⚽︎Friday, October 6: Arsenal vs. Man City Is (Allegedly) a Title Bout
⚽︎Friday, October 6: Arsenal vs. Man City Is (Allegedly) a Title Bout
Plus: VAR disgrace, Newcastle top the Group of Death, a Man United meltdown, and Chelsea scored a goal!
Welcome to THE FOOTBALL WEEKEND, your Friday morning rundown of all the best matches across world football over the coming weekend in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, and more. Get kickoff times and broadcasters, fantasy picks and what to watch for—all in your inbox to mark the beginning of the end of the workweek. Join subscribers from 66 different countries:
A brief reminder that THE FOOTBALL WEEKEND is hosting a first-ever watch party for ARSENAL vs. MAN CITY at Berry Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Sunday. If you’re in the area, come through for one of the biggest matches of the season. Kickoff is 11:30am ET.
We’ll have more on that game below, but first…..
THE HEADLINES
—Erik ten Hag might find himself walking the plank after it all went wrong again in midweek. Manchester United fell 3-2 to Turkish heavyweights Galatasaray at home in the Champions League, and the topsy-turvy match report contains a succession of Red Devil nightmares: an André Onana mistake led to a sending off for Casemiro and a penalty, and though Mauro Icardi missed it, there was still time for summer signing Sofyan Amrabat to give the ball away and see the Italian striker streak through on goal and chip it by Onana, who went down early to make it easy for him. Oh, and Wilfried Zaha came back to his old club to score.
One summer arrival provided a bright spot, as Rasmus Hojland looked a handful throughout, particularly when smashing in a header after a run from the halfway line on the break and with a powerful lung-busting dribble from behind the halfway line—holding off a defender—to mini-chip the keeper and make it 2-1. It was a dare-I-say Haalandesque performance, just what United fans were hoping to see when he arrived from Atalanta for £64m in the summer. But the look on ten Hag’s face as he marched off the field at full time, boos ringing in his ears, told the story. He may not be long for Old Trafford, just a week after TFW defended keeping Marcus Rashford in fantasy because this troubled crew might be “getting their shite together.” They are 10th in the table, their worst league start in 34 years, and bottom of their Champions League group with zero points after two matches. All their left backs are injured, and ETH received a dreaded Vote of Confidence from the club this week.
—Chelsea scored. This is a major headline, and not just because $108-million man Mykhailo Mudryk got his first goal eight months after joining the club. (It was a good one.) The two that Chelsea got were just their 6th and 7th of the season, their first in 38 days, to the point that they found themselves getting mocked by Domino’s Pizza. Thus Monday’s win over Fulham represented the two-time European champions’ revenge over a multinational pizza company.
—Racing Club de Lens were warriors in a famous Champions League win on Tuesday, making a fortress of the Estadio Bollaert-Delelis to dispatch the swanky crew in town. In a roiling blood-and-gold atmosphere, they defended ferociously and broke out to strike at Arsenal when they got the chance. Check out the Ibrahimovic-style acrobatic layoff from Elye Wahi to set up their equalizer after Lens pounced on Arsenal in possession. A woman wept in her yellow and red scarf at full time, the players partied backstage, and even Ligue 1 got involved on behalf of last season’s French runners-up: “FARMERS LEAGUE STRIKES AGAIN,” read the tweet from the league’s official account.
—Kevin De Bruyne may someday return triumphantly from injury, but as far as attacking midfield, it looks like we’ve entered the age of Jude Bellingham and Jamal Musiala. The two 20-year-olds are dominating at Champions League level, pulling the strings and scoring the goals for Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively. They put fear in defenders, attacking multiple at a time on the dribble to take them out of the play. They look a class above anyone who joins them on the pitch, and anyone in their generation until Pedri can get healthy. Bellingham and Musiala have stood out since the days when they played in the same youth teams for England. Musiala ultimately chose to represent Germany, the country of his birth, and you can see these two facing off in the finals of the Champions League and international tournaments for years to come.
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PREMIER LEAGUE: MAN UNITED-BRENTFORD
Saturday 10:00am ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 3:00pm GMT on Talksport 2 (Radio)
United are desperate for a win for all the reasons above, but so are Brentford. Thomas Frank’s side are sliding down the table, a far cry from last year’s performances in the league. Maybe it’s the absence of Ivan Toney, but either way Frank will be sleeping easier than Erik ten Hag. If he loses another match at Old Trafford, he’ll be in serious trouble, not that it will solve many of United’s problems to defenestrate him.
