injuries and suspensions are taken into account, it’s a sign of how far ahead of the competition the trio are that they manage to cope with the minimum of fuss.
The ‘two players for every position’ rule that it’s believed most managers would love to have throughout their squads, appears to be a reality in West London, on Merseyside and in the blue half of Manchester.
It’s no wonder then that Stan Collymore has noted that there’s a mini league going on within the top three.
Pep Guardiola has his City side on another one of this epic winning runs that have become his speciality, whilst Thomas Tuchel can point to having only conceded 11 goals as the basis for a tilt at the title.
Collymore, perhaps surprisingly then, has tipped his old side, Liverpool, to get the job done and pip both to top spot.