Premier League winners and losers brings the Ten Hag sack chat, Liverpool praise and Everton despair
Liverpool were great, Manchester United were terrible, and Manchester City are already threatening to be more crushingly unstoppably relentless than ever before. And just imagine being an Everton fan right now. Grim.
Winners
Liverpool
Going well, isn’t it? Liverpool’s first two wins under Arne Slot came in games where victory was very much required. Such is the rarefied Barclays air that any less at Ipswich and at home to Brentford would cause rumbling and grumbling to begin.
But within those victories there were still plenty of encouraging signs in the way Arne Slot’s Liverpool went about it. The ruthlessness of the Konate-for-Quansah switch at Ipswich was a real tone-setter and there has been quiet authority to Liverpool’s play since then.
Victories against Ipswich and Brentford can only do so much, though. They were enough to show us Liverpool weren’t about to collapse in a heap and could potentially be very fine indeed. It still needed something more convincing.
And a 3-0 win at Manchester United should do it. A case could be made, if one were so mischievously inclined, that this too was a game any side with serious aspirations ought to win given the state United currently find themselves in. And, sure, there will be plenty more said on that in a later section that some Liverpool fans may find even more enjoyable than this one.
But it is still Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About. It’s still quite something to go there and so thoroughly dismantle them. Doing that as a new manager on the back of an already flawless start makes it impossible not to wonder just how far this can go.
Now go read 16 Conclusions if by some inexplicable oversight you have thus far failed to do so.
Arne Slot
Maybe it’s not that hard to follow a legend. Maybe David Moyes and Unai Emery were either just not up to it or f***ed it up.
Maybe it’s also a bit early to get into this. Maybe it’s also significant that Jurgen Klopp – unlike, it must be said, either Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger – took great care to make sure he left a squad in decent shape for whoever should follow him.
But it’s already clear – and Slot, to be fair, has been repeatedly and plainly unfussed about the transfer activity or lack thereof – is a coach happy to work with that talented squad. A coach happy to imprint upon the squad his own ideas and principles but one clearly recognising that his job at Liverpool is one of evolution not revolution. Nothing needed to be ripped apart and started again here – unlike at United where far, far more could and should’ve been – and Slot knows it.
Luis Diaz
While Darwin Nunez attracts the banter and attention and above all else the memes, it is very often Luis Diaz who has in truth been the least convincing and compelling member of Liverpool’s stacked attack. He came into this season having scored only five Premier League goals since November last year but now has three already in this campaign – a total bettered only by absurd Norwegian robostrikers.
He may have had a fair bit of help from United in scoring his double here but those goals on the back of taking the sort of chance he so often fails to against Brentford last week make him one of the most eye-catching elements of Liverpool’s eye-catching start.
Manchester City
We think West Ham are going to be half-decent this season. We are beyond certain that plenty of good teams will go to the London Stadium and get turned over or at the very least forced to work unbelievably hard to get a result.
And City beat them at walking pace. When the Hammers had the temerity to accidentally equalise, City simply went and scored again. The overriding sense of a second half City spent almost sarcastically in first gear was that any repeat of that foolishness from West Ham would have led to severe repercussions.
As it was, Haaland burst to life to complete his hat-trick and a bloodless 3-1 win that would have been ominous even without the counterpoint of Arsenal’s careless dropping of two home points earlier in the day.
We’re not saying City are definitely going to win the league again; we’re just quite alarmed by how close we are to saying it three games into the season.
Erling Haaland
More goals, more records, another hat-trick. It’s all just utterly preposterous. Every time he does something like this there’s a new record that just leaps out jarringly. The fact he now has more Premier League goals than Luis Suarez is this week’s breath-taker.
It somehow seems even more absurd than the fact only three players in history have more Premier League hat-tricks than Haaland, and that this number will most likely be two at worst by the time the year is out.
But the shocks just keep on coming. His next goal takes him past Eric Cantona. The one he scores 10 minutes after that takes him level with Chris Wood AND Danny Ings AND Chris Armstrong.
He has broken the league.
Newcastle
A difficult summer and an unsatisfactory end to the summer transfer window left Newcastle in need of something of a pick-me-up. They are neither the first nor last team to find a visit from Dr Tottenham to be most restorative.
It may not have matched the shock and awe of their last two demolitions of Tottenham at St James’ Park but is arguably more important for that.
