Arne Slot took to the Premier League like a duck to water. The Dutchman arrived on Merseyside, took over a Liverpool team who’d finished nine points off the pace the year before, and won the title at a canter. Then the Reds went out this summer and splashed some serious cash — £450 million, to be exact, though they had some money coming in from player sales, too. They bought shiny new forwards to replace the ultimately failed signing of Darwin Núñez.

When Hugo Ekitike hit the ground running and Liverpool started off perfect, with seven wins from seven in all competitions, it was only natural for a certain air of inevitability to creep into how they were discussed. They’d won the league with Darwin. Now they had a lethal young striker scoring freely, and they were bringing in Alexander fookin’ Isak at the transfer deadline?

The math was simple: champion team + better strikers = more championships.

But Chelsea struck another blow at that equation this weekend with Estêvão’s stoppage-time strike at Stamford Bridge. It was proper Barclays, that one, befitting of the two-decade-long feud between the Reds and the Blues, and it was Liverpool’s third defeat in eight days. Suddenly, nothing is preordained, and a whole lot of people are questioning the gospel.

Have Liverpool truly improved at full back with the signings of Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez? Will another mega-signing, Florian Wirtz, take the kind of time to settle that his manager did not, and is he disrupting Liverpool’s shape and making them easier to play through in the meantime? (He started the match at the Bridge on the bench.) Can we truly expect Mo Salah to maintain the level he did last term as he moves through his 33rd year? What about Virgil Van Dijk at 34 — and is his partner at center back, Ibrahima Konaté, getting exposed?

Injuries have been part of the story, though Chelsea are ravaged by injury as well and managed to find a way past Liverpool on Saturday. And besides, the injuries that the champions are now forced to deal with raise some uncomfortable questions about last season: How much did the Reds benefit from their strong fitness record at a time when Arsenal and Manchester City were decimated?

City are an interesting case study in this context. The air of inevitability that Pep Guardiola’s side enjoyed for years evaporated over the course of a few months last season, though they were certainly at the end of a cycle: Kevin De Bruyne, İlkay Gündoğan and others were winding down as top players, at least in games played at a Premier League pace. (De Bruyne could be reborn down in Italy this season, which would be a lot of fun.) Liverpool’s squad is much younger, for the most part, but a lot of the predictions around this current season were predicated on the idea that Salah and Van Dijk would maintain exactly the same level this year as they did last.

There’s also the uncommon situation that Slot’s second year in the job could have much more upheaval and require more deft management than did the first, particularly as far as getting all the pieces to fit together. Last year, his team was essentially plug-and-play, though he did uncover Ryan Gravenberch as the solution in deep midfield. Now there’s been a revolution at fullback and in the forward line, and Slot faces a challenge more common to a first-year manager. He’s got to get his bearings.

As for Liverpool’s opponents this past weekend, Chelsea just notched their third marquee victory of calendar year 2025. But this is really their first major statement in my book. Their win over Liverpool in the spring had the caveat that the Reds had already won the title at the aforementioned canter. They were on the beach. Chelsea’s win over PSG at the Club World Cup was impressive, but I’d maintain it existed in a sort of twilight zone, detached from the normal business of top-level European football. And they didn’t have to beat any top teams to get to that final.

This was something else, even if they happened to catch Liverpool at a good time. The Reds were doubting themselves in a number of departments, but they still looked dangerous and Chelsea were able to cope even with all their own injuries at the back. (And, to be fair, throughout the team.) This is the kind of challenge I laid down for Enzo Maresca a few weeks back, when Chelseaworld was crowing, “Champions of the World” and boasting about the third-tier European trophy they’d won at the modest cost of £1.5 billion.

I felt solid in that call when they were soundly beaten by Bayern Munich, who look formidable this year, and when the West Londoners started taking Ls (and red cards) all over the place domestically. But if this is the start of a serious run of form, maybe Chelsea really will challenge for the top honors, including the Premier League. Personally, I think they’re more a Top Four outfit, but we should all have learned by now that we don’t know what’s around the corner.

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NEWCASTLE UNITED 2-0 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

There’s a rich tradition of renegade and ruthless Premier League owners, as Chelsea can attest. Absurdly wealthy and powerful men buy these clubs, put shocking sums of money in, and demand immediate results. If they don’t get them, or they just get a bad taste in their mouth, the manager is torn out in short order and a new one planted in his place.

Sometimes, it works quite well, even if (in my WOKE! view) this whole MO tarnishes the club. Other times, as we’re seeing with Nottingham Forest, it’s a bit of a disaster.

I have no privileged information regarding the fine details of how that football club is run or what happened for Nuno Espírito Santo to be shoved out the door. There were reports of a rift with the new-ish head of football, Edu, who was recruited from Arsenal last season. There was the on-pitch verbal mauling from Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis after an undesirable result last season which may have sent things sailing fatefully towards an iceberg.

But the fact remains that last season was a very successful one for Nottingham Forest Football Club. They very nearly qualified for the Champions League, and through some ugly chicanery within the labyrinthine halls of football governance, they’re playing in the Europa League this term. And yet Nuno has been fired and replaced with a manager who lost twice as many games last year.

Forest lost 11 Premier League matches in 2024/25; Ange Postecoglou lost 22 with Tottenham Hotspur. The latter did win the Europa League with the North London outfit, even if I think the quality of that competition is ripe for a reassessment now that Champions League teams aren’t dropping down for the knockout rounds. But even with all that, it was a pretty mystifying appointment.

Forest traded the solidity and results-first pragmatism of Nuno, pretty much a necessity for a club in their position, for the freewheeling eccentricities of Postecolgouball. The results have not been good. They’re yet to win under the new manager, and they’re one point above the drop zone. The pressure is mounting on the Aussie already.

This leaves the ruthless renegade at the top of the club, Marinakis, in a position where he might have to pay off two dismissed head coaches in the space of a few months. Things could still improve for Ange at Forest, and he could romp to a second-straight Europa League title with a second club. But does it look likely? And who is really to blame if this season comes unstuck at the City Ground?

It’s still gobsmacking to see an American make the difference in heavyweight bouts at the top of Serie A. When I interviewed Christian Pulisic for GQ last season, I set the scene for the story by looking at his telling intervention in the Derby della Madonnina a couple months prior. But he just about one-upped himself against Napoli on Sunday, assisting one and scoring another to sink the champions and throw A.C. Milan’s hat in the ring for the Scudetto.

It was Gareth-Bale-in-the-Copa-del-Rey-final stuff on the first one, as Pulisic went steaming down the touchline, rescuing the ball from going out of play while running at full tilt. The #11 in red and black took a healthy touch which seemed to put it in the defender’s path, but like Bale all those years ago against FC Barcelona, Pulisic had the pace to make up for it and power on by. He showed vision and patience once he arrived in the box, declining a cutback to Santiago Giménez at the penalty spot to pick out Alexis Saelemaekers for a back-post tap-in.

He nearly stacked another assist with a beautifully weighted through ball in behind after he took up a smart position near the center circle to engineer a counterattack 27 minutes in. But his next killer act came just a few minutes later, when he spotted an artery in the Napoli defense and sliced through it with a perfectly timed run, just in time for Youssouf Fofana to accept a low cross into the area and lay it off for him first time. Pulisic marched onto it and struck, 2-0, wheeling off into the corner with his arms outstretched as the San Siro erupted.

Like I said, there’s something about watching an American do it on this kind of stage. We’ve just never seen it before. The Curva Sud was bouncing even before this match kicked off, Milan’s famous cathedral alive with the belief that this titanic club was ready to compete for Italy’s top prize once again, and a kid from Pennsylvania is at the center of their plan to do that. He is the top scorer in Serie A. For all the hand-wringing about the state of the national team, the United States finally has a player who’s threatening to become world class.

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Test your pundit: Did they emerge from the 2-1 thriller at St. James’ Park spouting the narrative that Arsenal are all about set pieces? Nobody with respect for their own audience who watched that game can pretend the visitors’ threat was contained to the two late headed strikes with which they commandeered the three points, though Mikel Merino did once again prove that he is one of the purest midfield goal scorers in world football.

Gabriel, meanwhile, found true redemption after his weak showing on Newcastle’s own headed opener, rising up to power in the winner after 96 minutes and make the case that the Gunners have a bit of that champion strength in the telling moments. They’ll hope to score more goals this season and leave fewer matches teetering on the fine margins, but there will be times they need to go to hostile territory and snatch victory from the jaws of a draw. The 14 of those they posted last season doomed their title charge.

Part of that is more trickery and invention from their creative souls. Eberechi Eze was a massive addition this summer, but it was the captain of the old guard, Martin Ødegaard, who came on late in the match and started slicing Newcastle’s entrenched defense to pieces. If the Norwegian can regain his vision for the killer ball and the conviction to play it, perhaps Arsenal can get back to the kind of flowing open-play patterns that carved open many a team back in 2022/23 and during their blistering second half of 2023/24.

Also, how good is Jurrien Timber?

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Liverpool have been living on the edge all season, sitting on the fence and always falling over onto the right side. At Selhurst Park on Saturday, though, they tumbled into the neighbor’s yard and got bit by the dog.

