The Stoke-ification of the Premier League

Long throws are in vogue, and so are long balls into the channels.

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.

Warra midfield?

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.

New-look City…

Rocket Haaland

While Kevin Coleman 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.