Football
The Premier League is five matchweeks down as it heads into the newly elongated first international break of the season.
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That’s enough times for early narratives and crises to take hold.
This game makes fools of us all. Obviously we all know already who’s winning the league, who’s going down and which managers are on the chopping block.
Well, at least we like to think so.
Last weekend was particularly dramatic in the Premier League. Champions Arsenal suffered the first defeat of their title defence at Brighton, Brentford hammered Chelsea and Manchester United’s stuttering start to the season wobbled once again in London.
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Worst Premier League overreactions from first month
‘Man City look unstoppable’
It became a reflexive part of the soccer discourse in the UK to rhetorically ask «How can anyone compete with Man City?» whenever Pep Guardiola’s great team got on one of their ominous winning runs. Six titles in seven seasons legitimised that dread, even if the fact that three of those were won on the final day somewhat undermined the premise.
Enzo Maresca could not have asked for a better start to life as Guardiola’s successor. Sunday’s helter-skelter 5-3 win over Sunderland made it five wins out of five for the Premier League leaders. Throw in the Champions League and Carabao Cup wins over Porto and Norwich City and it’s seven out of seven. But this isn’t the same City as Guardiola’s team. The player turnover has been huge, the club are two years removed from their last Premier League title and the playing style in England’s top division has moved away from the one Guardiola inspired and dominated. Manchester City are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
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Let’s rewind a month to the raft of pre-season predictions. Barely anyone had City winning the league; plenty had them finishing below Manchester United (more on them later) or outside of the top four altogether. The receipts are easy to find. Granted, City had an excellent end to the transfer window after most of those calls, adding Enzo Fernandez and Ayyoub Bouaddi to Elliot Anderson in a no-expense-spared midfield refit. Iliman Ndiaye has also hit the ground running since joining from Everton on deadline day.
But this is not some indomitable machine. City needed a late comeback to overcome Bournemouth, were lucky to beat newly promoted Coventry, and didn’t look fantastic in the Manchester derby before Phil Foden was sent off and United had no idea what on earth to do with their man advantage. Then there was the whole VAR fiasco around the winning goal. In all of those matches, and in the high-octane shootout with Sunderland, Maresca’s team showed serious character to get the job done in various trying circumstances, something an array of enviable individual quality allows. City’s most complete, dominant performance came against Crystal Palace, but this looks like being an incredibly difficult season for the Eagles.
Legitimate and strong contenders? Absolutely. Maresca has handled a daunting task superbly so far. But don’t claim this City are a sure thing right now because they’re nothing of the sort.
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‘Arsenal have been found out’
As much as the word will forever be associated with the club, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal team have never looked invincible. They don’t score enough goals and leave too many games down to fine margins to ever put opponents completely out of the conversation. But they are an admirably hard-edged and streetwise team of stars who are a nightmare to play against.
That’s what made Brighton ransacking the Gunners’ day at the seaside so shocking. Fabian Hurzeler’s side had the time of their lives, won 3-0 and could have scored more. Arsenal don’t lose like this.
However, one horrible Saturday afternoon does not alter the overall picture of a very impressive start by the champions. Their wins at Aston Villa and Sunderland were hard-fought, but they emerged with three points from fixtures where they took one combined last season. They came from behind to beat a Chelsea side with their tails up. Aside from the opening night slapping down of Coventry, there have been no gimmes in this opening five.
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There will be talk of Hurzeler having hit upon a “blueprint” to disrupt Arsenal and, no doubt, other teams will try some of the same moves after the international break. But Brighton are an intensely well-drilled team with a very clear playing identity. How many of those are there in the division? Could Manchester United (honestly, we’re getting to them) try the same thing and achieve the same result if they played Arsenal tomorrow? Don’t be silly.
Brighton, Leeds, Brentford and Sunderland have all caught the eye with excellent performances over the past couple of weeks. What all those teams have in common in this league of flux are settled playing squads who are very familiar with the clear ideas of a manager secure in his post and operating with complete authority. Now, which team in the Premier League does that description apply to more than any other?
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‘This is the worst ever Man United’
Poor Gary Neville. We’ve all got a bit hot-headed and said silly things when our team are playing terribly. Most of us don’t have the misfortune of doing this in front of a television audience of millions when we’re supposed to be working as a vaguely impartial and insightful pundit.
Was United’s grim 15 minutes after halftime against Fulham, when Senne Lammens and Lisandro Martinez turned into a couple of the Keystone Cops, the worst they’ve ever been? As covered elsewhere on this website, it probably wasn’t their worst 15 minutes last week.
4-0 at Brentford and 7-0 at Anfield under Erik ten Hag, 4-0 at Everton under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. *makes extravagant hand gesture* The whole Ruben Amorim thing. A first derby defeat to Manchester City for 13 years in 2002, for which Gary Neville was largely responsible. Honestly, pick your poison.
Are United playing badly? Yes. Are there reasons to be concerned that Michael Carrick becomes subsumed by the sort of grim autumns that overwhelmed Solskjaer, Ten Hag and Amorim? Absolutely. But those grim running stats do not tell the whole story. United have more touches inside the opposition penalty area than any other team this season and have allowed the fewest in theirs (as per Opta). It’s possible to be both rubbish and a little bit unlucky.
And here’s the thing. In the self-styled Best League In The World, do you really have to be that good to finish in the top four or five? Manchester United came third last season and look at the state of them! On a serious note, that’s all that’s required of Carrick or whoever else is in charge as winter gives way to spring next season. Be in contention for Champions League football, keep that tap of earnings flowing into a huge club and plenty should take care of itself, however feckless the ownership is.
United aren’t going to win the league. Why on earth would they, after the 13 years of various nonsense that has followed Alex Ferguson? Neville is still one of these people who exists, at least partly, within the «this is Manchester United Football Club» context. Blather such as his Sunday efforts only feeds the need for clips, the podcast industrial complex. The challenge this year is probably to be better than Aston Villa and that’ll be enough.
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