It is now official, Sunderland have hit rock bottom.
Recent days have taken their toll.
Sunderland losing 2-0 at Bournemouth on Sunday, a match where they could easily have lost by anything up to double figures as the Cherries wasted a ridiculous number of clear chances. The South coast team moving above the opposition in the Premier League table due to that result.
That had followed Fulham’s narrow 1-0 victory on Saturday over Hull, the Craven Cottage side moving off rock bottom in the league.
The weekend’s results meaning that if Tottenham avoided defeat on Monday night, Sunderland would end up 20th of 20 Premier League clubs.
A 3-1 scoreline at home to Coventry City might suggest a comfortable Tottenham victory but it was anything but.
Spurs twice took the lead with excellent finishes that were totally at odds with their general performance, then froze like rabbits in the headlights with zero confidence to then go on and make it a two or three goal margin victory.
With such dismal form over such a long time, especially at home, Tottenham instead dropping off and inviting Coventry to attack. With a bit more quality and/or luck, Coventry would have got at least a point.
Instead Spurs stumbled to the eventual win and a very late third goal that slowly went through the Coventry keeper’s hands gave an unrealistic look to the final scoreline.
The stats backing up the idea that this was a far from convincing Tottenham victory, as Coventry had more touches of the ball in the opposition box (26 v 24), the same number of corners (4 each), a similar number of shots (16 Spurs v 12 Coventry), whilst the expected goals stats were only very marginally in Tottenham’s favour (0.87 v 0.82).
The Premier League table is now beginning to take some shape.
The seventh round of matches now completed and almost a fifth of the way through the league season.
At the very top end you have three teams clear of the rest.
Manchester City with a perfect seven wins and 21 points, whilst Arsenal aren’t looking great but scraping through game after game and have a record of six wins and one defeat for their 18 points. Then you have dark horses Brighton on 16 points and they are scoring for fun with 23 goals from seven EPL matches, the two teams above them having scored 19 (Man City) and 11 (Arsenal).
These are the complete Premier League results from this seventh round of matches.
Saturday 17 October
Everton 0 Chelsea 2
Brentford 1 Liverpool 2
Fulham 1 Hull 0
Manchester City 3 Ipswich 2
Newcastle United 0 Aston Villa 1
Sunday 18 October
Bournemouth 2 Sunderland 0
Brighton 5 Palace 0
Leeds 1 Man U 1
Forest 0 Arsenal 1
Monday 19 October
Tottenham 3 Coventry 1
That leaves the Premier League table on Tuesday 20 October 2026
One of the stand out things for me is that only the top five and Ipswich have won more than two league matches so far, I think it is incredibly tight between so many teams. Pretty much any team can beat another, or draw.
You can’t help though but look towards the very bottom of the Premier League table and Sunderland propping it all up.