PREMIER LEAGUE: BRIGHTON-LIVERPOOL
Sunday 9:00am ET on Peacock / 2:00pm GMT on Sky Sports
Fourth against sixth in the Premier League, and two teams that score goals. They’ve got 35 between them across seven matches, and they’ll both be trying to get back on track after bruising defeats of different varieties last week.
PREMIER LEAGUE: WEST HAM-NEWCASTLE
Sunday 9:00AM ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 2:00PM GMT on BBC Radio 5
The Toon Army will reluctantly depart their castle for the London Stadium, where West Ham are having a grand old time. Jarrod Bowen is one of the league’s top midfield goal-scorers, while James Ward-Prowse has enjoyed a fine start to life with the Hammers. It’s got them to seventh in the league, one point better off than the Champions League Magpies.
PREMIER LEAGUE: WOLVES-ASTON VILLA
Sunday 9:00am ET on Peacock / 2:00PM GMT
This match offers the opportunity to watch Pedro Neto go to work. The Portuguese winger has climbed off the injury merry-go-round to get himself back into fitness and form, and he’s back to torturing fullbacks down whichever flank he takes up. He got on the ball in his own half against City and ran their defense ragged all the way to the byline, where he created an own goal.
It does Villa a disservice not to mention their likely contribution here, however: they put six past Brighton last week, and Unai Emery has been among the best managers in the league since his arrival just under a year ago. Ollie Watkins is in red-hot scoring form up front, and Moussa Diaby is a livewire. There will be goals.
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MORE HEADLINES
—Newcastle are top of the Group of Death in the Champions League after the electrical charge of St. James’ Park on a Wednesday night shocked the cultured technicians from Paris. Marquinhos had a mare for the first as PSG faltered trying to build play out of the back. Then Big Dan Burn, the towering local lad, powered in a header to make it 2-0. When another Geordie Boy, Sean Longstaff, beat Gianluigi Donnarumma five minutes into the second half, the party was truly on. When asked what he was thinking as he advanced on goal, he replied, “Just smash it as hard as I can.” It finished 4-1 to the Magpies, history for the Toon in Europe.
—Morocco, Portugal, and Spain will host 2030 World Cup, FIFA announced this week, though the tournament’s first three games will be played in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. This is apparently to mark the 100th anniversary of the first World Cup. That was held in Uruguay, whose pitch to co-host with Argentina and Paraguay leaned on the centenary aspect. It’s the first World Cup to be held across multiple continents—three, to be exact—and does this mean some teams will be traveling from Buenos Aires to Casablanca between their first and second matches? The tough travel does channel the 1930 edition: Egypt missed that tournament because they missed their boat.
—Gary Neville has (another) new show where Roy Keane, Ian Wright, Jamie Carragher, and Jill Scott appear to be the regular panel. On this week’s episode, David Beckham joined to talk bringing Lionel Messi to Miami. Becks is busy promoting a new docuseries on his life, out on Netflix now.
—It was a week for politics in European competition, as Celtic F.C. welcomed S.S. Lazio to Glasgow with a make-no-mistake tifo:
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WSL: MAN UNITED-ARSENAL
Friday 2:30pm ET on CBS Sports / 7:30pm GMT on Sky Sports
It’s Matchday Two of the Women’s Super League, featuring last season’s runners-up against third place. Striker Alessia Russo returns to Manchester to face the team she left in July on a free transfer.
MLS: INTER MIAMI-CINCINNATI
Saturday 7:30pm ET on Apple TV+
It’s the GOAT vs. the best team in MLS. Cincinnati secured the Supporters’ Shield (for the most regular-season points) on Wednesday night. Lionel Messi is nursing an injury and has missed four of his last five games, but if he goes, it could be a look into where the level is for the cream of the MLS crop.
