After matchday 22 Arsenal sit top of the Premier League on 50 points, having extended their lead despite taking only a single point from the most recent round. Manchester City and Aston Villa both slipped up \u2014 City against Manchester United and Villa against Everton \u2014 and now sit on 44 and 43 points respectively, each seven points behind Arsenal.<\/p>\n
That margin gives Arsenal some breathing room, but it is not a cushion their manager will want to rely on. City remain a consistent threat and Villa, despite the recent loss at home to Everton, have been in strong form overall.<\/p>\n
The next five Premier League fixtures for each club are: <\/p>\n
Arsenal (50 points)
\n– Arsenal vs. Man Utd (Jan. 25)
\n– Leeds Utd vs. Arsenal (Jan. 31)
\n– Arsenal vs. Sunderland (Feb. 7)
\n– Brentford vs. Arsenal (Feb. 12)
\n– Tottenham vs. Arsenal (Feb. 22)<\/p>\n
Man City (44 points)
\n– Man City vs. Wolves (Jan. 24)
\n– Tottenham vs. Man City (Feb. 1)
\n– Liverpool vs. Man City (Feb. 8)
\n– Man City vs. Fulham (Feb. 11)
\n– Man City vs. Newcastle (Feb. 21)<\/p>\n
Aston Villa (43 points)
\n– Newcastle vs. Aston Villa (Jan. 25)
\n– Aston Villa vs. Brentford (Feb. 1)
\n– Bournemouth vs. Aston Villa (Feb. 7)
\n– Aston Villa vs. Brighton (Feb. 11)
\n– Aston Villa vs. Leeds Utd (Feb. 21)<\/p>\n
On paper Villa have the most forgiving sequence. They still travel to St James\u2019 Park and host Brentford, led by the in-form Igor Thiago, but with eight wins from their last 11 matches those are fixtures they will expect to navigate. Arsenal face a trickier run. A resurgent Manchester United, fresh from a victory over Manchester City, visit the Emirates next and form can count for little in that game. The calendar also includes a North London derby against Tottenham Hotspur in February and a meeting with high-flying Sunderland, neither of which should be treated as straightforward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal lead on 50 points; Man City 44 and Aston Villa 43. Five-game runs set to define title race..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,711,1056,969],"tags":[1162],"class_list":["post-6060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-aston-villa","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}