Larry Ryan: The perfect imperfection of the race for fourth

This is football played by teams who can be very good and very bad, often in the same half.

FADED AMBITION: Antonio Conte, Manager of Tottenham Hotspur, looks on during the Premier League match between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur at Turf Moor (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Of course it’s nice to see people excited again by ‘the title race’. It’s wonderful to welcome back into our lives all those Liverpool fans you hadn’t heard from in a good while on WhatsApp.

And isn’t it lovely to see the world’s sportswriting cognoscenti entranced again by a six-nil battering? The kind of procession they might have decried, a few short weeks ago, as joyless, clinical and boring.