Premier League winners and losers: Liverpool strengthen grip as Dr Tottenham saves another patient
Liverpool and Brighton take top winner honours, while it should take about 0.3 seconds to realise which reliably stupid bunch of stupids are getting both barrels in the losers.
Winners
Liverpool
Can’t be many title-challengers who’ve had two better consecutive weekends without actually facing one of their direct rivals. As Liverpool have ticked off a pair of ticklish home games against Brighton and Aston Villa to finally and decisively put to bed any lingering ‘been a kind fixture list, though’ caveats about where they currently sit, City have crashed and burned at Bournemouth and Brighton while Arsenal have collected one point from a possible six.
We’re not quite sure we’re truly ready yet to declare Liverpool favourites in Arne Slot’s first season in charge, but the bookies absolutely are and we guess it’s kind of up to them really.
Liverpool are of course the only team to break the City Premier League monopoly in the last seven years, and they did it in crushing style in 2019/20. That season Liverpool both profited from but also undeniably to some extent triggered City’s collapse, and Pep Guardiola’s passive-aggressive grumpiness about Liverpool’s form this season does lead you to wonder whether something similar might be happening again this time around.
Certainly the combination of fixture computer and TV schedulers set this Super Saturday up perfectly in allowing us the ideal televised revolution of seeing Guardiola’s latest defeat lead straight into Liverpool’s latest success against an Aston Villa side and manager absolutely nobody takes lightly.
The manner of Liverpool’s win, providing as it did further examples of the intoxicating alchemy that appears to be taking place between Slot’s preference for studied control of games and the muscle memory of Klopp’s wilder ride, reinforced the belief that something truly special is brewing at Anfield currently while plunging not one but two rivals into CRISIS.
Only Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has had a better start at a Premier League club and there is surely no greater honour.
Brighton
Never panicked when trailing to what has inexplicably managed to become a rare Erling Haaland Premier League goal over recent weeks, and always felt like they had that comeback in their locker.
Ridiculously, Brighton very much appear to be At It Again, succeeding in not just riding out the departure of seemingly pivotal manager and vital players but positively thriving from it.
Tantalising possibilities abound for so many clubs in that bunched-up Premier League table, but few more obviously than Brighton.
Matt O’Riley
There have definitely been worse Premier League debuts.
Ipswich
A win at last. Much of the attention inevitably falls on the ridiculously stupid team they beat – and don’t worry, we’ll get to them later, at great and punishing length, whether anyone wants it or not, but it wouldn’t do to overlook the fact that there was nothing smashy or grabby about this win.
Ipswich deserved it. They were much the better side in the first half and could easily have gone in front earlier than they did. Having established a 2-0 lead that entirely reflected the balance of first-half play, they then defended it gamely against a side that – for all its many, many faults – do have something about them when it comes to the overturning of deficits.
Ten games without a win was clearly sub-optimal, but there had also been enough signs that this was coming somewhere down the line pretty soon. Ipswich had drawn five of those first 10 and been competitive enough in plenty of their defeats.
The challenge now, of course, is to turn this delightful one-off into something tangible, and the opportunity is there. Ipswich face Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Wolves before Christmas.
Liam Delap
It really is a very good time to be a young English striker scoring Premier League goals. If England are – as seems likely – going to largely skip the post-Kane generation of strikers – your Watkinses, your Solankes – and move straight on to the next gen as happened with Kane himself when he usurped Wayne Rooney, then Delap has a clear run at it.
Cole Palmer is the only England player with more Premier League goals this season than Delap’s six at just 21 years of age in a struggling team. Danny Welbeck also has six but is 33 and much as we’d love it to be the case we must grudgingly concede that he is probably not the future of England goalscoring.
Delap really could be.
Newcastle counter-attacks
We remain in the to-be-convinced camp about Newcastle this season but it’s been an excellent couple of weeks. Last week’s win over Arsenal showed their smarts, while this weekend they were perhaps, in a strange way, beneficiaries of Nottingham Forest’s shifting ambition after their brilliant start.
After a fine first half of being Nottingham Forest, they conceded a scrappy equaliser and forgot themselves. Crucially, they also forgot who they are playing. If there’s one thing Newcastle absolutely can and will do with great relish and punishing quality, it is counter-attack at pace against any team foolish enough to allow them to do so. Forest were those fools and were duly punished.
