If the average is maintained it will be the highest-scoring season in 20-team Premier League history, but as usual there is far from a single, simple explanation
Manchester City have kept two clean sheets all season. Liverpool have kept three. Both sides may have come out of last weekend lamenting defeats that have allowed Chelsea to open a small gap at the top of the table but it could be argued that with defences like they have it is remarkable they are as high up as they are. But this, perhaps, is the modern way: defending in the old-fashioned sense has become unfashionable.
“There is no modern generation,” José Mourinho growled in the summer of 2015 after winning the Premier League with Chelsea. He was responding to criticism of his supposedly “boring” style of play and with a certain level of wilful misunderstanding dismissed those who supposedly rejected the counterattack as “stupid”.
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