A few times when looking back at past PL champions the team that has won the title often hasn't had the best of results against the other "big four" teams, but just kept on racking up the points against the lesser clubs while their rivals dropped silly points.
It doesn't matter where you get the points from, as long as you get lots of them!
Is that actually true? I swear I've seen pundits say the very opposite - i.e. it is usually the teams who win matches against their closest rivals who end up winning the title.
sure united won it in one of the ronaldo years with very poor results against the top 4 sides. probably 2009 when liverpool did the double over them
I was definitely wrong to say often but there are instances where teams have done well against the other top teams but finished lower than those results would suggest they should.
Last season Arsenal and Man Utd had the best "top four only" records (both got 10 points) yet Arsenal only finished fourth in the league.
The year we came fourth we took 3 more points from the top four sides than Arsenal, but they finished 5 points ahead of us in the table.
08/09 was definitely the big one as Noddy said, Liverpool took 14 points against the top four compared to Man Utd taking 5 points, but Man Utd won the league.
Having a quick look at the old league tables it looks like the team who does the best in the top four mini league usually ends up as Champions, but there seems to be more variability in the teams fighting it out for the remaining CL spots, where good form against the lesser teams can make all the difference.