Newcastle sounded a warning when Alexander Isak shinned a volley wide when at his very best he would surely have provided the crisp final touch a slick Newcastle move deserved, but the reprieve was temporary. Joelinton scored a second, Forest chased the game even harder, and Ashley Barnes added a third.
It could have been even more in the end, but three was more than enough. Back-to-back wins have a big impact on that insanely congested Premier League table, and Newcastle now go into the break looking up and with confidence renewed after an iffy few weeks.
Joelinton
Always a strange one to remember Joelinton was bought as, and massively failed as, a striker before becoming a powerhouse midfielder and now a truly versatile all-round asset. Pressed into service as a wide player in the last couple of games and has let nobody down before taking his goal with precisely the sort of aplomb so conspicuously lacking when that was actually his job.
We’re excited to see where he pops up next. Right-back, we think. Then goalkeeper. Just not up front.
Eddie Howe
Wins over high-flying Arsenal and Nottingham Forest since we fingered him as the Sack Circus replacement we all need in our lives after Erik Ten Hag was finally put out of his misery. Probably what spurred him on.
Manchester United
A comfortable routine win where everything just goes quietly and effectively to plan with the result almost never in doubt. ‘Snice.
Ruud van Nistelrooy
There can be few grumbles with his four-game interregnum. The fans obviously adore him for obvious reasons, and United have been absolutely fine in his four games. The oddity of it all is that perhaps the most compelling and significant performance came in the one game he didn’t win – a 1-1 draw with this version of Chelsea counting as a far more significant act of managerial prowess than a couple of comfy home wins over Leicester and a trickier-than-it-ought-to-have-been Europa success against PAOK.
But there’s no denying that a potentially awkward spell with Amorim as king across the water has been negotiated pretty much perfectly. He now comes in knowing a bit more about the squad he will inherit with no damage done to results, while also inflicting that damaging defeat on City in what was really his first game as United manager.
What happens next for Van Nistelrooy is unclear but if he does leave Old Trafford he can do so with head held high.
Brentford’s home form
It is a truly remarkable thing. Brentford’s 3-2 win over Bournemouth, in which they overturned 1-0 and 2-1 deficits, sees them boast the Premier League’s finest home record.
They’ve got more home points and more home goals than anyone, which is wild enough in itself, but they’ve also conceded more home goals than anyone bar Wolves. They’ve conceded eight goals in their last three home games, which seems quite bad, but they’ve won the bloody lot – 5-3 against Ipswich, 4-3 against Wolves, and now 3-2 against Bournemouth. It’s ridiculous fun and they are obliged to keep this up for all our sakes.
There have been 29 goals in six games at the Gtech this season – six more than at any other ground and more than the entire season total for Liverpool or Nottingham Forest or Newcastle or Manchester United or Everton or Crystal Palace or Southampton.
Throw in the fact that the country’s best and most entertaining home team has also lost all five of their away games, and you’ve got something truly special.
Arsenal, ish
We really weren’t at all sure where to put Arsenal this week, but we’re taking the glass-half-full approach that their recent failings in general and this weekend in particular could have had far graver consequences and therefore they emerge just about in credit.
They could very easily have ended this weekend eighth in the table, 10 points adrift of Liverpool and seven behind Manchester City. That those numbers are instead fourth, nine and four means even the sting of failing to hold on for all three points at Chelsea is numbed significantly.
There is simply no doubt that a nine-point gap to Liverpool is not the same thing as a nine-point gap to Man City would be. Arsenal have 19 points from 11 games having won less than half of them. They have led in nine games and won only five. They are not playing that well, but they retain a live interest in the title race that, really, they could have reasonably expected to have entirely gone based on those numbers.
But really the main reason they go in the winners is…
Martin Odegaard
Arsenal’s ‘injury crisis’’ was always a bit overblown. They had a few injuries, which is normal and not part of The Conspiracy. It’s why squads exist. But it’s also true that not all injuries are created equal. Just as City without Rodri are nothing like the same beast, so too Arsenal without Odegaard.
They’re completely different players of course, but both are so utterly integral to the way their teams play that you only really notice it when it’s taken away and then again when it’s restored. Odegaard makes Arsenal tick in a way nobody else in that squad can. He is what elevates them from the ‘Mourinho-lite’ physical force to something more vibrant and multi-dimensional.