It’s that perennial question that Stephen Warnock and I tried to answer on the podcast a couple of weeks back: If you’re constantly scoring late winners, is that the mark of champions or an unsustainable approach that could ultimately see you punished? Just how many goals can Liverpool score at 83 minutes or later over the next eight months?

Maybe it just comes down to the fact that Crystal Palace are a very good side. Readers of our Friday match map will know I saw this as a major challenge for the defending champions, and Palace duly obliged. They’ve lost some of their most brilliant creative forces over the last couple of transfer windows and just keep marching forward, not unlike their bitter enemies Brighton. Manager Oli Glasner is the real deal — to the point they might be at risk of losing him, too, if a big club comes calling next summer.

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From two title contestants, we move to a team of a different description.

At Chelsea Football Club, they’ve been dining out on their new “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD” title, but I’ve been steadfast that they have yet to demonstrate they’re a top team. They had a miserable second half to last season, and there was little reason to believe they were suddenly ready to compete for the Premier League and Champions League when they’ve still got problems at goalkeeper, center back, and center forward.1

There was a measure of satisfaction for the neutral in watching them get dismantled at home by a club they now seem to see as their own personal academy. Brighton had a look at the Blues and the many ex-Seagulls in their ranks and thought, “Have some of this.” There was an undercurrent to this one, a nasty edge to the fight, but three late punches from the visitors put Chelsea on the mat.

After six games, each of these teams has eight points, but the Chels haven’t even faced a top opponent domestically. They were battered by Bayern Munich in Europe, and next week, Liverpool will really test them.

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It was just a few months ago, with the Championship playoff final looming, that longtime Sunderland commentator Nick Barnes wondered on The Football Weekend podcast whether it would ultimately benefit the club to win promotion to the Premier League. He said it was an active debate among the Mackems, and there was something to it: “Sunderland have a perilous connection to the Premier League,” as Barnes put it, as the swirling mega-money has at times sent them spinning out of the division and down the English league pyramid.

But for now, they look perfectly at home at the top: With their victory over Nottingham Forest this weekend, they now sit fifth. It was an advertisement for their steady approach under manager Regis Le Bris, while their opponents were an ad for something else.

The chaos and dysfunction at Forest has sent Nuno Espirito Santo packing and brought Ange Postecoglou in to replace him, but the Aussie has yet to win a match. They’re one point above the drop zone and two clear of West Ham, who’ve also sacked their manager, Graham Potter, to bring in…Nuno.

With the manager merry-go-round in full effect among the most at-risk stalwarts of the top division, the newly promoted teams are thriving and may — for the first time in years — keep their place in the Premier League.

It was a mere three weeks ago that I condemned Gabriel Martinelli to infamy: I said he was Arsenal’s problem in a nutshell. At the time, he was not doing enough. Goals and assists have been in short supply for the better part of a year and a half, but more importantly, the Brazilian was not even taking on his fullback. He also wasn’t running in behind with any kind of effectiveness — not stretching the opponent’s back line, and not getting into as many quality scoring positions with those once-trademark diagonal runs between the fullback and the centerback.

He wasn’t a threat. He was predictable — and emblematic of Arsenal in the worst of times in the Mikel Arteta era. And then came Sunday.

With 10 minutes to go in normal time, the fleet-footer came on for Jurrien Timber to provide a new kind of spark plug for Arsenal’s attack, which had been ramming up against the wall of Manchester City’s subterranean low block for most of the game. He darted around, putting defenders on the back foot, but it took 13 minutes for Martinelli to make the telling impact.

He locked eyes with Eberechi Eze — by then playing quarterback at the base of Arsenal’s midfield, the whole team desperately stretched — and scythed in behind City’s back five, splitting Nathan Ake and Joško Gvardiol. The latter trailed him as he latched onto Eze’s expert pitching wedge, controlled the falling ball deftly, ran onto it in stride, and looped a chip of his own over a Gianluigi Donnarumma stranded in no-man’s-land. The Emirates Stadium hushed and the seconds stretched elastically into minutes as the ball bounced off the turf and into the side netting. 1-1.

It was salvation for Arsenal, but perhaps just as important, it was redemption for Martinelli. Or was it comeuppance for all the rest of us, the haters baying from the gallery for so many months now? What I said three weeks ago was true, and yet — appropriate for this fixture — I now wonder if I should have #StayedHumble.

I didn’t advocate for selling Martinelli during this summer’s transfer window, but I did begin to write him off in my mind as anything more than an impact substitute. That is what he has done so well over the last week, coming on in the Champions League down in Bilbao to provide another telling contribution against Athletic Club before he knifed City at the death here.

Maybe that will be his role this season. Maybe it will be more. But something has come alive in his game again, an electricity that had been snuffed out. Nothing like a bit of competition for your place to get you crackling into life. He’s looking like that young kid who tore up Chelsea at Stamford Bridge again, full of frightening pace and running power and just a bit of killer instinct.

This is why we watch, after all. We think we know our stuff, but we never get the script in advance.

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One script I don’t need to see thanks to the plot’s sheer inevitability is the one where Manchester City’s approach to this match gets nowhere near the media firestorm that Arsenal’s more conservative match plans have garnered in recent years.1

Mikel Arteta has a well-earned reputation for pragmatism, solidity, control — one that was reinforced here with his midfield selection. A midfield of Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, and Mikel Merino is not the most creatively inspired, and the manager clearly planned to win the duels, physically dominate the big green patch, then bring on the creators later on to win it if that was what circumstances required. If Arsenal took an earlier lead through a set piece or a chance created through Noni Madueke’s devilry down the right, so be it.

But for all the meme-ified insinuations that Arteta has pioneered “haramball,” that he’s José Mourinho with dull press conferences, what City brought to the Emirates on Sunday was about 80 minutes of true anti-football. They were hoofing it, they were “direct,” and most of all, they sat deep. By the end, they had about 45 centerbacks and 14 defensive midfielders on.

Their game plan for the most part was to try to get onto Arsenal’s defensive line after two or three passes and get it to Erling Haaland. (This was wildly successful for their goal on nine minutes, indeed a devastating counterattack.) At times, they were playing the kind of two-man attacking game that I’d more closely associate with a Brentford or — back in the day — a Sam Allardyce side. They had the big man, Haaland, and the runner-dribbler, Jérémy Doku, and there wasn’t much else going on. I’d like to congratulate Pep Guardiola for taking on a new challenge managing Bolton Wanderers.

Ah, but I can already hear the excuses. City had three games in a week! They had to play their opening Champinos League fixture on Thursday, with two days less rest than Arsenal coming into this one! Just take a deep breath and ask yourself whether you’d make any of the same excuses for Arsenal, or indeed whether you have in the past. Fixture pile-ups? Injuries? Savvy game-management away from home that trades the naïveté of the late Arsène Wenger years for a steely pragmatism fit for a results business? None of these are luxuries granted to Arsenal and Mikel Arteta.

Some of that is down to the fact Arsenal haven’t yet won a major trophy, some of it is real over-conservatism from Arteta at times, and a lot of it, I suspect, is that trolling Arsenal fans is such a great business decision in today’s football media. No one can or would resist it. The discrepancy between how Arteta and Guadiola are assessed is likewise down to Pep’s formidable trophy cabinet (medal drawer?) compared with Arteta’s sole FA Cup, though that doesn’t actually say anything about style. Mourinho’s got plenty of medals, too, so I also suspect it’s down to reputation beyond silverware.

This is, technically, the same Pep Guardiola who coached the greatest stylish team of modern times, that famous Barcelona side, and he’ll probably always get more slack no matter how his current team plays. Personally, I found City to be a bit antiseptic and bloodless even when they were dominating English football with 89% possession every week, but it was basically impossible to make an argument about their entertainment value then.2

It’s easier now that they’ve been poor for a season, and yet it’s so unlikely this week will be spent talking about the failings in their approach or their ambition. In fact, it’s been all about Arsenal's failings in that department so far — and again, not without reason! Mikel Arteta could take a swig of the Brave Juice ahead of these encounters, particularly at home. But let the record show that, while the Arsenal manager picked two box-to-box midfielders and a deep-lying string-puller to start the match on Sunday, City went Full Mourinho — if not Full Allardyce. Pep does, after all, have a well-documented love for old-school English managers.

Perhaps more important than any of those complaints is that City did not show much on Sunday to indicate that Stephen Warnock and I got out over our skis in the pregame podcast when we suggested they would trail Arsenal and Liverpool in the table this season. They nearly got the better of Arsenal here, but they haven’t shown much this season to indicate they’re going to consistently dominate matches at the level required.

They aren’t defending at a particularly high level, the midfield is a long way from the De Bruyne-Gundogan glory days, and the wide attackers — even Doku — aren’t what they once were either. Maybe it’s no wonder they approached the game this way, and why even many Arsenal fans are disappointed with Arteta’s approach. This is a game the Gunners really should have won, because they look at least a half-step above the Citizens. There’s still time for the latter to rip into a new gear, I suppose, and they do have Erling Haaland.

