More often than not, if Jose Mourinho wants a draw, he gets a draw. His Chelsea side, the best defensive team in the Premier League by statistics and common sense, packed it in and unsurprisingly split the points with Manchester City on Saturday. This stalemate was similar to Chelsea's 0-0 draw with Manchester United early last season (before we knew David Moyes's team wasn't any good). It felt like a point for the sake of the campaign.

So, of course City manager Manuel Pelligrini was salty afterward.

Rolland Courbis has achieved a lot, there is no doubt about that. When he took over Montpellier, he inherited a relegation bound team that was lacking confidence and quality. 

“When I arrived at Montpellier, 18 months after the title was won, the team was in the process of falling apart. It wasn’t solid defensively, it wasn’t effective offensively, and the confidence was shot,” he told Le Parisien in a recent interview.

"I can’t imagine playing for anyone else after being 12 years at Chelsea. I’ve got a lot of respect for a lot of other Premier League clubs, particularly the top ones, but I'm not sure I could have done that." – Frank Lampard, May 2013.

How things have changed. Fast forward a little over 18 months and Chelsea’s record goal scorer is readying himself for a return to Stamford Bridge, not only with another Premier League club, but a “top” Premier League club who happen to be the West Londoners’ main title rivals.

With an horrifically busy schedule of three hours training a day, and just six shopping days to go until Christmas, professional footballers’ personal assistants are, as we speak, desperately loading up Maybachs with designer velour tracksuits, Jeroboams of Cristal and any other tat expensive enough to justify the effort. So without further ado, welcome to the Game Day 17 Premier League preview.

Will Liverpool Waste Yet More Money On A Goalkeeper This Winter?

“We play with 11 men, other teams play with 10 men and a goalkeeper.” – Brendan Rodgers.

Another weekend of heroics, excuses, individual magnificence and collective mediocrity. It’s the Game Day 16 Premier League Review.

You Can Do Better Than This, Brendan

In this week's Premier League review, we look at what's eating Diego Costa (and, more importantly, what other clubs should do about it), why Brendan Rodgers is feeling “absolutely incredible," how to interpret claims of a resurgent Manchester United and more.

We’re about a year and a half removed from Neymar’s dazzling performance at the 2013 Confederations Cup, which saw the then-21-year-old score four goals in four matches to secure the Selecao their 4th pre-World Cup tournament title. Since then, the new number 10 for Brazil moved to Barcelona on a $74 million transfer fee and led the 2014 host country to the semifinals of the World Cup before a back injury ended his (and his country’s) run.

The18 considered titling this article “The Master vs. The Apprentice,” but, knowing what an avid reader of ours he is, we feared Jose Mourinho would spectacularly lose his sh*t at even the mildest suggestion of deference towards Louis van Gaal. Neither man, however, could quibble at being labelled a Super Ego: how else are we to describe two managers who refer to themselves without the slightest hint of irony as “The Special One” and “The Best Coach in the World?”

Yesterday, we wrote about our predictions for the coming weekend of match play in the Premier League. Today, we drill down into the particular dramas to look out for in the coming days.

1. Chelsea To Keep A Clean Sheet (For The Sake Of Jose’s Mental Health)