That he got through the full game at Chelsea before the international break and if anything grew in significance as the game wore on is an absolutely massive plus for Arsenal. His assist for Gabriel Martinelli’s goal was sumptuous and just one element of a hugely encouraging all-round display.
Now for goodness’ sake get him out of that Norway squad and then – but only then, let’s keep our priorities in order here people – read 16 Conclusions.
Chelsea
For Chelsea, it felt more compellingly an outcome that sat in the ‘point gained’ rather than ‘two points lost’ camp despite being the home team. Most obviously in any 1-1 draw you’re likelier to be the cheerier if you score rather than concede the equaliser, while there are obvious pre-season-ambition considerations when it comes to weighing up Chelsea and Arsenal sitting next to each other in the table with near identical overall records.
But there’s another related factor here, and that is the way Chelsea have now navigated a difficult run of games without losing any ground at all in the top-four race which is really the one they’re running this season. Five points from three games against Newcastle, Man United and Arsenal after defeat at Anfield has been enough to keep them ticking over, and after the international break comes the chance to pounce with Leicester, Southampton, silly Spurs, Brentford (at Stamford Bridge, importantly) and Everton all on the pre-Christmas checklist.
Pedro Neto
Should have had an assist for the first-half cross that so magnificently picked out Malo Gusto three yards out, and then got his first Premier League goal for Chelsea with a shot swept home emphatically and unerringly from 25 yards. It was a great finish, with an odd sense of inevitability about it that doesn’t tally with the distance. We’re really struggling to put our finger on it but from the moment he shaped to shoot it just screamed goal. There was a weird penalty kick quality to it, perhaps in part due to Arsenal still working out who was marking who after Chelsea’s substitutions had shuffled their attacking hand, leaving Neto with far too much time and space to do what he did.
Anyway, nice goal.
Jordan Pickford
Nobody loves an international break more than Jordan Pickford and he warmed up for it in fine style with six saves and a nice clean sheet against West Ham.
Wolves and VAR
Maybe it’s not so bad after all, hmm? HMMM? Maybe the officials and VAR aren’t just out to get poor little Wolves after all – subconsciously or otherwise.
Big win, though, in the battle of the bottom two and it’s now five points from three games after just one point from the first eight. And now a win on the board without even having to rely on the inevitable upcoming freebie from Spurs.
Fulham
Some care does have to be taken not to focus too much on league positions right now given how bunched up the table has become, with more points separating second from third than third from 13th.
But what you absolutely can do is consider the vibes, and for Fulham and Marco Silva those vibes are currently unquestionably good.
They have been the Premier League’s most reliably mid-table team in the last couple of years and that is in all likelihood where they will land as the season’s stagger unwinds but after 11 games they sit one point behind Chelsea and Arsenal, two clear of Spurs and three clear of Manchester United. That is undeniably decent.
Losers
Dr Tottenham
Oh, mate. A couple of weeks ago we flagged up the potential of Dr Tottenham making the short trip to Crystal Palace, which duly arrived, but even we didn’t expect the Doc to be accepting appointments at his own surgery like this. We are, frankly, kicking ourselves. Of course we should have seen this coming.
From the moment we glanced at the league table and the weekend’s fixtures on Friday and thought to ourselves ‘Spurs could be third or tenth by Sunday night’ we should absolutely 100% have known that one of those was therefore clearly what would come to pass.
This was, in hindsight, a powerful alignment of just about every Spursy force imaginable. A game against a team not just without a Premier League win this season but without a Premier League win for 22 years and in the last game before an international break should alone have been enough to alert us.
But factor in the frankly undeserved opportunity to climb above both Chelsea and Arsenal? No other side can be so entirely relied upon to look that gift horse squarely in the mouth and say not today, thank you.
Spurs were, you won’t need us to tell you, utterly rotten against Ipswich. Nobody else in this league comes anywhere close to the current chasm that exists between Spurs’ best football and their worst. And they are more than capable of showing both in the same game, although admittedly not on this occasion.
At their best, Spurs play football beyond everyone outside the current top four and quite possibly beyond even them. Has anyone played better in a single half of football this season than Spurs did against Villa last week? Really not sure.
