By Will Sturgeon, 7 December 2001 12:00
NEWS This year's Premiership title race is the most open for years. Liverpool are clear at the top with dirty Leeds and Arsenal ominously poised should the Merseysiders slip up. And yet the question the media are concerning themselves with is 'what has happened to Manchester United?'.
Alex Ferguson's expensively assembled marketing machine/team seem to have forgotten to start playing this season and largely thanks to some comedy goalkeeping and suspect defending are currently residing in eighth place.
Eighth place is also a position they have made their own in silicon.com's latest Premiership web performance table with their site taking an average 2.60 seconds to load. Despite a bright start to the season, and a table-topping performance in August, the club's site seems to be mirroring the performance of its players, for now at least.
Sunderland are still having a good season - topping the pile with the site taking just 0.58 seconds to load, as recorded by web traffic monitoring firm Keynote.
Tottenham's rejuvenation on the park is mirrored in the world of the high-tech, turning around dismal early-season performances to rank second with 0.74 seconds.
The happy Hammers will be, well, happy with third place and Everton have upstaged their more glamorous neighbours to claim fourth spot - with Fulham and Ipswich doing their best impression of Stanley Park, separating as they do the red and blue half of Liverpool. The Reds are seventh with an average time of 2.57 seconds.
It will come as little consolation to Liverpool fans mourning the loss of Robbie Fowler that their site outperforms Leeds', which takes ninth place with an average time of 2.90 seconds.
Further on down the list, below Premiership make-weights such as Blackburn, Southampton, Bolton and Aston Villa are Arsenal, in sixteenth place, struggling by with a sluggish 4.52 seconds.
Further down still and Middlesbrough, Derby and Leicester are all pretty much where you'd expect to find them, scrapping it out trying not to come bottom, but their blushes are spared by Chelsea, who are rock bottom with a poor 6.46 seconds.
The table in full looks like this:
1. Sunderland: 0.58 seconds
2. Tottenham: 0.74
3. West Ham: 0.94
4. Everton: 1.46
5. Fulham: 2.13
6. Ipswich: 2.52
7. Liverpool: 2.57
8. Manchester United: 2.60
9. Leeds: 2.90
10. Newcastle: 2.94
11. Blackburn Rovers: 2.96
12. Southampton: 3.01
13. Bolton Wanderers: 3.03
14. Aston Villa: 3.37
15. Charlton: 3.85
16. Arsenal: 4.25
17. Middlesbrough: 4.33
18. Derby County: 6.13
19. Leicester City: 6.42
20. Chelsea: 6.46
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