LA LIGA: ATLÉTICO MADRID-REAL SOCIEDAD
Sunday 10:15am ET on ESPN+ / 3:15pm GMT on Viaplay
Assuming Girona will fall away at some point, this looks like a genuine Top Four clash in La Liga. Atléti are in an unusual goalscoring run under Diego Simeone with 11 in four matches—Antoine Griezmann, Álvaro Morata, and Ángel Correa have been the main threats—while Sociedad are often a joy to watch. Takefusa Kubo scored a good one as they trashed Basque rivals Athletic Club 3-0 last week and celebrated with the latest fake injury twerk.
SERIE A: NAPOLI-FIORENTINA
Sunday 2:45pm ET on Paramount+ / 7:45pm GMT on TNT Sports 1
The Italian champions fell 3-2 to mighty Real Madrid at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona in midweek, but they've smashed in four goals in each of their previous Serie A bouts. Victor Oshimen continues to score—if not celebrate—following Coconutgate, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia can put on a show from the left wing. In the purple of Fiorentina, Nicolás González is the threat with four goals in six matches.
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DISGRACE AT THE PGMOL
TFW considered headlining this section “VAR CHECK,” but the gag did not convey the appropriate level of disgust. The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) released the snuff film audio tape of an incident in Sunday’s Tottenham-Liverpool match in which the VAR officials completely botched the job when they ruled out Luis Díaz’s strike for Liverpool through poor communication with the on-field referee. Nixing the opening goal of a top-of-the-table clash through sheer bumbling incompetence is not acceptable, though Liverpool’s statement threatening an escalation of action was a bit much and manager Jurgen Klopp’s call for the match to be replayed borders on the absurd.
This is the 13th time PGMOL have gone public with their failings since the introduction of VAR, and while the technology is certainly here to stay, the system built to implement it has been shameful and destructive, both to the “sporting integrity”—as Liverpool put it—and the Premier League as a product. Just a couple of weeks ago, they held up Brentford and Everton’s match for a lengthy VAR review focusing on the wrong moment in the play. In February, Lee Mason forgot to draw the offside lines and failed to rule out an offside Brentford goal against Arsenal. But it becomes a grave matter of international concern when it happens to Liverpool. Granted, they were also hit with two red cards, one of which a Premier League panel subsequently ruled was a faulty decision.
It’s not that the Merseysiders shouldn’t be mad, and it’s not even all about VAR. This past weekend, Nottingham Forest keeper Matt Turner inexplicably avoided giving away a penalty for a scything challenge on Yoane Wissa, a moment reminiscent of the egregious no-call on Matchday 1 when Man United keeper André Onana bulldozed Wolves striker Sasa Kalajdzic in stoppage time. The refs on the field shanked both of those, but where was VAR to back them up? Teams have been robbed of points they won’t get back, including with a lawsuit.
It all suggests a deep rot in the refereeing structures in England. The authorities emphasized crackdowns on time-wasting and talking back to the refs in the lead-up to this season, but maybe they should emphasize getting calls right. There are problems on the continent, particularly with VARs handing out soft penalties, but surely only in the Premier League is the standard of both video and on-pitch refereeing so poor. The solution is not a replay, but changing the structures of this whole thing. A start would be to acknowledge that, just as the players are chosen on merit regardless of their nationality, the referees also don’t need to be English. They need to be the best.
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PREMIER LEAGUE: ARSENAL—MANCHESTER CITY
Sunday 11:30am ET on Peacock / 4:30pm GMT on Sky Sports
Last season’s Top Two each bring setbacks from the past week into this upper-crust battle. Arsenal lost their first match of the season a few days ago, and this will be the third and final match that Man City are without Rodri after he saw a straight red card for his bizarre choking maneuver on Morgan Gibbs-White two weeks back. The Citizens’ trip to Wolves last weekend illustrated how crucial he is as the fulcrum of their midfield; the back line was exposed at times, and some combination of Matheus Nunes, Mateo Kovačić, and Rico Lewis will be asked to shore things up on Sunday.
City have also been exposed down the wings, even in their midweek victory over RB Leipzig. Pep Guardiola moved ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson for career Champions League wins with that one—can you guess the rest of the top five?—but his Many Centerbacks approach may be showing a glitch or two. The Sky Blues went (physically) big for their treble push towards the end of last season, but last weekend Pedro Neto had the beating of Nathan Aké—who usually has himself a game against Arsenal—and Joško Gvardiol didn’t look entirely comfortable at left back in Leipzig. Kyle Walker, a proper right back, also loves to play against the Gunners and is likely to feature. But will it be Aké on the left, or could Rico Lewis step into an inverted fullback role?
