Premier League title race run-in: Will Liverpool, Manchester City or Arsenal come out on top?

BBC
 
Premier League title race run-in: Will Liverpool, Manchester City or Arsenal come out on top?

It is set to be the tightest Premier League title race in years.

For the first time since 2015-16, when the third-placed Gunners were two points behind leaders Leicester after 26 games, the top three are separated by just two points.

In fact, that gap at the top has only been as tight at this stage of a Premier League season on seven other occasions - and only four times this century.

Current table

What are the remaining fixtures?

Guardiola's team arguably have the most difficult run of fixtures in the coming weeks. After travelling to Bournemouth on Saturday, City welcome bitter rivals Manchester United to Etihad Stadium before a highly anticipated trip to Anfield in their next league game.

Arsenal trail City by a point but are currently the league's form team, having begun a calendar year with five successive wins for the first time in their history.

They visit Manchester City on the final day of March - just over two weeks after welcoming Chelsea to Emirates Stadium.

As for Liverpool, the loss in north London on 4 February remains their only league defeat in their past 18 games. Jurgen Klopp's team host City on 10 March before travelling to Goodison Park for the Merseyside derby a week later.

What do the prediction models suggest?

Opta's 'supercomputer' prediction model estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and their own Opta team rankings - based on historical and recent team performances. These are simulated thousands of times to create the probabilities.

The predictions by data experts Nielsen's Gracenote are also based on match simulations run thousands of times, using their Euro Club Index which ranks teams from across the continent. While these predictions have Liverpool and City finishing on the same number of points at the end of the season, Jurgen Klopp's side are slightly favoured due to the fixture schedule.

Whatever happens, there are certain to be plenty of twists and turns between now and the final day of the campaign on 19 May.