This was Newcastle in third gear able to grind a victory against a direct rival. Able to outwit and outsmart their opponents.
The 6-1 and 4-0 wins were enormous fun, but there may be a more lasting satisfaction – and significance – this 2-1 win earned through sweat and endeavour. And a little bit through Tottenham being stupid, sure.
Bournemouth
Any time you’re ahead of Manchester City in a table, things are going pretty, pretty, pretty well. Bournemouth are currently the only team other than City to have won a game after falling behind this season, and it would be fair to say City overturning Ipswich’s early lead at the Etihad was a touch less dramatic and impressive than the absurdity Bournemouth inflicted upon poor old Everton at Goodison Park at the weekend.
It was not, for 85 minutes, a particularly good Bournemouth performance. Indeed, there may be valid concerns about the ease with which they were outplayed for so long by so poor a side. But when the ending is as magnificent as that it seems churlish to dwell upon what went before.
A first win of the season after a pair of draws sees Bournemouth handily placed going into the international break and already proud owners of one of the great madnesses of the season.
Brentford
Two home wins either side of a defeat at Anfield that can be considered largely irrelevant to Brentford’s wider aims for the season has provided ample further evidence that Ivan Toney’s departure need not inconvenience them.
They will have harder afternoons than this but they boast a compelling array of attacking options that elevates them above the more humdrum who dwell within the Barclays mid-table.
There seems little reason to fear a repeat of last year’s flirtations with the relegation zone, and every reason to expect more afternoons as straightforwardly pleasant as their stroll past Southampton.
Bryan Mbeumo
Two goals in front of the departed but observing Toney to take him joint-top of the ‘Without Haaland’ goalscoring table (i.e. the only fair goalscoring table) after a difficult end to last season.
Losers
Manchester United
Not just bad, but catastrophically bad. And not just catastrophically bad, but catastrophically bad in all the ways that could have been predicted. Toothless in attack, over-run in midfield, clueless in defence.
And precious little sign that the man on the sidelines could do anything about it.
In time we still expect United to collect the fruits of their summer transfer efforts, but how far it can carry them above and beyond their current (miserable) level remains to be seen. And whether Erik ten Hag is the right man to carry out the task more dubious still.
There are easier assignments ahead after the international break, with Southampton, Palace and a Tottenham experiencing their own crisis of confidence next in the Premier League. But there are no guarantees now what that might bring after a start that has delivered a wildly unconvincing win over Fulham and a pair of contrasting yet painful defeats.
What is certain is that it’s United who will spend the next two weeks as the centre of attention, as the season’s first designated crisis club and that whatever they hope to achieve this season will have to be accomplished playing catch-up.
Erik ten Hag
We can’t be sure if the things he says represent genuine delusion or are just a desperate attempt at deflection or grasping for time, but no explanation is particularly good for Ten Hag.
There is mitigation to this defeat. It’s not his fault his desperately needed midfield reinforcement wasn’t signed in time for this pivotal clash. It’s not his fault that Luke Shaw is injured, again.
But that would all feel more valid if we hadn’t watched Ten Hag’s United turn in this precise performance week after week for a year. This was not a freak occurrence easily explained away as one of those things. There are simply too many of those things now.
Ten Hag may yet survive and ride this out for a while, maybe even the whole season. But if he does it’s likely to have more to do with United’s new owners doubling down on their error of the summer rather than admitting to it.
Casemiro
That surely has to be the end. The hope that he might be able to recover something of his old self by losing a few pounds has been exposed, and that training video of a man desperately diving into last-ditch tackles appears increasingly, achingly poignant. He’s gone, and it’s just one of many United f**k-ups that they didn’t acknowledge and address this in the summer when it was in plain view.
Manuel Ugarte will likely provide a solution, in time, but must now hit the ground running for a team in dire straits and one which was never going to need much nonsense at the start of the season to find themselves in full cracked-badge crisis mode.
Lads, it’s Tottenham
Should have beaten Leicester. Could very easily have beaten Newcastle. One point that could and perhaps should have been six and a team that looks so beatable in all the ways that might have been expected.
The bald facts are that Ange Postecoglou’s side have been a mid-table team now for far longer than they were anything else. They may be fun, they may be entertaining, but they now appear to be quite considerably less than their expensively assembled parts, too easily repelled and too easily breached.
