Liverpool heads into Christmas with a four-point lead, a game in hand and as the overwhelming title favorite in the Premier League on the back of a wild 6-3 win at Tottenham on Sunday.
As for Manchester United and its new manager Ruben Amorim, they stumble into the festive period in 13th place — as low as they’ve been at Christmas since the 1989-90 season — and with a familiar sinking feeling.
United lost 3-0 at home to Bournemouth for the second straight season, the latest statistic to show just how far this English giant has fallen and the job Amorim has to turn around its fortunes.
Worse for United, it seems like great rival Liverpool cannot be stopped.
Make that 21 games in all competitions without defeat after the Reds' biggest league win of the season, with Mohamed Salah netting two of the goals to move above Manchester City's Erling Haaland to the top of the scoring charts.
Liverpool has 39 points from 16 games and stretched its lead over second-place Chelsea, which could only draw 0-0 at Everton, to end a five-match winning streak in the league.
Salah now has 15 goals in the Premier League to break a tie with Haaland — and will leave London thinking he should have had more.
In an end-to-end contest resembling a basketball match, Liverpool scored more than five goals for the first time this season, with Luis Diaz (two), Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai also netting.
“You can see quality players with top discipline,” Tottenham captain Son Heung-min said. “There’s a reason they are top. If you give them a mistake, they punish you.”
Tottenham's injury-hit defense was open at the back but its attack caused Liverpool's problems throughout, with James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke all finding the net.
Spurs are another big team in the bottom half, having slipped to 11th place.
The optimism that might have been generated by a last-gasp 2-1 derby win at Manchester City last weekend has disappeared for United, which lost 4-3 at Tottenham in the English League Cup quarterfinals on Thursday before being handed a defeat to Bournemouth by the same score as 12 months ago.
“We were a bit nervous, I felt it in the stadium,” said Amorim, who has won four and lost four in all competitions since starting his United tenure with a draw at Ipswich on Nov. 24.
Dean Huijsen, Justin Kluivert — from the penalty spot — and Antoine Semenyo scored for Bournemouth, which climbed to fifth place in the standings and has now beaten Man City, Arsenal, Tottenham and United this season. Indeed, City has dropped to seventh place, an unthinkable unravelling for the winner of the last four Premier League titles.
United left out Marcus Rashford for the third straight match.
At one point during Amorim's post-match press conference, water appeared to drip slowly from a ceiling light fitting on reporters sat in the front row of the Old Trafford media room.
After all the money spent on players — $1.3 billion and counting — and the huge turnover of managers, Chelsea's American ownership could have seen the club atop the Premier League with a win at Everton — for a couple of hours at least.
However, a 0-0 draw ended Chelsea's eight-match winning run in all competitions and gave Liverpool the opportunity to push four points clear.
Nicolas Jackson headed against the post in the first half for Chelsea, while Everton had the clearer chances in the second half.
Everton also held Arsenal 0-0 last weekend.
“Sometimes you have to play a different game and we are learning to play a different game,” Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said. “They (Everton) are one of the best teams in Europe in terms of clean sheets.”
Vitor Pereira got off to a great start as Wolverhampton manager, with his new team beating Leicester 3-0 in his first match in charge.
Pereira took charge on Thursday as the replacement for Gary O'Neil and immediately ended Wolves' four-game losing run as Gonçalo Guedes, Rodrigo Gomes and Matheus Cunha scored first-half goals at King Power Stadium.
Wolves stayed in the relegation zone but moved two points behind Leicester, which is a place above the bottom three, and Pereira said: “I believe that we will stay in the Premier League and we will play at a better level than we saw today."
It handed Leicester manager Ruud van Nistelrooy a second straight big loss early in his reign, after a 4-0 defeat at Newcastle last weekend.
Another recently hired Premier League manager, Ivan Juric, began life at Southampton with a 0-0 draw at Fulham.
Juric wasn't in charge of the team because he doesn't have a work permit. He was sitting in the stands for the match instead.
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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
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