Premier League: Man City revival should spook Chelsea

Sergio Aguero has fired 16 goals in 17 league starts in 2014/15

Though they are seven points behind, Michael Lintorn is adamant that Man City's title race isn't run...

At first glance, Chelsea were the big winners of Premier League matchday 25, undermining Man City's impressive 4-1 victory at Stoke by breaking Everton down late on for a 1-0 triumph which maintains their seven-point lead with 13 games to play.

The Premier League winner betting reflects the view that little has changed, with the leaders 1.162/13 to see their advantage through and the champions 8.88/1 to complete a comeback comparable to those that they achieved in 2011/12 (to overhaul Man United) and 2013/14 (at Liverpool's expense).

However, there is a legitimate case for arguing that the momentum is back with Man City now despite Willian's deflected 89th-minute strike.

Statements don't come much louder than prevailing 4-1 at a ground where you had never won a Premier League match in six prior attempts, as Manuel Pellegrini's men did at the Britannia Stadium.

It also served as an emphatic response to the accusation that they are half the team without Yaya Toure, though they will soon have the midfielder - who has won each of the past nine fixtures that he started for the Citizens - back, energised by a maiden African Cup of Nations success.

When Man City escape an awful run, they repair the damage with remarkable haste. A sequence of one win in six earlier this season was followed by nine in a row once they stopped that rot, and there were two similar bust-then-boom sequences on the journey to the 2013/14 title.

Sergio Aguero has a comparable tendency whereby once he starts scoring, only injury can stop him, as his burst of 16 goals in 14 outings before hobbling off against Everton in early December showed. It took him over two months to get back to net-rippling, but he is there now after his brace at Stoke.

Never forget that Man City have pulled level from eight points behind Chelsea once already this term, and it took just an eight-game stretch to overhaul that heftier gap.

This is where it gets interesting, because Jose Mourinho's side are playing nowhere near as well now as they were before their first fall, which comprised of draws at Sunderland and Southampton and losses at Newcastle and Tottenham.

The Blues have achieved a convincing win in only one of their last nine clashes with Premier League clubs: the 5-0 destruction of an out-of-form Swansea.

The aforementioned Southampton and Spurs wobbles fell in that period, they were outplayed by Liverpool in their Capital One Cup semi-final, sneaking through in extra time, were held at home by mid-slump Man City and were narrow victors against Newcastle, Aston Villa and Everton.

A slide was far less telegraphed in the first third of the campaign when the sole points that they spilled in their first dozen outings were away draws at Man City and Man United and seven of their ten wins came by margins of two goals or greater.