Man City ninth team to top table in Premier League term

LONDON: The topsy-turvy nature of the Premier League season has led to nine teams topping the table – already a record for a single campaign.

Manchester City moved to the summit following their 5-0 thrashing of struggling West Brom on Tuesday night, meaning almost half of the teams in the league have sat in first place this term.

That is already the highest number of different leaders in Premier League history and comes on the back of the lowest from last season – where only City and champions Liverpool held top spot.

Pep Guardiola’s men knocked neighbours Manchester United out of first place after their win at The Hawthorns while Arsenal, Everton, Leicester, Liverpool, Southampton, Tottenham and Chelsea have also hit the front at different stages of the season.

Before this year the highest number of leaders in a campaign had been eight – coming in 1998/99, 2001/02, 2002/03 and 2007/08.

Ahead of the current season, there had only been nine different leaders across the previous six campaigns – with Hull and Huddersfield the unlikely names among them.

Southampton lost 3-1 to Arsenal on Tuesday but had sat atop the table in November, the first time they had done so in the Premier League.

Leicester, meanwhile, had been top of the tree in September – their first taste of leading the way since their shock title triumph in 2016. In 29 seasons, Manchester United have had a spell at the summit in all but four of them, two of which have come since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.