It’s a results business, and for Liverpool, business is good. Their helter-skelter victories over the first two matchweeks were not the stuff of champions, particularly when multi-goal leads were squandered, but their 1-0 triumph over potential title rivals Arsenal at Anfield on Sunday was the right stuff. They had control of the game for just 25 minutes or so in the second half, but that was enough to snatch the result with a certified wondergoal from Dominik Szoboszlai.

The makeshift right back’s strike from 34 yards dipped viciously, arrowed in with real lethality, just a bit reminiscent of Declan Rice’s telling second free kick for Arsenal against Real Madrid in the Champions League last season. David Raya cheated towards the post that Szoboszlai ultimately hit, but as Lee Dixon put it on the NBC commentary, the Arsenal goalkeeper “could’ve moved last Tuesday and he still wouldn’t have got it.”

Szoboszlai made a telling contribution on the other side of the ball, too. He kept Gabriel Martinelli well in-check in that makeshift fullback role, though the Brazilian forward didn’t do too much to trouble him in the first place. Indeed, Martinelli didn’t try too much, and that’s far too often the case. It feels like a lifetime ago that Arsenal’s #11 was scoring key goals against Chelsea and the like, but now he rarely even takes on his fullback. When he does attack someone on the dribble, he rarely beats them. And when he gets into the box with a chance to shoot or find a teammate, he rarely does either one. His low crossing is particularly wasteful.

But it’s that first point, where he gives the defender so little to think about, that could be most damning for Martinelli. Nobody on either side had a vintage game, but at least Noni Madueke continually asked questions of Miloš Kerkez down the other flank. The Hungarian fullback answered most of them, even if Madueke got in behind him a couple of times, but the young Englishman tried things. When Eberechi Eze made his debut for Arsenal, coming on for Martinelli down the left, the difference was immediate. He was popping the ball by the Red shirts, twisting and turning. Nothing quite came off, but there was a spark there, a worry for the home side.

There was always a good argument for starting Martinelli, and it’s obvious why Mikel Arteta loves him: he runs the yards, he defends well, he supports the overall structure of a very structured Arsenal side. But he’s missing everything that Arsenal fans have been crying out for, particularly from their wide left forward: unpredictability, bravery with the ball at his feet, and execution in and around the opposition box. Arsenal were very secure at the back in the first half apart from some self-inflicted wounds playing out from deep, and they had good control in midfield. But they just didn’t have enough in the final third, an all-too-familiar story for a year now.

@nbcsportsWhat else is there to say? #soccer #premierleague #liverpool #szoboszlai #goals

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On the flip side, Mo Salah symbolized what Liverpool were about: The Egyptian legend took the first hour or so off, as he often seems to do these days, but when he woke up, he immediately produced threat. He is a results player in a results team. End product, goals and assists, and even before that: just a bit of magic, a dart in behind or a haunting series of tiny touches and stepovers to twist Riccardo Calafiori inside and out. It only happened a couple of times, but it threw Arsenal’s whole shape out of balance. That period in the middle of the second half was all that Salah and Liverpool needed — well, that and the wonderstrike from the parking lot.

The byword for this version of Arteta’s Arsenal has been “control” for a couple of years now. Control in midfield, control over the game state, control at the back (where they really are solid). But are you really in control of a game when you don’t have the goals to show for it?

This team is radically different from those later Arsène Wenger sides who played beautiful stuff without the stiff spine necessary to win things, but the fundamental truth they both suffer with is largely the same: You can’t go to Anfield, control the match for most of the first hour, and not have a goal or two to show for it. Not if you want to win the match, which Arsenal have not done at this ground since 2012 — when Arteta was playing in Wenger’s midfield.

There are plenty of storylines coming out of this one, not least the fact that the key signing in each of these engine rooms — Martín Zubimendi for Arsenal, Florian Wirtz for Liverpool — is taking some time to get up to the pace of this league. Zubimendi probably had more of an impact here out of the two (apart from a sharp strike from Wirtz in the second half), but he’s been overrun at times during his first few matches in English football. Liverpool’s magnetic German, on the other hand, has really struggled to make an impact.

And yet it didn’t matter. Anfield was quiet for large spells of the first half, but it exploded in song and noise on 64 minutes as the Reds went marching on — just long enough to get the goal and the result. The old reliables came good at key junctures, while Arsenal’s old reliables, Martinelli chief among them, simply did not. The away side were missing their best player in Bukayo Saka, their key creator is not fully fit in Martin Ødegaard, and one of their key deep passers, William Saliba, went off injured here after just five minutes. But they’ve now got arguably the strongest squad in the league, no component of which was prepared to make the kind of telling contribution that Liverpool’s defending champions were. Perhaps they are doing champion things after all.

False Starts and False Dawns

Both Tottenham and Manchester City heralded new eras over the first few weeks of this season, the former with their new manager and 450% less chaos in how they approach a game of football, the latter with a whole fleet of new signings with whom Pep Guardiola surely would return to form as a genuine threat to win the Premier League.

The Spurs honeymoon with Thomas Frank is surely over, though, after the 1-0 battering they took from Bournemouth on their home patch. They were fortunate to go into halftime down by just a goal, and the desperation with which the home crowd bayed for a second yellow card for Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo shortly after the break betrayed Tottenham’s desperation to change the game state. They didn’t get that decision, nor did they ever get much of a sustained foothold in the game.

It was all a reminder of how steep the climb is from losing 22 league matches in a season, as Spurs did in their last campaign, though it’s worth bearing in mind that Bournemouth are a really, really good side. So good, you have to wonder whether Andoni Iraola could have gotten the Spurs job at Frank’s expense. There was only one winner of the tactical battle here, as the Cherries pressed high with huge intensity and running power, clobbering the men in white and stampeding onto the Spurs backline when they won possession.

As for City, my prediction for how Erling Haaland would start this season is in only moderate trouble, but the frailty and fragility that became a new and ugly trademark for Guardiola’s side last season does not seem to have faded in the summer sun. The Sky Blues will certainly be in amongst the Top Four discussion, maybe even on the outside of the title race, but the way Brighton were able to flip this match on its head and steal the points off them is a major concern. I’ve had the sense for some time now that Pep is looking forward to spending some time away from Manchester.

The Dundee Derby

I feel guilty for not recommending the Dundee Derby alongside the Old Firm among the Matches Worth Your Time on Friday. Celtic and Rangers fought out a real stinker at Ibrox on Sunday, and while all the subtext of that famous rivalry is fascinating — just ask the commenters screaming at The Football Weekend on YouTube — the match itself was not. 0-0 and nothing to shout about in Glasgow.

But there were a couple goals between Dundee F.C. and Dundee United this weekend, as the latter ran out 2-0 winners in Britain’s Closest Derby. These two clubs’ stadiums are just 183 meters apart, which puts them just behind IFK Malmö and Malmö FF in Sweden as the most neighborly enemies in Europe. (PSG and Paris FC have now entered the chat with FC’s promotion to Ligue 1, though some may dispute the “derby” title for such a young intracity rivalry.) Anyway, I pledge to do better in presenting you with idiosyncratic feuds to watch before they happen.

St. James’ Park is always a cauldron, but this was something else. The rolling tides of song swishing about the stadium, the fever pitch when anybody in black-and-white won a challenge.

Newcastle fans always think they can make the difference, not unlike their opponents here at their own home ground. “We can make this a really difficult place for [them] to play,” John Williams told me of the sentiment at Anfield when Liverpool completed that comeback against Barcelona. “That victory was our victory.”

Every touch on Monday night crackled with electricity, every challenge was life and death. Hugo Ekitike was booed because … he was once linked to Newcastle in the press but joined Liverpool?

It was ruthless, and so were the Magpies. Liverpool were summarily outplayed over the first half an hour. They had no control in midfield and were once again cut through relatively easily, just like in Matchweek One, even with the return of Ryan Gravenberch to (theoretically) hold things down.

But it was that 23-year-old Dutchman in midfield who delivered the sucker punch to Newcastle’s chin and once again proved the Iron Law of Football: You’ve got to score when you’re on top, and if you don’t take your chances, you will be punished. His clever strike, low and hard from distance, opened the scoring and kicked off what ultimately turned out to be the match of the season at this early stage.

Anthony Gordon soon went steaming into Virgil Van Dijk and got himself sent off, dealing Newcastle’s ambitions in this game a (seemingly) disastrous blow. Liverpool took a bit more control after that, got to halftime, then came out and scored pretty much instantly to (apparently) kill the game. And then, with 10 men, Newcastle came roaring back into the match, fueled by spite and fury, somehow pulling it back to 2-2.

And then they threw it away again, 100-plus minutes in: Anthony Elanga fell asleep at the end of a very long shift and failed to help out at the back post, Liverpool swarmed in, and Dominik Szoboszlai ran onto a low Mo Salah cross and played a brilliant silent pass. The ball just seemed to present itself to 16-year-old Rio Ngumoha1, completely unmarked with the whole North East of England as his playground. The youngster made no mistake, dispatching it with aplomb, and he wheeled away a match-winner. Three points to Liverpool, plucked from the roiling sea on Tyneside.

