With just over a quarter of the season completed things have settled into a pattern at both ends of the Premier League.
The likes of Liverpool and Chelsea look well-placed to fight for the title, while there are at least half-a-dozen sides who appear set for a big fight to avoid relegation this term.
Sportslens takes a look at five major talking points from the latest round of games.
No Hazard, no problem
Eden Hazard missed Chelsea’s comfortable 4-0 victory at Burnley on Sunday with a back injury, but the Blues didn’t miss a beat in his absence.
Ross Barkley and Willian produced impressive performances to highlight that Chelsea are not a one-man team.
Chelsea will face far tougher tests this season than the Clarets were able to muster at Turf Moor, but the fact they safely navigated this fixture without Hazard bodes well for their hopes of mounting a serious title challenge this season.
Burnley look relegation fodder
Burnley continue to struggle against the ‘Big Six’ teams at home and have taken just two points from their past 13 games at Turf Moor against those sides, losing 11.
The Clarets have been ruthlessly dismantled by Manchester City and Chelsea over the last two weekends and they look like a team who are heading to the Championship.
Manager Sean Dyche received plenty of plaudits for surprisingly leading Burnley to 7th place last season, but it now appears his luck has finally run out.
Happy Salah sparkles for Liverpool
Mohamed Salah was criticised during the week for not celebrating after either of his goals against Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League.
Whatever had supposedly made him miserable appeared to have been forgotten as he fired Liverpool ahead against Cardiff City and celebrated with his trademark smile.
Five goals in his last four games for club and country suggests all is well with Salah and people are looking for problems where there are none.
Rashford fails to take big opportunity
Romelu Lukaku’s axing for Manchester United was no big surprise and it handed Marcus Rashford the perfect chance to shine in his favoured central role.
However, Rashford did little to stake his claim ahead of the Belgian as he was anonymous for the majority of the game.
The youngster missed a one-on-one in the second-half after being sent through by Juan Mata and he was understandably hauled off in the 64th minute after failing to take a golden opportunity to prove he could be United’s main man.
Twitter not doing enough to deal with pondlife
Were you one of the idiots who cracked a joke on Twitter about the helicopter crash involving Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha?
If you answered ‘yes’ to that question then go away and take a few minutes to ask yourself exactly what sort human being you are.
The fact that this sort of thing appears to go largely unchallenged by platforms like Twitter is one of life’s great mysteries. They need to do far more to remove these morons from their site.
Add Sportslens to your Google News Feed!