But their worst is just unspeakably, unwatchably, unbearably bad. And here they may even have dug through their already deeply sunken floor.
Had they won this game and gone into the international break in a dizzy third place, we would have urged caution and suggested it wasn’t perhaps a true reflection of where they really sit as the table concertinas behind Liverpool and City. So it’s only fair we don’t tee off too much about them sitting tenth now, but the optics are terrible and the missed opportunity undeniable.
Since that ludicrous run at the start of last season – one which in hindsight did have far more fragility than anyone was perhaps willing to acknowledge given the hard work Spurs made of wins over very poor Sheffield United and Luton sides as well as the very acknowledged freakishness of the win against Liverpool – Spurs have just never been able to string a proper run of proper results together. It’s just always one eye-catchingly brilliant step forward and two mortifying shuffles back.
Tottenham pre-interlull
We had to dig further into that lament we’ve heard over the last 24 hours from Spurs fans about always losing the last game before the international break so that there are two whole weeks to stew in the misery of it with nothing to distract you apart from some unwanted Carsleyball. It felt instinctively very much like one of those confirmation bias things, one of those miseries all fans always believe are unique to their own club – like hitting the first man at corners or not making decisive/early enough substitutions.
But, as very often turns out to be the case with Spurs, they actually are That Club. This one is actually very real. This is now the fifth in-season international break in a row that Spurs have gone into on the back of a defeat. And they’re not just regular defeats either. There’s some absolute doozies in here, look.
Tottenham 1-2 Ipswich
Brighton 3-2 Tottenham – from 2-0 up, of course
Newcastle 2-1 Tottenham
Fulham 3-0 Tottenham
Wolves 2-1 Tottenham – with those Wolves goals coming in the 91st and 97th minutes.
The good news for Spurs fans, we guess, is at least there isn’t another one of the bastards until March. The bad news is that it’s preceded by another trip to Fulham, where another besh*tting of the entirety of the bed can already be inked in.
Ange Postecoglou
What is far less certain, though, is whether Big Ange ‘Mate’ Postecoglou will be the man to oversee said beshatting of bedsheets at the Cottage. He’s lucky, really, that Spurs fans in general hate Daniel Levy so much that he rather than the manager remains the primary focus of the current anger.
Postecoglou was willing to take responsibility for this latest defeat, as he pretty much had to, but he should really be under far more pressure. Spurs have now taken just 56 points from the last 39 Premier League games, with 17 wins and defeats apiece.
And the overall trend is, if anything, downward; over the last 18 league games – very nearly a half-season of evidence – that record slips further to seven wins and 10 defeats yielding just 22 points.
It is nowhere near good enough, no matter how watchable it often might be. Having handed Crystal Palace a win after eight games without one, he’s now allowed Ipswich a Premier League win after 22 years without one.
Those two results alone – defeats against sides who have between them registered zero wins in their other 20 league games this season – could absolutely constitute a sacking offence and they are far from outliers in an overall picture stretching back a very long way now.
The lack of obvious compelling candidate to take over and the tantalising glimpses Spurs do still occasionally provide mean it probably remains fair enough to stick with Postecoglou – for at least as long as he continues to make a decent stab at the cup competitions that he always wins in his second season everywhere anyway.
But we grow increasingly convinced that there is no long-term success coming Tottenham’s way from this manager or this football. For those in the Mailbox who wondered why Spurs didn’t get more credit after the win over Villa; yeah, this is why. Because this is what Spurs do, because this is what Spurs are.
Manchester City
Four defeats in a row, and they can’t even really grumble about a single one of them. Yes, losing Rodri is a desperate blow to City’s entire way of playing football but it’s also just not really good enough for a deliberately small squad compiled at eye-watering cost to be this reliant on one Real Madrid-baiting midfielder, no matter how otherworldly his gifts.
These are players and a manager who could and should have come up with a better solution than they’ve managed so far. The collapse at Brighton was perhaps the most damning defeat yet, because City had actually got themselves into a position to arrest the slide. From the moment Brighton equalised, you sensed what would happen next. That City were so short on confidence and belief that the Seagulls could absolutely go and get the winner that duly arrived. Everyone in that stadium felt it. That’s a really bad thing for a team of City’s heft; the aura has gone and it’s hard to see how or when it might be restored.