At halftime on NBC’s U.S. coverage, Danny Higginbotham suggested that Liverpool’s 1-0 advantage was just champion stuff. I had my doubts, despite the old adages around champions winning ugly when they have to, and I had a chuckle because Arsenal’s 1-0 grindfest away at Old Trafford just last week did not get the same treatment in many quarters. Arsenal are not the champions, to be fair, but Liverpool didn’t look it either when they soon enough threw away a 2-0 advantage against 10 men here.

Those two can test their title credentials against one another next Sunday, when they meet at the aforementioned Anfield, but in the meantime the Reds of Merseyside have some real questions swirling. Can they really expect Salah to put together another campaign like the last? Has Ibahima Konaté already dropped off a level at centerback? How much trouble are they in at fullback? And — though none dare say it — might it take some time for Florian Wirtz to adjust to the pace of the Premier League? Neither he nor Salah shone here.

There are fewer questions at striker, to be fair, even with the high-drama links to Alexander Isak that helped fuel the atmosphere at St. James’ Park on Monday. Ekitike looks the real deal up to this point, and for all their discombobulations, Liverpool look like scoring three or four whenever they step out. Perhaps, in the end, this lot will be a test of whether you can win titles by outgunning everyone you run into, scoring those three or four when your opponents get one or two.

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When Rasheed Wallace said, “Ball don’t lie,” he was talking free throws after a questionable foul call. If a player missed, it was because the basketball gods interfered, skewing the trajectory of the uncontested shot from 15 feet because it was a false foul that got the player those free throws in the first place.

So it was with Bruno Fernandes at Craven Cottage on Sunday.

Well, one difference is that missing a penalty is way worse than missing free throws, and getting that penalty is a way bigger deal, too, and Bruno would say — is still saying — that the referee put him off by jostling him while he was going through his pre-kick routine. That’s why he skied it into Saturn’s orbit.

And also: It actually was a foul.

You can’t say that Calvin Bassey’s roughhousing on Mason Mount in his own penalty area wasn’t a foul. It would have been called as such anytime, anywhere on the pitch — except, will it? Will this kind of offense be consistently penalized at corner kicks all season? Will we see penalties like this each and every time? Because for decades, this kind of thing just wasn’t penalty material, and it certainly wasn’t call-it-back-multiple-minutes-later-for-a-VAR-review material.

This is a new PGMOL fixation, about which we learned right before the season kicked off, to crack down on defenders’ tomfoolery at set pieces in their own 18-yard box. But is this just another Major Refereeing Initiative that will be enforced for 2.5 months until everybody forgets about it and we go back to the previous regime of legal wrestling at corner kicks?

My money is on the latter, particularly since in the very same game Manchester United’s Lenny Yoro shoved a defender in the back while fomenting his team’s opening goal. At the very same corner where the penalty was awarded, Luke Shaw was roughhousing with Rodrigo Muniz. These are subjective calls made by (very) human referees within a system already struggling for consistency.

The most likely outcome is we will have a handful of outlier decisions over these first couple of months. Pushing-and-shoving that’s been more than commonplace for decades will become illegal and harshly punished, and then it will just stop one day, probably some time in October or November.

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“It’s happened again, it’s happened agaaaain,” the Tottenham supporters crowed, and they had a point: They’ve beaten Manchester City in three of their last four meetings across all competitions, twice in a row at the Etihad Stadium. Since 2020, City have come away victorious from just six of 15 encounters with Spurs, losing eight.

Considering how poor Tottenham were at some of those junctures, we’re well into Bogey Team territory here. City simply have a problem with Spurs. They don’t like a fight with the lads in Lilywhite, to the point that it feels difficult to draw too many conclusions about whether new manager Thomas Frank is truly ushering in a new golden era at Tottenham. Six points, five goals scored, none conceded — it’s a stellar start to 2025/26 for the North Londoners, but it’s a long way from here to May. Having lost out on Eberechi Eze, they do still need a new creative force to create the magic to complement their improved structure.

For City, the picture is murkier. It certainly seems like Pep Guardiola’s grand revolution over the last two transfer windows, where the old guard was jettisoned and hundreds of millions of pounds in new players came in, may not go off without a hitch. Everybody — myself included — decided there was no way a Pep team could disappoint two seasons in a row, and maybe they will be in the thick of a title race come April and May. But in a relative rarity for the Catalan managerial legend, his team has something to prove.

Who’d have thunk it that, with all the hundreds of millions of pounds spent and top-class talent from all over the world recruited, the new Premier League style archetype would be Stoke City?

OK, maybe that’s a bit strong, but there were an awful lot of long balls into the channels across the opening nine matches of the 2025/26 season. There was plenty of generalized hoofing it! going on, and there were long throws all over the place.

Most everybody is treating any throw-in within their opponent’s third of the field as a full-on set piece, a manual corner kick, so it feels right that Rory Delap’s son just got his big move to a Champions League side in Chelsea. Liam is a handful for opposition defenders, though he’s not likely to cause the sheer chaos his father’s throws did for, say, Arsenal’s center backs in the Arsène Wenger era.

Speaking of which, the Arsenal were back at it again with the set pieces at Old Trafford on Sunday, masking a fairly miserable performance with three points as they kick off yet another title challenge. I firmly believe that Mikel Arteta’s interest in cultivating the pragmatic side of Arsenal’s game grew exponentially after his side were dismantled by some extremely direct play from Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland back in 2023, as Pep Guardiola outsmarted his former pupil by simplifying Manchester City’s game in a decisive title clash.

That vertical demolition drove Arteta to build a side that was strapping, physical, and ruthless, seeking out the cynical side of the game whenever necessary. (At times, it’s felt unnecessary — even as an Arsenal fan.) That obsessive focus on set pieces and marginal gains seems to have trickled down to the rest of the league. But if they want to do one better and win the title, they need to flow forward at times, too, and make things easier on themselves by cutting open the opposition and popping in a few goals.

“1-0 to the Arsenal” remains a great song, but it’s no longer a recipe for winning titles on its own. Sometimes in this Premier League you need to score three or four to see off an opponent, even if Arsenal aren’t likely to match Liverpool’s goalscoring this season. If they can maintain their dead-serious defensive record of the last few seasons and pop in some more goals, though, they might just find that top-of-the-table balance come May.

Midfield chaos amongst the would-be title challengers

Arsenal were very poor at Old Trafford, and it wasn’t just their play in and around the United box. They were turgid in that respect — it’s become sadly typical of their game over the last year — but the bigger concerns were in midfield. The Gunners got seriously stretched, exercising very little control over the trenches. The most perilous situations emerged when Martin Ødegaard would cough up possession with four or five of his teammates ahead of him. Martín Zubimendi is still getting up to the pace of the Premier League by the looks of it, while Declan Rice couldn’t really get his foot on the ball.

Their title rivals Liverpool weren’t much different on Friday, the opening day, at least as far as how open the midfield got at times.

The big question for me coming into this season was whether the Reds had truly gotten better at full back, where I’m just not sure I buy Jeremie Frimpong as a right back in a back four as opposed to a wingback in a three-slash-five. (And is Milos Kerkez truly the second coming of prime Andy Robertson at left back?) But the Liverpool midfield was just as much of a head-scratcher against Bournemouth at Anfield.

Maybe they’ll sort themselves out quickfast when Ryan Gravenberch returns to the lineup, but Liverpool looked very stretched in transition moments and often found Bournemouth attackers running straight at their backline. Even the stalwart centerback pairing of Virgil Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté looked uncomfortable in those moments, and Arne Slot will be tinkering this week to find the balance in the middle of the park that secures Liverpool a bit more control.

They do have that thing that Arsenal lack — the ability to bang in four goals on a whim — and that will see them through a lot of sticky situations.

Rocket Haaland

While got into many of the reasons I feel alienated from Fantasy Premier League this week, I do like a bit of idle speculation about who’s going to post a lot of points. I was talking to a friend over a pint on Wednesday about fantasy strikers, and my sneaking suspicion was that Erling Haaland would start this season shot out of a cannon.

For all the talk of Gyökeres and Sesko and Ekitike and Isak, the Norwegian is still quite possibly the most lethal center forward in English football, and he can’t be happy with all that talk of other strikers this summer.

I expect Haaland to top the scoring charts over the first 10 Matchweeks at least, possibly with more than a goal per game. Manchester City are a whole new force from an attacking standpoint, and while they have a few tricky fixtures over those first 10, there are also some brace and hat-trick opportunities for their #9. He’s already got two from their pillaging of Wolves on Saturday.

Welcome back Sunderland!

It was not a major focus of the TV coverage here in the States — Brighton-Fulham got top billing in the 10 a.m. hour — but Sunderland came crashing back into the Premier League with a sharp 3-0 victory over top-flight stalwarts West Ham.

The Stadium of Light was bouncing, and it was a reminder that this massive club from the North East has been down too long. It’s been a punishing eight years since the Black Cats were last scrapping with the big boys, as the BBC’s Sunderland commentator Nick Barnes explained ahead of the Championship playoff final in May, but the roar for the opening goal, the roar when Simon Adingra won a crucial corner in the second half, the roar when Dan Ballard — hero of the playoff semifinal — scored another thumping header to seal the game … beautiful.

It’s a great story for this league, and this was possibly the beginning of a very bad story for West Ham. The Londoners just don’t look right, and they could be in more of a relegation scrap than they might have budgeted for.

