Your Utterly Meaningless and Mildly Interesting 2009 Table **UPDATE**

Hull City lost again today. That shouldn't be surprising. They are winless in their last seven and have but one win in their last 19 league matches. That's a kind of competitive competence than can only be described Derby County-esque.

The Tigers were beaten 1-0 by an Aston Villa side that, a couple of months ago, was putting the fear of Europa into Arsenal. Villa, for their part, were hardly impressive in putting Hull out of their misery (or maybe closer to it in the form of relegation). It was Villa's first win in 11 league tilts.

If you had the misfortune of watching it, you could be excused for thinking it was a bottom five match-up. In fact, we thought, on form, it might have been. So we set the Wayback Machine* to the turn of the New Year and made a second semester table. Since December 31, this is what the EPL (suck it, Barclays) would look like.

It is surprisingly unsurprising (save maybe for Villa).


1 Manchester United 42
2 Arsenal 33
3 Liverpool 32
4 Chelsea 32
5 Tottenham 25
6 Manchester City 25
7 Everton 24
8 West Ham 23
9 Fulham 21
10 Aston Villa 20
11 Stoke City 19
12 Blackburn 19
13 Bolton 16
14 Portsmouth 15
15 Wigan 14
16 Sunderland 13
17 Newcastle United 11
18 Middlesbrough 11
19 West Bromwich Albion 10
20 Hull City 7


Yeah, Villa at 10th faired much better than we anticipated. But their slide didn't start until into February (although the drop in play maybe has its seeds when Laursen went down before Boxing Day). Only two other teams are more than three spots plus-or-minus their current position on the table. Tottenham are five spots to the good, and Wigan four to the bad.

There is still some shaking out to do at the top of the table as Arsenal play both United and Chelsea and, while they won't make up the gap to first, they might put some distance back to third, or fall to it. But the Big 4 are still the Big 4 with an unbridgeable gap back to the pack.

The bottom four here are also the same bottom four in the full season table. Oddly enough, the only team that is certainly going down, West Brom, is the only team in the group that is playing with any fight. Next week might settle who joins them in the drop. Hull host Stoke and Newcastle welcome Middlesbrough. A single point might be enough for Hull. But failing a positive result for them, a winner of the Newcastle v. Boro match would move out of the drop zone on goal difference.

Anyway, just something to peruse of mild interest.

Thank you for your continued support of Unprofessional F... Oh wait. That's someone else's coda.

[* 'We' here means The Fan's Attic as he did all of the necessary math. Also, apologies for the table not being easier to read. Blogger is fascist in the way it refuses to recognize tabs or even multiple blank spaces.]

TFA UPDATE: Here's the rudimentary table I created.
EPL Second Semester Table

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