And there’s also the absolute raging certainty that this gets worse before it gets better, because City’s first game back is against Spurs at the Etihad and you don’t need us to tell you what is 100 million per cent guaranteed to happen there with Spurs being such complete rollercoaster pricks right now.
Pep Guardiola
Is the fatigue that did for Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool now getting to Guardiola? You do have to wonder. He’s been there eight years now. It is an eternity in the modern game. It is as long as his Barcelona and Bayern Munich reigns combined. He has won all there is to win and has nothing left to prove.
What he has, is an ageing squad in need of a rebuild. Klopp, faced with the same situation, realised he just didn’t have the energy to build another great team at Liverpool. What he did was make sure the foundations he left were solid, something from which Arne Slot is now a conspicuous and grateful beneficiary.
It’s not certain Guardiola will or even can do likewise at City. There are greater off-field uncertainties at play here, of course, thanks to the 115 charges. But on field the situation is different too. They are not suddenly a bad team, but they are suddenly an ageing one. There are players who have been absolutely crucial to Guardiola’s success approaching the end of their City careers at the same time as he appears to be. Kyle Walker appears done as any kind of halfway reliable elite-level footballer. The 34-year-old’s contract is up in the summer, as is that of 33-year-old Kevin De Bruyne and the manager himself.
Erling Haaland has made no secret of what he considers his pre-destined career path, while John Stones, Mateo Kovacic, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva are all now the wrong side of 30.
Sure, those are just examples from the gloomier end of a squad that also contains Rico Lewis, Josko Gvardiol, Savinho, Jeremy Doku and Oscar Bobb and a gaggle of centre-backs in what should be their late-20s peak.
But there’s unquestionably a rebuild that needs to take place over the next couple of years, and it’s one Guardiola has shown little interest in committing to. Which is fair enough, but City could really do with some certainty now from somewhere and one way or another the time approaches for Guardiola to provide it.
Aston Villa
Let’s take a bit of care with this current Villa crisis. They’re still very well placed in the Champions League and are one point off third place in the Premier League. It’s all going to be okay.
But it is also a four-game losing run now for a team that had lost just one of its previous 13 in all competitions this season.
Going out of the Carabao is careless, given the opportunity it clearly provides for a team enjoying a good spell to achieve tangible trophy-cabinet success, but no disaster. That’s even more true of a Champions League defeat at Club Brugge rendered almost entirely moot by both the format and Villa’s own previous efforts.
And in isolation Premier League defeats at Tottenham and Liverpool hardly scream crisis point either. But there were worrying elements to it all. That Champions League defeat, clearly with one eye on this Liverpool game, would be easier to accept if there had been something tangible to show for it at Anfield.
Spurs’ last couple of results probably do still say more about them than Villa because they did play unreasonably well in that second half, but there were still reasons for concern in the ease with which Postecoglou’s side sauntered away to victory having trailed at half-time.
Villa are a side that look like they could do with a result to steady the nerves, and now they have to wait two weeks for that chance.
Nottingham Forest’s hubris
Like Simba, they have forgotten who they are. There is no panic and nothing is f***ed after a second defeat in 11 leaves them fifth rather than third in the Premier League table, but the way they started chasing the game and played so entirely into Newcastle’s counter-attacking hands (can hands counter-attack?) after conceding a scruffy set-piece equaliser was a first real sign of a costly loss of perspective.
There was nothing about that first Newcastle goal that needed to prompt such panic in a team that has defended so well as a team all season. Yet they immediately set about chasing that lost lead with reckless, uncharacteristic abandon against a team with few peers when it comes to punishing over-committed opponents.
It’s a rare and forgivable blip, but one Nuno and his team must learn from. As Jamie Carragher said very obviously but undeniably correctly of Nuno after Newcastle’s third goal: “He doesn’t like his team conceding on the counter-attack; he likes them scoring on the counter-attack.”
He’s funny like that, is Nuno.
West Ham and Everton
Misery loves company.
Crystal Palace
Have palpably failed to build on that impressive win against Spurs, presumably due to having to now once again play against teams that are not Spurs.
Southampton
A ninth defeat in 11 games, and a particularly six-pointy one at that, for the first team this season that truly looks condemned. There are lots of other teams we fear for, we really do, but only Southampton appear entirely, irrevocably doomed.