Joshua Zirkzee latched onto a through ball in the box in the 96th minute and played a bouncing square ball across to Harry Maguire, the once-pilloried giant of a center back who had just days before secured a vote-of-confidence contract extension. The script was written: he would tuck home the chance first time and wheel away to celebrate at the away end.

Except it was not a good ball to hit, and Maguire did not quite have the technique to meet the challenge, and he popped it over the bar. The slightest tweak to his contact would have snagged a signature victory for Manchester United away at Anfield over the seemingly unstoppable Reds of Liverpool. In the end, a game that nearly never kicked off at all due to a dense blanket of snow that descended on the north of England overnight, a game which ultimately was played in blustery, soaked conditions, was something like the game of the season.

It all started well. Liverpool controlled proceedings and crept continually into the Manchester United penalty area, occasionally peppering a shot at goal that was blocked or skewed wide. But United were also more than capable of breaking out and scampering into the space in behind Liverpool’s advanced position.

After 19 minutes, left wingback Diogo Dalot drifted over towards the sideline and hovered for a moment in front of Trent Alexander-Arnold, who was caught square for a second as Dalot accelerated and looped around him. Bruno Fernandes sliced an outside-of-the-boot chipped through ball and found him in behind. Dalot was away, clean through, not needing a touch to find himself on the edge of the box. He zipped in a cross that curled just behind Amad Diallo as the young Ivorian flew in, stretching his head for it near the center circle.

The match slid into halftime 0-0, but both teams had threatened, and in the 52nd minute, breakthrough. Fernandes was again involved for United as he drifted inside on the dribble at the top of the box, attracting defenders and waiting until Alexis Mac Allister jumped out to pressure him. The Argentine midfielder left a gap between him and Ryan Gravenberch, and Lisandro Martínez was lurking behind them after drifting back onside after a forward run. Fernandes found him with a brilliant scooped through ball and he was in. The diminutive center back ran onto it and smashed the ball in off the crossbar of Alison’s goal, beating the Brazilian all ends up to make it 1-0. He did the pregnancy cele—which is perhaps a bit too ubiquitous at the moment—and United were on top of the world at Anfield.

The goal unsettled Liverpool, and all of a sudden the high balls in weren’t calmly cleared. The ball bounced in the Liverpool penalty area and Kobbie Mainoo latched onto the loose ball and had a shot. He revved up the away end, which was roaring with approval. Finally, a performance worthy of the shirt. But just a couple of minutes later, their lead was erased.

Cody Gakpo exploited some space down the outside behind United’s back three-slash-five and Mac Allister found him with a fine through ball. Matthijs de Ligt was on the mad dash to cover and Gakpo chopped the ball cleverly to send him sliding out of the picture. With another touch, Liverpool’s Dutchman buried it high in the net, and Liverpool were right back in the game. The title march was set to continue.

And so it was in the 67th minute, when it looked like Manchester United Comedy Club was back in session. Michael Oliver missed De Ligt’s handball on first assessment, perhaps because of the frankly bizarre upward angle of the defender’s arm, but a VAR review dealt out justice and a penalty it would be. Mo Salah put away the penalty to pull even with Thierry Henry on 175 Premier League goals and give the home side the lead, but could Andre Onana have done better? The location was savable, but the goalkeeper somehow dove above the ball (which was, in fairness, laced by the Egyptian).

From there, it felt safe enough to believe Liverpool were going eight points clear at the top of the table. They continued to control things, particularly in the middle of the park, but United never lost that sense that they could break out and get the home team defending on the back foot, running back towards their own goal. In the 80th minute, substitute Alejandro Garnacho picked up the ball in just those conditions and ran at Ibrahima Konaté, shifting the ball to his left foot and squaring a low cross beneath the defender’s stride in a compound motion. It rolled across the box towards the Liverpool penalty spot, splitting the Red shirts and their lunging legs to find that man, Amad, running onto it. The Ivorian tucked the ball away low to even the score, 2-2, and flip the script again.

These two old heavyweights of English football slugged it out for another 16 minutes after that, throwing haymakers that grazed or whiffed their opponent. United caused havoc with a couple of set pieces and the pinball chaos that ensued, though Liverpool broke out from one of them and got down to United’s defensive third in two passes. Salah’s ball through to another substitute, Darwin Nunez, was snuffed out with a genius sliding intervention from young Lenny Yoro. Conor Bradley slinked around Fernandes’s challenge out wide and tried to sneak one in Onana’s near post, but the keeper avoided embarrassment, palming it away.

And then there was Harry Maguire. Or, I’d argue, Joshua Zirkzee. These are the moments where you write your name into a rivalry and become part of a club, but the summer signing came up short. He asked too much of his center back with a lack of concentration when hitting the pass, and the chance to seize all three points at the home of their great enemies went up in smoke, but manager Ruben Amorim was chuffed speaking with the press after the game. This was proof he can get fire from a dull stone.

For Liverpool, it will be a disappointment to surrender two points after storming back from 1-0 down into the lead, but it’s as you were with regard to the Premier League title they chase. Another matchweek is gone, and they’re six points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand. Barring injury to one or two key players, they don’t look like anyone’s catching them.⚽︎

Five at the back? Boring. Handing over possession away from home? Cynical. A big man up front? Anachronistic. Except Nottingham Forest are doing all these things and playing great stuff, and they’re second in the Premier League.

OK, maybe they’d call it three at the back. But what’s the difference when you’re willing to settle for 38% possession at Goodison Park, home to one of the worst outfits in England’s top flight? If Everton survive this season, they’ll rarely do it by having 62% of the ball, and honestly they might be better off playing the Forest way. But can they? Can Sean Dyche do what Nuno Espirito Santo is doing?

Because there’s more to it than defend-defend-defend-and-counter. The way the Trees flow forward when they win possession is a joy to watch. Morgan Gibbs-White is often the engine, carrying the ball past players or combining with a teammate to get them running on top of the opposition defense. From there, they’ve often got an advantage in men or momentum, and their front-foot fliers can pick a pass. Anthony Elanga is chief among them, and he’s been in the kind of devastating form this season that makes you wonder why there was no place for him at Manchester United.

Perhaps this system is a version of what Ruben Amorim wants from his own setup at Old Trafford—but does he have a Neco Williams to bomb down the left-hand side, combining devilishly with partners-in-crime so Forest can tic-tac-toe their way up the field? Does he have an Elanga, or even a Jota Silva? Does he have a Chris Wood?

That last one needs asking, because rarely do you see a 33-year-old striker hit the form of his life, essentially from nowhere. The New Zealnder has forged a fine career in the Premier League, sure, but he’s gone ballistic this season. 10 minutes in at Goodison, he took a looped pass on his chest 25 yards from goal and, without a moment’s hesitation, thwacked it full on the volley. It bounced wide, but the confidence was flowing through him like electricity. He has been everywhere over these first 19 games, using his size and power but also often his brain, finishing off those flowing moves with strength and cleverness.

After 14 minutes, Gibbs-White launched a long ball towards Wood, running in behind the marooned James Tarkowski. Wood stretched to pop a header towards Elanga, who’d drifted into his orbit to play a two-man game up front. The Swede returned the ball to Wood with a header on the bounce and again, with the utmost instinct, the big #11 deftly looped an effort over Jordan Pickford with just a bit of topspin. It was balletic movement and a touch finish, classy behavior.

Forest were tidy and organized after that, seeing off what threat Everton produced primarily through the whizkid wanderings of Iliman Ndiaye, who’s probably too good for this bunch. And when Elanga jumped on a slack Everton square ball in the 60th minute, the Trees took their chance to seal the game. Elanga attracted two defenders and found Wood lurking at the top of the box. He took it in but didn’t try to turn, waiting for Gibbs-White to make his far-post run into the box so he could find him with a slide-rule ball. The young Englishman allowed it to run across him and then slipped it back behind his planted leg—and behind defender Abdoulaye Doucouré—with a bit of a mini-Cruyff turn. Then he buried it high in the net above Pickford.

It was enough to get Forest over the line at Goodison, and this has all been enough to get them into second here at the season’s halfway point, at least until Arsenal and Chelsea play their 19th games. Who would have predicted this for Nuno Espirito Santo, run out of the English game after a poor spell with Tottenham that felt lab-tested to fail? The Portuguese has come storming back now, and even if Forest can’t maintain this kind of form through the second half of the season, they’re now looking at a finish that even Nuno’s best Wolves sides would envy.

And if they can maintain it? The Tricky Trees will be back in the European Cup, a competition they’ve won no less than twice.⚽︎

There were plenty of “Jesus Is Risen” headlines this past week, though it’s worth pointing out that Easter is in the spring. We all have no choice but to reach for the metaphors, however. Before this, Gabriel Jesus had scored once in 33 appearances, nine in the last season and a half. But Arsenal’s Brazilian #9 has been born again this Yuletide, scoring five goals in two matches to head into the dense thicket of festive fixtures armed with a machete.