The wings are where many of the battles will be fought, even with injury questions over Arsenal’s star widemen. Gabriel Martinelli has yet to return to training following a hamstring injury in mid-September, while Bukayo Saka is a doubt after picking up knocks—and now suspicions of a hamstring issue—in his last three matches. Arsenal fans have been sounding the alarm for months now about the workload Saka’s been asked to bear, as he seems to play every single game for both Arsenal and England, often close to 90 minutes. Supporters will remember past young Arsenal talents whose careers were derailed by injury—and who took promising teams with them. Mikel Arteta may be left ruing his decision to stretch Saka’s durability to the limit one too many times.
If he’s missing, the manager could go for Leandro Trossard on the left and Fabio Vieira on the right, two players of real technical skill—particularly Trossard, a supreme striker of the ball—but who won’t run in behind much to stretch the play. Another option would be to shift Gabriel Jesus out to the right, where he often played for City, and go with Eddie Nketiah or Kai Havertz at striker.
The latter has not hugely impressed while replacing Granit Xhaka in the “Left 8” role in Arsenal’s midfield, and coming into the season, it looked like Arteta might be planning to play Declan Rice and (the now fit-again) Thomas Partey together at the base of midfield in big games. That foundation would allow the creatives farther forward—chiefly Martin Ødegaard—to go express themselves, though it would complicate Oleksandr Zinchenko’s positioning as an inverting left back who wants to come into those spaces in midfield. Could Takehiro Tomiyasu come in to replace him and deal with the threat of Bernardo Silva or Phil Foden down City’s right wing?
It’s strange times for Foden, the 23-year-old Englishman who seemed primed to shine when Kevin De Bruyne was ruled out for the long term with injury. Bernardo is the next man up in terms of experience and creativity in attacking midfield, but Foden can channel De Bruyne’s pace and running with the ball. He’s also clever in his movement, gliding into spaces he can exploit. He has a goal and three assists in seven matches, but Julián Álvarez is (probably) the best player in the Premier League at the moment. Have a look at his free kick against Wolves last week. Or his appearance in midweek, when he came on with 12 minutes to go and within a few of those had ghosted into the lefthand corner of the 18-yard box to curl and dip one into the top right corner of the net.
He is the chief danger man for City as a withdrawn striker, particularly as—who dares say it?—Erling Haaland is not in his best form. He’ll surely punish TFW for saying so, but Craig Dawson showed last week that he can be man-marked, and Arsenal’s powerful centerback partnership of Gabriel and William Saliba may be up for the job. What will concern them is Álvarez and the other deeper runners flowing forward and getting into the box around Haaland. That, and City’s relentless quest to get to the end line for cutbacks.
It should be a tight match despite the significant injury concerns for Arsenal, who have yet to show the kind of fluid passing patterns going forward that defined their 2022/23 season. They and Liverpool must defeat City head-to-head if there’s going to be a new champion this season, and this contest may well come down to the little things. Both these sides have been leaning on some short corner and free-kick routines, sending out two clever attacking midfielders to dribble and combine at the edge of the box rather than launch a cross in. Whoever stays switched on defensively in these moments—and can pull out a bit of magic when they get half-an-opening—will take the match.
The smart money says City: they’ve won their last 12 Premier League matches against the reds from North London. Arsenal haven’t beaten them in this competition since December 2015, when Manuel Pellegrini was managing the Citizens. It’s a remarkable run, particularly in a larger historical context: Before that, of the 187 matches these two had played since their first in November 1893, Arsenal had won 95 of them. That’s nearly 51 percent.
This was not a Big Game in the days of Thierry Henry, but few in English football’s old guard have suffered more than Arsenal for the ascent of the New Money Titans, from José Mourinho and Didier Drogba’s Chelsea in the mid-2000s to the ballad of Emmanuel Adebayor. The Togolese striker got his big-money transfer to Man City in 2009, the first of many to ditch North London for Blue Manchester in that period, and Arsenal supporters could feel the tectonic plates of the English game shifting beneath them. They made their anxieties plain with the vitriol they sent Adebayor’s way, and he returned it by scoring against his old team and running the length of the pitch to knee-slide in their faces.⚽︎