The penultimate gameweek of the first half of the season brought remarkably little drama. The top three all won their games against difficult opponents to widen the gap between them and the chasing pack. And the bottom four teams all lost except Burnley, who managed a draw. It seems the first half of the season will conclude by giving us clarity on which teams are in a title race and which teams are in a relegation scrap. Every other team is in the mid-table conversation, given how congested things are there. But before we get ahead of ourselves, here are the winners and losers from gameweek 18.

If there is a manager who doesn't care how the wins come as long as they come, it's Marco Silva. Fulham are missing one key player in attack, defence, and midfielder to the ongoing AFCON, but they keep marching on thanks to a lone Raul Jimenez goal, resulting in a 1-0 win against West Ham. For a team that seemed like they were headed for a relegation scrap, the difference in tenor between their last two fixtures and their next fixture shows the scale of the job Silva has done.

When they played Nottingham Forest two weeks ago, it felt like a must-win six-pointer in the race to avoid the relegation places. Saturday's game against West Ham was a chance to put more daylight between Fulham and those relegation spots. But all of a sudden, next Thursday's game against Crystal Palace seems like a mid-table clash where victory could take them above a Crystal Palace side that could take them above one of the most in-form teams in the Premier League this season. They're also currently just 3 points behind Chelsea in 5th. Fulham could go from relegation spots to European spots within the space of half a season. I don't know of a more remarkable transformation at a Premier League club this season. Give Marco Silva a medal just for that.

It seems like ages ago now that Chelsea held league leaders Arsenal to a 1-1 draw with ten men and seemed poised for a title challenge. Those title challenge dreams have now faded away. After the 2-1 loss to Aston Villa, Chelsea now sit 5th, outside the Champions League places, 3 points behind Liverpool, who have had a chaotic season, and level on points with Manchester United. The loss to Villa was more painful because Villa have now taken Chelsea's spot in the three-way title race, and they sealed that by beating Chelsea at their own ground. Enzo Maresca's team is slowly losing the plot, and given how congested the middle of the table is, any further slip ups might land them in a mid-table scrap with the likes of Brentford and Sunderland, not exactly the kind of company Chelsea want to keep this season.

A Kevin Schade hat-trick and an emphatic 4-1 victory over Bournemouth was Brentford's holiday present to the faithful at the GTech Community Stadium on Saturday. That win took them up to 8th place on the table with 26 points. A somewhat useful measure of the smoothness of the transition Keith Andrews has overseen is that Brentford currently have 2 more points than they did at this point last season under Thomas Frank (24 points after 18 games). Not bad for a former set-piece coach who was expected to lead the Bees into a relegation battle this season.

It's quite interesting how wrong the masses can be in their assessments of managers in the Premier League. Keith was expected to suffer while Bournemouth under Iraola was widely expected to be in the European conversations this season. After Saturday's result, Bournemouth are close to a relegation scrap, and Brentford will be eyeing the possibility of a European spot if they maintain their momentum for the second half of the season.

Brighton have no win in their last five games and after Saturday's 2-1 loss to Arsenal sit 13th on the table with 24 points after 18 games. For a club like Brighton, these are not the expected standards; they should be in the mix for European spots at the very least. What's even more interesting is that I can't quite tell what's going wrong at Brighton right now. They haven't had to deal with a raft of major injuries, and they're not competing on multiple fronts, so the Premier League is their main focus. There just seems to be a lack of application this season in the Brighton team. Fabian Hurzeler probably knows better than I do what the problem is exactly, but they need to find a solution fast before things go even further downhill.

Perhaps threatening to fire a manager is good sometimes. Five games ago, reports circulated that Leeds were considering sacking head coach Daniel Farke. We will probably never know how true those speculations were, but what we know is that Leeds have not lost a game since that report went around. Daniel Farke switched formation to 3-5-2, Dominic Calvert-Lewin decided to come alive, and the rest, they say, is history. Such is the form Leeds are in right now that they went into the game against Sunderland expected by some to win that game, if only on account of the Black Cats playing with a severely depleted squad thanks to AFCON. They came away from the game with a respectable point thanks to Calvert-Lewin's 47th-minute equaliser after Simon Adingra had taken the hosts ahead in the 28th minute. However, it's all credit to Daniel Farke and his team that this game will feel more like 2 points dropped than a point gained to the people at Elland Road. A lot can change in a month.

Two losses in succession (and three losses in the last five games) means that Nottingham Forest is still very much in the relegation conversation. Granted, they are 5 points ahead of West Ham, who currently occupy the last relegation spot in 18th, but we know how quickly things can change in this league. Saturday's game against Manchester City offered Nottingham Forest the opportunity to nick some points off the league's in-form team and give themselves a confidence boost. It was no easy game, and City only ran out 2-1 winners thanks to a late Cherki goal. However, when you're in a relegation scrap, points matter more than anything else, and "giving Manchester City a run for their money" doesn't put points on the board.