He isn’t just scoring, though. He’s buzzing around the pitch, flowing with confidence as he battles defenders on the ground and in the air. He takes a pass between the lines with his back to goal and makes life hellish for a center back, spinning and feinting and dropping shoulders, turning and running with the ball and finding a teammate for a 1-2. “He has back his heart and soul, he has back his goals,” Peter Drury said when Jesus bashed in his first after six minutes at Selhurst Park.

This was a vision of that Jesus who arrived from Manchester City in July 2022 perhaps hoping to prove he could be The Guy for a team that competed for titles. He quickly built partnerships with Martin Ødegaard and Thomas Partey and Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka as Arsenal became a whirring machine of passing football and elite physicality. They were quicker in mind and body than the teams they ran over for four and a half months. There were scrappers and absolute units in the team who dispelled the notion that Arsenal were a soft touch. They were were top of the league at Christmas.

Jesus was a massive part of that, one of those aforementioned scrappers who won battles up and down the middle of the pitch and stitched the play together. And then there was the Winter World Cup, when Jesus jetted off with Brazil only to pick up the knee injury that would dog him in various ways for the better part of two years.

Now he’s popped up again to score big goals for the Gunners when the peanut gallery is chirping that Arsenal need an open-play coach. What could Mikel Arteta’s team have done with another striking option over the last year? Could they have taken two more points last season with a #9 who was #9ing? There’s no way to know, but he could transform their season here in 24/25.

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BONUS COVERAGE:

TOTTENHAM 3-6 LIVERPOOL

The only time Spurs look like they can defend is when they set up in the half court with their midfield and forward lines behind the ball, so they almost never create that game state. They don’t look comfortable at set pieces, but it’s the high line that kills them. You can’t spend the whole game running back towards your own goal.

There didn’t seem to be any midfield at all. At the very least, the midfield is not considered part of the defensive unit in Tottenham’s current tactical scheme. They half-press and get dissected. Liverpool are a well-oiled machine with slick patterns of play to build out from the back into the middle third, so Spurs tried to play high up the field and their midfield was easily bypassed with an interchange of shorter passes up the field or a high ball. Either way, they put their defenders into a continuous series of all-or-nothing challenges in the middle of the park. When they lost those duels, it sent the white shirts streaming back towards their own goal and into a series of on-the-run 3v3s with Liverpool’s fleet-footed attackers descending upon them.

Spurs have injuries, but the response to that—and Liverpool’s dominant form in the first half of this season—is to adapt and survive. Create a solid core to defend your penalty area and do not leave your 17-year-old makeshift center back exposed. Archie Gray put in a better shift than his more experienced partner, a natural center back in Radu Drăgușin, but this was down to this team’s tactics and mentality.

In the NBC studios at halftime, Tim Howard and Robbie Earle pointed out that there was never any reason to think Spurs would change their approach for the last few minutes of the half after getting back in the game at 2-1. It seemingly doesn’t occur to Ange Postecoglou’s side that they could manage the game until halftime. They got themselves a lifeline and immediately went back to playing basketball. Liverpool’s mentality is decidedly different: Mo Salah came out after their 6-goal feast and said they need to defend better.

As an Arsenal fan of a certain vintage, I probably go for Arsène Wenger references once too often, but Postecoglou’s approach seems to be a kind of philosophical self-destruction that is decidedly late-stage Wenger. Surely we’re not late-stage Postecoglou?⚽︎

When Amad Diallo tip-toed in behind the Manchester City backline down the inside channel after 25 minutes, it was another sign that Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 formation could prosper against the downright disheveled Sky Blues. The young ex-winger ultimately dragged his shot wide and was ruled offside, but in his new inside-forward role, a throwback—at least in name—to English football’s Middle Ages, he would soon cause all kinds of problems for Pep Guardiola’s outfit. Injuries in defensive areas have been killer, but the space in between the City midfield and defense—particularly in those inside channels—was too often abundant. Add in the lack of pace among City’s defenders, and you’ve got a cocktail that floored the Citizens before the 90 minutes were done.

Because it wasn’t just Amad. The nature of Amorim’s system is that it encourages players in every line to step forward, to step into their duels and send the play rolling in the other direction in one decisive movement. In the contemporary era of transition football, it’s a difference-maker. And against this City side that looks old and static, lacking in dynamism and pace in a way exemplified by the agéd Kyle Walker, it would ultimately prove fatal. The goal that the hosts scored to go 1-0 up ultimately just looked fortuitous, a randomly deflected cross, as they rarely threatened with anything beyond a half-chance before getting run over entirely in the closing stages.

Amad, the young Ivorian, was at the heart of it. It’s not news to United fans that he is their most powerful weapon, particularly in this new system, and at some point he just started exploding through the City lines to cause trouble. In the 60th minute, he picked the ball up with wingback Noussair Mazraoui flanking him, demanding some of Matheus Nunes’s attention, and even with Phil Foden tracking back in support, City’s makeshift left-back was in trouble. Amad engaged the rocket boosters and zipped between the two of them, putting just a bit too much on the touch so that Joško Gvardiol could step in and cut it out. But it was a preview of coming attractions.

After 73 minutes, Mazraoui stepped forward to win the ball off Jérémy Doku at the halfway line and went barreling forward, finding Rasmus Højlund on the turn. The #9 slid a through ball between Gvardiol and Rúben Dias in City’s bedraggled defensive line for Bruno Fernandes to scamper onto. United’s most accomplished technician flicked his chip wide, however, and I began to wonder whether the Red Devils’ superior shape and physicality would be betrayed by their finishing.

But time and again, Amad got in on that back line—and often left them for dead. He dropped his shoulder at one point and left Dias floored. After 80 minutes, he squared up Nunes and skinned him again with a couple of back-and-forth touches and a body feint, leaving him on the ground in the 18-yard box as the Ivorian popped towards the byline. Again he was thwarted by his own meaty touch and a Gvardiol intervention.

But then came the crowning mistake from Nunes, deployed as a hapless defender in a Guardiola anti-masterstroke. The Portuguese, now stationed in the right-back area near the touchline, played a horrifying backpass towards Ederson in goal. He only found Amad. The #16 in red latched onto it in an instant, drifting out to the edge of the box. The goalkeeper squared up to him, trying to contain the threat, and as Mr. Diallo drifted towards him and into the box on the dribble, Nunes came steaming in and fouled him. Penalty.

The whole passage reeked of desperation, disorder, everything we’ve come not to expect from Pep Guardiola’s side. But this seems a different Guardiola side now, exposed in between the lines and in behind over and over again, and this time they were truly punished. Fernandes slotted the penalty away with minimal fuss, 1-1, and the dramatic reversal had only just begun.

A minute later, United were back on the ball with Lisandro Martínez just behind the halfway line. There was a chasm of space between City’s midfield four and the four behind them—a back four at four different depths and with still more chasms between them. It was a shambles, and Amad, lurking in the acres of space on the far side, darted past Nunes into that inside channel again. Such was the Sky Blue disarray that he had time to bend his run behind Gvardiol, who’d fallen asleep.

Amad turned vertical again, comfortably onside by a couple of yards, and Martínez’s barely-diagonal ball—it was almost a straight long ball in behind—erased the City defenders from the play. It hit the turf inside the box and Amad caught it on the half-bounce, still traveling at break-neck pace, popping it up over Ederson before skipping after it and pawing the ball towards goal with a left-footed volley. It rolled almost in slow motion towards the goal line, trundling across the goalmouth. But somehow Gvardiol, jogging back at half-pace to intervene, could not sort his feet out and it nutmegged him.

It was a comedy of errors, starting with the shabby back line with no pressure on the ball. City threw this game away, to be sure. But it was a shining moment, still, for the 22-year-old who has come to life under this new manager and within his intriguing new system. Time and again, Amad would erupt past a Sky Blue shirt or two who were stuck in the mud. He detonated down the sideline at one point, burning the fullback and carrying the ball at breakneck speed before unleashing a scything cross that left the City defenders helpless, saved only by the lack of a United shirt crashing the back post. It was unreal technique, on the run and in stride. Unstoppable.

It was all in marked contrast to the residents of City’s attacking midfield, that area behind Erling Haaland where the magic’s meant to happen. I’ve had questions for years now about Doku’s end product, and whether—not unlike, say, Gabriel Martinelli—he often floats a cross to back-post no-man’s land or slips a cutback to nobody in particular. But at least he can shift and leave a defender in his wake. Jack Grealish came on and was completely anonymous yet again. Phil Foden played the entire match and was essentially limited to some potshots from in and around the top of the box. Even Savinho, who’s looked dangerous in his first season in Manchester despite his lack of goal output, offered nothing after coming on.

In truth, Amad’s showing was in marked contrast to United’s other attackers, too. Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho were dropped from the squad for this one, in case you hadn’t heard, and their futures at Old Trafford do not currently look bright. Rashford’s had a couple of moments in recent weeks as part of his customary New Manager Bounce, but it’s a long time since he was regarded as a present or future top-class player. Mason Mount went off injured again, and it’s not clear what position he’s suited for in the first place. Fernandes is sliding deeper into midfield in Amorim’s system.

