SOCCER/FA PREMIERSHIP: This season's Premiership promises to be the closest of close-run things. A race to the wire is widely predicted, although it may still not turn out quite that way.

So far no one team have dominated the leadership, and Manchester United, champions in seven of the past nine seasons, have yet to top the table. Seven different sides have, and at the moment three points are all that separate Leeds United, in first place, from Liverpool, lying fifth.

The quality of the contest is high and may be decided on whose best marksman shoots straightest most often. It might be Liverpool's Michael Owen or Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy, Arsenal's Thierry Henry, Newcastle's Alan Shearer or even Robbie Fowler, whose every goal for Leeds chills Anfield's soul.

The prospect of the leading five teams charging down the home straight towards a climax worthy of Ben Hur is a compelling one. Or maybe the second circuit of football's most demanding, if not quite its grandest, national course will produce further fallers to leave, at best, a three-horse race by the spring.

After Manchester United's languorous stroll to a championship hat-trick last season even this would make a change. Yet the finish is unlikely to be quite as close as it was on a Friday night in 1989 when a Michael Thomas goal in stoppage-time completed a 2-0 victory for Arsenal at Anfield to pip Liverpool for the title on the greater number of goals scored.

At least taking the contest to the final weekend in May would prolong the excitement, not to mention the agony. Arsenal, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester United will be at home, respectively, to Everton, Middlesbrough, Ipswich and Charlton while Newcastle visit Southampton.

The fact that the lead has already changed hands more than a dozen times is partly because of the spreadeagling of matches over a long weekend to suit television. To this extent the Premiership has become a game of sponsored leapfrog; fun in its way but slightly manufactured. And this weekend could be a case in point.

Newcastle will return to the top if they beat Leeds at St James' Park tomorrow but could then be overtaken by Manchester United winning at Southampton on Sunday afternoon. By early evening, however, United could have lost the leadership to Arsenal, whose game against Liverpool at Highbury starts two hours later.

For satellite and digital TV viewers, not to mention the television companies' coffers, the Premiership plot could hardly be better, although some may feel, even now, that the impact was more dramatic when the First Division kicked off at 3 p.m. on a Saturday and everybody waited on tenterhooks until James Alexander Gordon revealed the results on the radio at 5 p.m.

Either way, the month of January should go some way towards deciding just how intense the remainder of this season's championship is likely to be. On Sunday week Leeds and Arsenal meet at Elland Road and two days later Liverpool will be at Manchester United in a fixture brought forward from Easter Monday, April 1st, because one or both may be playing in the Champions League quarter-finals on April 2nd or 3rd. Then Leeds go to Chelsea on January 30th.

The strength of the squads at Highbury, Anfield and Elland Road combined with Newcastle's new consistency suggests that Manchester United, even if their present winning run continues, will find it hard to break clear of the pack and run the rest into the ground. They have already dropped too many points and will do well to establish any sort of lead before returning to their tasks in Europe.

By this stage last season Manchester United had dropped 16 points compared with Arsenal's 24 and Liverpool's 27. Now United, like Newcastle, have dropped 24, Arsenal 21, Leeds 22 and Liverpool 25. So it is going to take a collective and considerable loss of form to break up the bunch. Liverpool, for one, are working on it.

In leapfrogging terms the present pattern bears comparison to the 1981-82 season when six teams - West Ham, Ipswich, Swansea, Manchester United, Manchester City and Southampton - tossed the leadership around until March, whereupon Liverpool stepped in and led the rest of the way.

In nine Premiership seasons only Blackburn Rovers and Arsenal have successfully staved off Old Trafford's seasonal march to the championship and six wins in a row for United have echoed those mid-season resurgences that won Liverpool so many titles.

Yet the feeling remains that this time the race will go the distance, although it may become a triangular contest between Arsenal, Manchester United and Leeds.