CREDIT: "WEST HAM UNITED VS MANCHESTER CITY" BY JOSHJDSS ON FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)
Like many of the crazy things that have happened this season of the Premier League, West Ham United have beaten all odds and sit only one point behind the top four teams in the league.

It’s that sad time of the year again. That time when my yearlong coverage of England’s top flight of football comes to an end with plenty of drama left to unfold. Each team in the league has at least seven remaining matches to play, giving them 21 points each left to gather. With so much football left to go, the clubs all have chances to drastically change their fortunes, and it’s near impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the games to come. But I’m still going to try.

There will be a new champion

Since the league’s formation in 1992, there have only been five clubs that have come out of a season as the number one team in England. At the end of this year though, we will see a sixth Premier League champion. Both Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur are still within touching distance of the title, and both would make a worthy champion off the back of their performances this year. If Leicester is able to maintain the form that has only seen them lose three times all season and see out their lead, it will be one of the greatest team turnarounds in sports history. If Spurs manage to overtake them, it will be a justification for the development of a long-term footballing project, as their young team has been steadily improving over the last several seasons.

West Ham United will be in Europe

Another club famous for its inconsistency, West Ham United, like Leicester, are making a mockery of what was expected from them this year. A new manager in Slavin Bilic seemed like a pairing that would take time to come to fruition, instead the Croatian has seemingly transformed the club. Consistently taking points off of challengers of a higher calibre, West Ham have only lost six matches this year, and currently sit just one point behind the top four. Even if they are unable to maintain their push for the Champion’s League spots, the Europa league beckons for a team that is starting to look like the real deal.

The North goes down

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that the winner between Sunderland and Newcastle United would stay up, and the loser would go down. Instead, the two Northern clubs played out a 1–1 draw, trapping both in the relegation places. With a lack of quality and consistency surrounding both clubs, one would be hard pressed to give either club a vote of confidence in their survival bids. If both clubs were to go down, it would be the first year without a club from the north of England in more than a decade. The Premier League would lose one of its most heated rivalries, and football in the north could be dealt a crippling blow, and if the clubs are to avoid the drop, something drastic will have to change, and soon.