When it comes to those two inside-forward creators, Amad Diallo is the pick of the bunch, a youngster bursting with confidence who can shift through the gears, leave defenders roasted on a spit, and find the finishing touch when it matters. Speed, technique, and composure is a dangerous combination. It’s not just that he’s United’s best attacker at the moment. He may be their only player in forward areas who looks like he could become a genuine top-class player.⚽︎

TOTTENHAM 3-4 CHELSEA

It feels like a lifetime ago that Tottenham Hotspur went up to the Etihad and battered the hell out of the champions of England. Maybe Manchester City are just a poor side, but they’re just about the only outfit that Ange Postecoglou’s boys can beat these days. Since they triumphed over Aston Villa on November 3, Spurs have lost to Galatasaray in the Europa League and Ipswich Town in the Premier League, drew with Roma and Fulham, and lost to Bournemouth. And then they welcomed Chelsea to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, went up 2-0, and threw it all away.

Granted, they benefited handsomely from Marc Cucurella’s self-destructive footwear choices as he twice slipped on the slick turf to hand them their chances. But they had to take them, and they did. An injury to Cristian Romero seemed to destabilize them, however, and Jadon Sancho—who was lively all night—drifted inside on the dribble and smacked in a fire-starter off the post.

You could feel the Spursiness percolating through the television screen, and while they kept hold of the lead for another 44 minutes, they were also missing chances. Son Heung-min in particular squandered an opportunity when he was through on goal, and you just felt the Iron Law of Football Karma lurking above the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium like the Sword of Damocles. In the space of 23 minutes, they were peppered with three more Chelsea goals, and two of them were criminal penalty giveaways.

The second of those was really nuts, a mentality implosion, and there are questions to be asked around what percentage of this comes down to The History of the Tottenham and what portion is Postecoglou. It’s old hat now to point out that Big Ange may be overcommitted to a singular approach to play, not unlike Arsène Wenger in his later days when his Arsenal teams suffered from a disastrous lack of pragmatism. Spurs did show some fight in the final minutes, getting back in the game with a third goal and going fairly close to a stoppage-time equalizer, but the capitulations are arriving regularly these days.

As for Chelsea, they showed tremendous composure for a young team, never sweating the 2-0 deficit, possibly because they knew how easy it is to get change out of this Tottenham defense. Cole Palmer came alive deeper into the game, darting about and dropping his shoulder to twist up the opposition back line. Enzo Fernández smashed in a volley off a deflected cross following a Palmer pirouette session, and his midfield mate Moisés Caicedo continues his ferocious behavior in the heart of the action even if he got away with a nasty orange-card challenge.

Chelsea look the real deal, in other words, and Enzo Maresca has dismissed the preseason mockers—the squad’s too big! all that money for nothing!—to get the Blues’ house in order. They are playing their way into a title race.

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BONUS COVERAGE:

FULHAM 1-1 ARSENAL

The referees did not cost Arsenal any points at Craven Cottage on Sunday, even if a VAR review ruled out a winning goal from Bukayo Saka on an offside technicality. Gabriel Martinelli simply stepped offside, even if he didn’t gain an advantage from it. Still, there was a particular non-call that will gall Arsenal fans to no end.

In the 41st minute, Fulham center back Calvin Bassey lost a duel with Saka down the sideline in Fulham’s half. It was an Arsenal throw, with Fulham stretched and Bassey in particular out of position. So—like millions of players before him in games large and small—he held onto the ball, taking three touches with his feet and his hand, to delay the restart of play and allow his teammates (and him) to get back into defensive position. The referee whistled to signal he’d clocked Bassey’s time-wasting routine and demand that he stop.

Play resumed, and all the while the commentators (at least on the NBC feed) were chatting about other things. Except, we were reliably told this season, Bassey’s antics are automatic yellow card behavior. A no-brainer. “I had no choice, he knocks the ball away,” the referee might say. “I have no choice. He's put me in an awful position. Dec, you need to go I'm afraid.”

By now you may realize this is what Chris Kavanagh said to Declan Rice during an Arsenal-Brighton match at the end of August after he flicked the ball away after the whistle. It was deep in the Brighton half after Rice was called for a foul. It was instinctive for the Arsenal midfielder—again, the result of all those hours and hours of match play since he was a kid—and it was almost as far as possible from the Arsenal goal. There wasn’t a break on. And yet Kavanagh showed Rice a second yellow for delaying the restart and sent him off. In another incident early in the season, Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard kicked the ball away milliseconds after the whistle blew against Man City and was sent off for the same offense.

But on Sunday, with Bassey consciously delaying the restart in a moment of peril for the Fulham defense, there was no first yellow card, much less a second to send him off. Just an extra whistle. And who was the referee? Chris Kavanagh.

It’s not that it should be a yellow-card offense every time, or that it should have been here. It’s not even about a lack of consistency, which is always an issue in refereeing despite it being the only thing anyone asks of the officials. It’s that the referees never actually cared about protecting the sanctity of the restart from devilish delays. It’s just one of those stupid initiatives they announce at the beginning of the season, enforce for a few matchweeks, and then never mention again.

It just so happens that in this season, Arsenal were made an example of in PGMOL’s quest to get people to Respect Them more. Too bad it cost the Gunners four points in the crucial early stages—and cost them important players (through suspension) for subsequent matches. They should have delayed their delaying of the restart until later in the season, when everyone has stopped pretending to care.⚽︎

“Families are always rising and falling in America,” Hawthorne and Billy Costigan said, and the same goes for football clubs in England. Chelsea rose to perennial contention on the wings of Roman Abramovich’s money in the early 2000s, competing for league titles pretty consistently through 2017. But even before the oligarch was sent packing following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Blues lost just a bit of their ferocity, and then there was the disastrous plunge after Todd Boehly and Co. took the reins.

By 2022/23, they’d finished 12th on 44 points. The inherited policy of constantly hiring and firing managers began to look less ruthlessly effective, like it had under Abramovich, and more desperate and deranged. The Chelsea lions were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

But beginning last season, they did begin to get one or two things right, and Mauricio Pochettino weathered a rough start to secure 63 points by season’s end, good enough for sixth. It wasn’t good enough for him to stick around, however, and things looked a bit chaotic once again. Enzo Maresca had the whiff of a panic appointment in that context, but look at him now. A third of the way through the season, Chelsea are third in the league, behind Arsenal only alphabetically. (The two London outfits are dead even on points, goal difference, and goals scored.) The Blues are on the rise again.

And they got here—in part—by bludgeoning Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Nicolas Jackson smacked a bouncing cross in off the post on seven minutes, Enzo Fernández welcomed in a Cole Palmer slide-pass at the top of the box and speared in a second, then Palmer took up a similar position and used a couple of defenders as a screen to arrow in a third with a deft swing of his left boot. By the time it hit the top left corner, the game was cooked. Chelsea were rampant until the final whistle and could have had five or six.

All the while, Aston Villa were falling apart. Last season’s supermarksman Ollie Watkins missed a golden chance in the first half, Pau Torres gifted the opposition a free kick in the box with what the referee (contentiously) ruled was a backpass to goalkeeper Emi Martínez, then Martínez executed an insane giveaway of possession in his own box but somehow avoided punishment. Then he went off injured. Villa looked legless in midfield, overrun, devoid of ideas, and they lacked conviction in both boxes. The physical and mental tax of adding Champions League football to the calendar seems to be breaking Unai Emery’s side in much the same way it did Newcastle last season. They don’t have the squad, or perhaps Emery doesn’t have the wherewithal, to cope.

The sum effect is that Villa appear to be a Premier League family whose fortunes are falling. All those wonderful moments last season, the decisive defeats of title-chasers Arsenal and Man City, even the glowing moments in Europe this term are no longer looking like the beginning of a new era, one where the Villans play their way into regular Top Six membership—a seat at the big boys’ table. There’s growing risk now that it was all more like a wild and exotic holiday that’s coming to an end. Time to go to back to the office in the morning.

The office, at this point, is the bottom half of the Premier League. Aston Villa are 12th and sinking, though their fate could change quickly if they can get themselves together, get some control in midfield, put together a few clean sheets, and finish off their chances. Incredibly, just four points separate them from Brighton in that fourth and final Champions League spot. It’s an unusual English league season already, and there’s two thirds of it left to play.

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BONUS COVERAGE:

LIVERPOOL 2-0 MAN CITY

One might expect the biggest match of the Premier League season so far to get the Lead Story treatment, but it’s a sign of the times for Manchester City that they struggled to even make this game competitive. Liverpool completely battered them, particularly in the first half, though in a different way from Tottenham last week. The scoreline was ultimately more modest, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a match over the last decade where City were more comprehensively shut out of the midfield game than they were at Anfield. They were routed. It was Arne Slot’s Austerlitz.

The Dutchman got his team selection and his tactics exactly right, while for Pep Guardiola it was something like his Waterloo. Bernardo Silva, İlkay Gündoğan, and Rico Lewis were simply too lightweight to deal with the physicality, hard running, and tidy passing work of Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, and Alexis Mac Allister. Even with Manuel Akanji flitting in to join the Citizen midfielders from the back four, they were losing duels and chasing shadows.