The penultimate gameweek of the first half of the season brought remarkably little drama. The top three all won their games against difficult opponents to widen the gap between them and the chasing pack. And the bottom four teams all lost except Burnley, who managed a draw. It seems the first half of the season will conclude by giving us clarity on which teams are in a title race and which teams are in a relegation scrap. Every other team is in the mid-table conversation, given how congested things are there. But before we get ahead of ourselves, here are the winners and losers from gameweek 18.

If there is a manager who doesn't care how the wins come as long as they come, it's Marco Silva. Fulham are missing one key player in attack, defence, and midfielder to the ongoing AFCON, but they keep marching on thanks to a lone Raul Jimenez goal, resulting in a 1-0 win against West Ham. For a team that seemed like they were headed for a relegation scrap, the difference in tenor between their last two fixtures and their next fixture shows the scale of the job Silva has done.

When they played Nottingham Forest two weeks ago, it felt like a must-win six-pointer in the race to avoid the relegation places. Saturday's game against West Ham was a chance to put more daylight between Fulham and those relegation spots. But all of a sudden, next Thursday's game against Crystal Palace seems like a mid-table clash where victory could take them above a Crystal Palace side that could take them above one of the most in-form teams in the Premier League this season. They're also currently just 3 points behind Chelsea in 5th. Fulham could go from relegation spots to European spots within the space of half a season. I don't know of a more remarkable transformation at a Premier League club this season. Give Marco Silva a medal just for that.

It seems like ages ago now that Chelsea held league leaders Arsenal to a 1-1 draw with ten men and seemed poised for a title challenge. Those title challenge dreams have now faded away. After the 2-1 loss to Aston Villa, Chelsea now sit 5th, outside the Champions League places, 3 points behind Liverpool, who have had a chaotic season, and level on points with Manchester United. The loss to Villa was more painful because Villa have now taken Chelsea's spot in the three-way title race, and they sealed that by beating Chelsea at their own ground. Enzo Maresca's team is slowly losing the plot, and given how congested the middle of the table is, any further slip ups might land them in a mid-table scrap with the likes of Brentford and Sunderland, not exactly the kind of company Chelsea want to keep this season.

A Kevin Schade hat-trick and an emphatic 4-1 victory over Bournemouth was Brentford's holiday present to the faithful at the GTech Community Stadium on Saturday. That win took them up to 8th place on the table with 26 points. A somewhat useful measure of the smoothness of the transition Keith Andrews has overseen is that Brentford currently have 2 more points than they did at this point last season under Thomas Frank (24 points after 18 games). Not bad for a former set-piece coach who was expected to lead the Bees into a relegation battle this season.

It's quite interesting how wrong the masses can be in their assessments of managers in the Premier League. Keith was expected to suffer while Bournemouth under Iraola was widely expected to be in the European conversations this season. After Saturday's result, Bournemouth are close to a relegation scrap, and Brentford will be eyeing the possibility of a European spot if they maintain their momentum for the second half of the season.

Brighton have no win in their last five games and after Saturday's 2-1 loss to Arsenal sit 13th on the table with 24 points after 18 games. For a club like Brighton, these are not the expected standards; they should be in the mix for European spots at the very least. What's even more interesting is that I can't quite tell what's going wrong at Brighton right now. They haven't had to deal with a raft of major injuries, and they're not competing on multiple fronts, so the Premier League is their main focus. There just seems to be a lack of application this season in the Brighton team. Fabian Hurzeler probably knows better than I do what the problem is exactly, but they need to find a solution fast before things go even further downhill.

Perhaps threatening to fire a manager is good sometimes. Five games ago, reports circulated that Leeds were considering sacking head coach Daniel Farke. We will probably never know how true those speculations were, but what we know is that Leeds have not lost a game since that report went around. Daniel Farke switched formation to 3-5-2, Dominic Calvert-Lewin decided to come alive, and the rest, they say, is history. Such is the form Leeds are in right now that they went into the game against Sunderland expected by some to win that game, if only on account of the Black Cats playing with a severely depleted squad thanks to AFCON. They came away from the game with a respectable point thanks to Calvert-Lewin's 47th-minute equaliser after Simon Adingra had taken the hosts ahead in the 28th minute. However, it's all credit to Daniel Farke and his team that this game will feel more like 2 points dropped than a point gained to the people at Elland Road. A lot can change in a month.

Two losses in succession (and three losses in the last five games) means that Nottingham Forest is still very much in the relegation conversation. Granted, they are 5 points ahead of West Ham, who currently occupy the last relegation spot in 18th, but we know how quickly things can change in this league. Saturday's game against Manchester City offered Nottingham Forest the opportunity to nick some points off the league's in-form team and give themselves a confidence boost. It was no easy game, and City only ran out 2-1 winners thanks to a late Cherki goal. However, when you're in a relegation scrap, points matter more than anything else, and "giving Manchester City a run for their money" doesn't put points on the board.