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Top six dominate

There are two 16-point gaps in the Premier League table - from second to third position and from sixth to seventh. There have never been two such large gaps in a table since the change to three points for a win in 1981-2.

If Watford do not beat Arsenal tonight it will ensure that this will be the first top flight case of three seasons in a row with the same teams filling the top six places (in any order). Arsenal are sixth in the league, yet their projected points total would have been enough to finish first or second for much of the 1980s or 1990s.

Of those players in the remaining 14 clubs who have previously been owned by another English league club, nearly 40 per cent were at a top six club.

The Premier League is formally a corporation in which all 20 clubs are equal shareholders, but the realities of power were demonstrated last year when the top six strong armed the rest into altering one of the foundational principles of the league, namely the distribution of the money secured from international TV rights. The threat of a breakaway was there in the background.

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