Liverpool Would Have The Biggest Turnaround For A Champion In 29 Years

The race for the Premier League title got a lot closer this Sunday, as Liverpool fell to Chelsea and Manchester City topped Crystal Palace. With one fewer game played, City holds the goal differential tiebreak over Liverpool, and is currently a 4/5 favorite to win it all.

Should Pellegrini's squad stumble, however, Liverpool has a chance to pull off a remarkable underdog achievement. Liam Ferry of Ongoalsscored.com has put together a great graphic (a portion of which is above), showing how each Premier League champion has fared in the three seasons before their title.

Liverpool finished seventh in 2012-13 and eighth the year before. The concentration of talent and wealth at the top of the table has always made it difficult for teams to make the jump from "good" team to titleholder.* If Liverpool wins, they'd be the first champion since 1984-85 Everton to finish the previous season in seventh place or lower, and the first champion since 1991-92 Leeds United to finish 8th place or lower in one of the previous two years.

*Liverpool has won 18 titles overall, the second-most in league history behind Manchester United, so the idea that they're an "underdog" is easy to brush off. Their last win was in 1989-90; a useful comparison may be (shudder) the Dallas Cowboys, who have won the second-most Super Bowls in NFL history (5), but have been pretty mediocre (146-142) since 1995.

[ On Goals Scored]