In the second half, Liverpool were happy to cede some ground in the middle third and retreat to their castle, where their shape was so good you hardly noticed Ibrahima Konaté was missing in the heart of defense. Joe Gomez was good enough, Virgil Van Dijk was fantastic apart from one moment of madness that went unpunished, and Andy Robertson rolled back the years to bomb down the lefthand side. His old partner-in-crime, Trent Alexander-Arnold, played a few scything balls across 60 yards or more, the best of the bunch a long ball in behind for Mo Salah that faded from inside to out like a golf shot, beguiling a City defender. It was one of a million times that Liverpool went scampering into the acres of space behind the Sky Blue rearguard, sniffing out their lack of pace on the turn and sparking chaotic retreats. At times in that first half, City looked like they were running through molasses.

It was the best of the Jürgen Klopp heavy-metal stuff bottled for more managed consumption, with an ABV label or at least a message from the missus that you’d better be home by 11. If Slot can maintain that intensity and that cutting edge while introducing spells of calm control, as he did here, maybe Liverpool really will win the league.⚽︎

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Erling Haaland stood over the ball in the center circle, waiting to restart play, a pout of glum frustration etched across his face.

Arsenal had done their work early in the day, dispatching Nottingham Forest in the 10am / 3pm hour, and it was up to Manchester City to match the result and keep pace, crucially, with pack-leaders Liverpool. A loss would leave the Citizens eight points adrift—nothing insurmountable, but a major statement, surely, that it’s the Reds from Merseyside who are the team to beat nearly one third of the way through this Premier League season.

These were joyous days on the Sky Blue side of Manchester, of course: Pep Guardiola signed a fresh contract last week to take him past a decade with the club, years filled with shiny silverware and win after triumph after victory. So much winning that the team developed an air of invincibility over time, the vibe that they are simply relentless, will not be beat, will get the goals to erase your lead, will pick up more points than you across 38 games. No matter how many you get, they will get a few more. In 2022-23, they spotted an imperious young Arsenal side eight points and came back to win it. In 2018-19, when Liverpool took 97 points, City went 98. They’ve relinquished the Premier League trophy for just 12 of the last 77 months.

But Guardiola’s squad walked out into something less than a roaring atmosphere at the Etihad, a not-so-shouty crowd that’s grown fat and happy on relentless success over that last decade. It is not the same ferocious atmosphere now. It’s sometimes downright genteel in the way the Emirates Stadium once became under Arsène Wenger. City’s away support is boisterous, an atmospheric addition to any arena in the league, but their home court has become a bloodless arena. The folks come for a show and down the years they’ve gotten it, but perhaps their instinct to pick the team up and urge them back into contention when they’re down, provide the Home Team Advantage, has atrophied.

And there were some forces of football nature here that Pep and his troops and their home support would need to grapple with, not least the Iron Law of Football: if you fail to take your chances, you will be punished.

A first-minute booking for Yves Bissouma in Tottenham’s deep midfield presaged City’s early dominance as they rampaged in behind the Spurs midfield line and created two good chances for Erling Haaland, their bionic #9 who was fresh off a hat trick for Norway in the week. But he passed up both of them, first dawdling on a low ball slid the box from Joško Gvardiol after the Croatian defender-winger scampered in and run at the Lilywhite back line. When it reached him, Haaland took a succession of small touches on his sledgehammer left foot trying to set the ball to shoot and allowed a defender to cut off his view of the goal, firing wide at the near post.

Then, on 11 minutes, he stood waiting eight yards out after Savinho spun off a defender and ran in on the back line again. But when the short pass came on time and with a decent weight to be hit, the Norwegian superstriker shot low without venom, denied by Guglielmo Vicario’s kick save.

Three minutes later, City were made to pay. Dejan Kulusevski stirred up the trouble for the first of many times throughout the evening, floating around the right wing with the ball in tow until he locked eyes with James Maddison streaking through the City team. The English attacker zipped in behind to meet a dipping cruise missile of a ball, perfectly timed from Kulusevski, volleying it past Ederson with aplomb and wheeling off into the corner to throw a trademark dart at the television camera.

City were stunned but not shellshocked—they’ve been known to concede the first goal throughout these dominant years. They came forward down the left to respond, and Phil Foden picked it up centrally to shoot over on the stretch, a half-chance. But City were warned again when Son Heung-min aimed a curling far-post effort from near the corner of the 18-yard-box that Ederson palmed away, and then Maddison struck again after 19 minutes.

City coughed up the ball in their own third, the spinning gears of their buildup machine popping out of place, the ticking hands out of sync, and Madison latched onto the loose ball 24 yards from goal. He fed Son at the top of the D then overlapped down the inside left channel, the #10 brushing right past his #7’s shoulder, almost passing him a note on his intentions. Son hit him with the reverse pass just as he broke through the back line, and Madison dinked it over the goalkeeper with the left foot to showcase his class, wheeling away into that corner again.

The Citizens’ noses were bloodied now, but no longtime observer would have considered them cooked. The shadow of invincibility still lingered, though the superhero’s cape was beginning to grow tattered. They generated some half chances, pops at goal rather than their usual surgical dismemberments of the opposition defense. It wasn’t until 60 minutes that they had another truly dangerous opportunity, Bissouma’s giveaway near his own goal offering Haaland the chance to jump on the ball, wheel around and whizz a left-footed pile-driver off Vicario’s crossbar near the far post. By that time, Tottenham had rampaged into City’s third again, breaking swiftly with so many Sky Blue shirts behind the ball, and Pedro Porro made it three.

The Guardiola supermachine had started to sputter, and the Etihad went quiet indeed. Vicario made his saves, but as time went on, City’s shots started skying over the crossbar as shocked partisans wailed in disbelief from the stands. Haaland put it couple right in his body, which the Italian—a serious shot-stopper even if he doesn’t always command his box—batted away with minimal fuss. The fire had gone out for Guardiola’s side by the time Timo Werner latched onto a loose City pass in deep midfield and ran at the back line yet again, sliding a low cross through the six-yard box for fellow substitute Brennan Johnson to finish the job.

4-0. Battered at the Etihad.

“Stay Humble” has surely aged worse than any tag line in recent history, the kind of thing one of John McClane’s enemies would utter before their comeuppance. So it’s been for Erling Haaland and his team, who’ve lost five in a row in all competitions and fallen eight points behind leaders Liverpool. Arne Slot’s side have started well, though they looked woozy after Southampton landed a couple of jabs to go 2-1 up at St. Mary’s the following day. Russell Martin’s side invited them back into the game with two chances presented on a silver platter, however, and Liverpool’s imperiled vibe was casually erased.

The Reds will drop points between now and May, but will anyone be in the same area code to capitalize? Arsenal will need to go on a City-like run of points accumulation over the next couple of months to change the script, while Chelsea are hanging around but may need another season before this young team is ready to sustain a challenge.

The top story, though—the only story considering Guardiola’s renewal of his vows and the phenomenal record he’s built in management across three countries—is that the City boat is rocking. It may require a serious January acquisition to deal with Rodri’s disappearance due to injury: İlkay Gündoğan was the latest pale imitation to slot into Pep’s deep midfield after Mateo Kovačić and others have been asked to try to fill the void. But they’ve got big matches to play in the here and now, before the transfer window pops open. In less than a week, after all, they’re headed to Anfield.

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BONUS COVERAGE:

IPSWICH TOWN 1-1 MAN UNITED

Ruben Amorim’s first minutes on the sideline as manager of Manchester United could scarcely have gone better. The club’s once-talismanic academy product, Marcus Rashford, has endured a torrid few years in match play but popped up in the second minute to give his team a 1-0 lead at Portman Road.

The Red Devils had surged into life, it seemed, buoyed by the honeymoon under interim coach Ruud van Nistelrooy and the arrival of the new full-time boss, playing with the joyous freedom of ten Hag-less existence. But as the first half ground on, Ipswich Town got themselves back into it and more, showing some sharp play to fashion openings in the 18-yard box as United often found themselves reeling just a bit, stretching to get their blocks and keep the hosts out. It ended 1-1, but the Tractor Boys often looked the more likely winners.

They nearly struck when Liam Delap met a low cross with a precocious heel flick from a couple yards out—André Onana denied him dexterously—and in the final minutes when Jack Clarke latched onto a ball floated towards the back post and wheeled around from the byline to find Conor Chaplin for a shot from eight yards that was defanged by a partial block.

It was all a signal that Amorim has a job on his hands, which we all very well knew no matter how well he’s been doing down in Portugal over the last few years. He’s had just a few days with this bunch, and he’ll need time to communicate the method to his 3-4-3 madness. But there’s also just a more basic question here:

Are there enough good players in this United team for them to be good? They probably only have one top player at his position—Bruno Fernandes—along with a crew of promising youngsters: Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho, Amad Diallo. We haven’t seen Leny Yoro yet and he could join that group, but the rest of the squad is mostly veteran players who cannot cover the ground they used to in a league that prizes—demands—physicality.

Manuel Ugarte and Mainoo may prove a better central pairing than Christian Eriksen and Casemiro, who started here, but United just have so much to do. It may come down to whether—working with United’s new-look football executive team under Sir Jim Ratcliffe—Amorim is better at spending £200 million in the next transfer window. Surely they can’t spend it less effectively than they did in Erik ten Hag’s time.⚽︎