EPL Friday: Tie At The Top; Frank Lampard & Steven Gerrard Make Decisions; NBCSN Breakaway

College football isn’t the only sport that completed a very significant Jan. 1. Across the Atlantic in England the Premier League put on quite the New Year’s Day show with 10 matches that combined to produce 33 goals — a new record for New Year’s Day. Bet you didn’t even know they tracked such things, did you?

Tottenham’s complete, total and utterly shocking 5-3 victory over first-place Chelsea ensured this goal record and also set up an equally crazy quirk at the top of the league. If you’re a Chelsea-hater, hopefully you recorded the match because Jose Mourinho teams rarely get smashed like that, if ever. Chelsea have shown some signs of slipping lately — fatigue will be the main culprit blamed — so watching what the club does in the January transfer window becomes even more fascinating.

After 20 matches, Chelsea and Manchester City are dead-even in every possible way.The Blues will remain atop the table until play resumes on Jan. 10 following this weekend’s FA Cup action due to the old tried-and-true alphabetical clause.

Peer up and down the top half and, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary for the first 10 weeks or so of the season — we will have a title race in 2015. More than that, the race for the final two Champions League berths will be equally crazy to watch since Southampton’s expected slide remains in hypothesis stage only. More than that, Harry Kane and Spurs continue to improve and are now a point better than North London rival Arsenal, which lost to Southampton. (Are Kane and Tottenham actually “good”? … call it a story to explore at a later date.)

Even Liverpool — left for dead a month ago — is only seven points adrift, granted blowing a 2-0 lead at Anfield to Leicester City doesn’t bode well going forward but Brendan Rodgers team is at least in the race.

Got all that? A couple other items of note took place Thursday as well, let’s explore them briefly.

* Good-bye Gerrard: If you follow soccer you’ve certainly seen the news that Steven Gerrard announced he’ll leave Liverpool when his contract expires in May. Odds are he ends up in Los Angeles with the Galaxy, since the MLS club has an open Designated Player slot following Landon Donovan’s retirement. Gerrard is 34. He can still contribute — in spurts — but doesn’t have the pace or motor any more to play in Rodgers’ favored high-pressing system.

The move and timing mostly make sense. Gerrard can keep playing for another few years in a way that Liverpool fans aren’t going to freak out if he’s running around Anfield in, say, a QPR or Stoke City jersey in 2016. The situation didn’t fully develop, either, where Rodgers and Gerrard or the manager was forced to play the “club legend” into his twilight years when his place in the starting XI was no longer merit-based. There isn’t a perfect way to script a final chapter — well, it would have been winning the EPL title last May — but this is acceptable for everyone.

Whenever stuff like this happens, people love to talk about legacy or what have you, often rushing to the hyperbole chamber. Gerrard wasn’t the greatest soccer player to ever put on a pair of cleats, but he was exciting, consistently made things happen in big moments and was an excellent contributor to Liverpool Football Club for some 26 years. On a personal level (sorry), the 2005 Champions League Final — now commonly referred to as the Miracle of Istanbul — was the game that completely hooked me to European soccer. There was no turning back following Liverpool’s once in a lifetime comeback from down 3-0 to AC Milan. It was simply amazing to watch unfold in the middle of the day on ESPN2, despite not having a rooting interest one way or the other.

A little less than a calendar year later in 2006, Gerrard scored this goal vs. West Ham to tie the FA Cup final in stoppage time.

Martin Tyler’s call was perfect and surmises the Gerrard career quite well, “When you need someone to stand up and be counted, to pull an absolute rabbit from a hat, Steve Gerrard has done just that. We know the name, son.”

The Premier League is in so many ways built on characters and personality more than anything else. Gerrard was one of the biggest — although his play more than anything else did the talking, so long as Phil Collins wasn’t involved. The EPL was more enjoyable, in part, thanks to Gerrard. He will be missed. (And get people like me to buy Galaxy tickets when they’re in town.)

* Frankie Goes to New York (Eventually?): This much is fact: Frank Lampard will stick with Manchester City until the end of the Premier League season and not join MLS expansion team NYCFC in time for the start of the new season in March. Lampard, it appears, despite previous signs to the contrary was never officially “on-loan” from NYCFC to City, causing confusion since the two clubs share an ownership group. MLS’ lack of transparency in terms of contracts is again in question, as more news trickles out.

A lot happened in the wake of the news that broke on New Year’s Eve. A NYCFC fan group was publicly upset, writing how it “publicly denounce(s)” the Lampard decision. Manchester City’s commitment to MLS was called into question, too. In short, from a PR standpoint — and the 11,000+ season ticket holders, this isn’t a good look. Lampard was trumpeted as a marquee player along with David Villa for the new team and he’ll join the team eventually, in the summer … maybe? (You could also argue whether trumpeting a 36-year-old player as the face of the franchise the best business decision in the first place.)

If we can separate the public relationships snafu in New York with, you know, the actual sporting aspect of it you’re much harder pressed to quibble with the decision. Lampard — to the surprise of almost everyone in the soccer world — has actually been a contributor and important player for City this season. He scored Thursday vs. Sunderland in what proved to be the decisive goal in City’s 3-2 win, pushing his total to five on the season. (Lampard also passed Thierry Henry on the EPL scoring charts, albeit in lots more games.)

With Yaya Toure bound for the African Cup of Nations in January, Lampard is needed by Manuel Pellegrini’s club. Again, few, if anyone saw this development coming.

What it boils down to is City’s ownership group weighed up the choices: making a run at the EPL title with Lampard contributing or getting off on the right foot in New York, and obviously picked the former. I’d say if you’re a soccer fan in New York, it’s probably a smarter idea to wait until NYCFC actually kicks a ball in a game that matters before rushing to judgment but this is definitely a strike against it and makes you leery going forward — saying nothing of NYCFC’s long-term stadium situation which remains in flux. The whole situation is bizarre, however you decide to look at it.

* NBCSN Channels Red Zone: The Jan. 1 fixtures presented the rarity in the EPL — eight games all kicking off at once. To accomodate viewers, at 10 a.m. NBCSN opted for “Breakaway” — jumping around to all the goals and incidents when they happened. Thanks to yeoman’s work from Rebecca Lowe, NBCSN pulled it off with aplomb and even stopped telling viewers what was about to happen later on in the broadcast.

Long term, I’m not sure I’d personally enjoy this every time the EPL is on. Thursday was, remember, a unique situation and filled with goal after goal. There are plenty of times when there are five games on at 10 and they’re all snoozers.

A weekly soccer Red Zone type thing coupled with Twitter isn’t going to help my ADHD. Thursday’s work by NBCSN reminded us it can be done quite well, but it’s probably best in small doses.

RELATED: EPL Best XI: Chelsea, As Expected, Dominates Team of the First Half

[Photos via Getty]