They are also possessed of a quite staggering naivety that at times veers alarmingly toward the stupid.
Ange Postecoglou might have succeeded only in building the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham ever.
It all makes this 2-1 defeat at Newcastle so much more vexing from a long-term view than either of their more obviously painful defeats at St James’ Park in the last two seasons. The 6-1 was inflicted on a broken, gaslit, demoralised squad being led by a confused and befuddled caretaker who should never have been entrusted with the task. The 4-0 came to a team that could be argued to have just run out of steam after a rollercoaster first year playing a new game a new way.
This one comes so early and so infuriatingly on the back of the previous away-day frustration at Leicester that it feels like it reveals something more deep and vital than those two.
Newcastle didn’t even have to play well to beat them. And that’s something pretty much all half-decent teams have now worked out. Stay in the game against Tottenham and it’s like waiting for Homer Simpson to do something stupid.
Tottenham’s only wins in their last 14 Premier League games have been against Luton, Nottingham Forest, Burnley, Sheffield United and Everton to go with draws against West Ham and Leicester and seven defeats against Fulham, Newcastle (twice), Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Man City.
It tells an increasingly compelling story of a mid-table team that can just about generally be relied upon to overpower the dregs but with no answer when put up against any of the clubs they might consider their peers.
Everton
Surely now less a football club and more an exercise in finding new and appalling ways to inflict misery upon a fanbase.
The defeats against Brighton and Spurs were bad enough, but at least no Everton fan was subjected to unreasonable quantities of cruel hope during those paddlings. Now they have contrived to lose a game they not just led 2-0 after 85 minutes but one which they had up to that point thoroughly dominated.
It should, if anything, have been a more convincing scoreline. It seemed a churlish criticism, though, of a team that would surely just be happy to get that first win on the board ahead of the international break and hope to use it as a launch pad for the season ahead.
But then came the capitulation. And what was so horrifically unpleasant about it was the grim sense of inevitability. From the moment Bournemouth pulled one back, you sensed the arrival of the equaliser. From there, it was but the tiniest leap of imagination to know what would come next.
A team that didn’t concede a home goal in the final two months of last season conceding three in 10 minutes to turn three points to ash and leave fans bewildered and horrified but far, far less surprised by this latest turn for a miserable than anyone should be.
With Everton it no longer seems to be a case of if they will let you down, but how and how badly.
Arsenal
A draw against a fellow unbeaten side after being reduced to 10 men doesn’t sound like a disaster, but Arsenal exist in a really quite unpleasant reality where absolutely nothing less than victory will do in almost any game they play.
It’s one of the reasons the whole Celebration Police thing is so dispiriting. Because that’s not just about the mean-spirited, bitter policing of joy but also a deliberate refusal to acknowledge and understand that these celebrations are often primarily about relief when the margin of error has been reduced to such microscopic levels.
The focus on Declan Rice’s red card is inevitable but shouldn’t be used to mask the fact this was not a good performance, and the response to that setback was not one of title winners.
It was not the officials who decided to retreat into themselves, it was not the officials who failed to track runners, and it was not the officials who had failed to put the game safe before it all went awry.
Declan Rice
His first Premier League red card is a costly one, unnerving Arsenal as it did in this game as well as ruling him out of the North London Derby after the international break. Arsenal really should still have enough to see off this current version of Spurs, but the greater nervousness around that will be understandable given the significance of Rice’s absence for the second half of their 2-2 draw at the Emirates early last season.
Given the previously discussed wafer-thin margins of error at which Arsenal must now operate, it’s up there with the worst possible games he specifically could have missed and the manner of his dismissal is already sure to come up again and again should Arsenal narrowly miss out again in the final reckoning this season.
What he did was, of course, silly. And let’s not forget the first yellow card came for a deeply reckless foul that sat very much in No Complaints territory.
And we have only limited sympathy with the ‘others get away with it’ argument.
It’s really no different to the speeding motorist argument. It was a daft thing to do at a daft moment. That others have and will again get away with it doesn’t mean it wasn’t silly to give the officials a decision to make.
And in time we’re all going to come to regret Rice’s actions as every online Arsenal fan constantly updates his or her personal list of Players Who Kicked The Ball Away And Didn’t Get Booked for the rest of the campaign.
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