What’s the opposite of a cliffhanger? As the Premier League packs up for its winter break, as those depleted muscle fibres begin to regain their tensile strength, as English World Cup glory is all-but guaranteed (this was the plan wasn’t it?) by winter sun global marketing trips, it is hard to avoid the sense of dramatic entropy.
The Premier League has always sold itself as blockbusting cinematic entertainment. As every screenwriter knows the key ingredient of any pulp drama is tension, obstacles, storylines that twang like an overtightened steel guitar string. Twenty-odd games in, the season has dished up something very different.
