Premier League: Man Utd’s quandry, the ‘new Griezmann’ at Arsenal, Conte’s baffling Spurs decision

The Score is Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Monday morning

The Premier League returned, and it felt like it had never been away: Arsenal winning, Everton and Southampton in peril, Leicester conceding from set pieces and Liverpool’s full-backs doing wonderful things in the final third while Mohamed Salah scores.

Arsenal’s win took them further clear of Manchester City (who play on Wednesday evening), but Newcastle were the big winners after another emphatic win, this time at Leicester. Eddie Howe’s side have lost once in the league this season, deep into stoppage time at Anfield. They couldn’t, could they?

Premier League results

Monday 26 December – full round-up here

Brentford 2-2 Tottenham

Crystal Palace 0-3 Fulham

Leicester 0-3 Newcastle United

Everton 1-2 Wolves

Southampton 1-3 Brighton

Aston Villa 1-3 Liverpool

Arsenal 3-1 West Ham

Tuesday 27 December

Chelsea 2-0 Bournemouth

Manchester United 3-0 Nottingham Forest

Arsenal

Martin Odegaard was Arsenal’s best player against West Ham, instrumental in the comeback because he just appears at the right place at the right time. Odegaard won possession seven times, had six shots and created five chances. There were shades of Antoine Griezmann’s new France role in Odegaard’s second-half performance.

But this is not down to the brilliance of one player. If Arsenal are to overcome the loss of Gabriel Jesus and maintain their title tilt, that group of three attacking midfielders – Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martnelli – only become more important. Martinelli and Saka must push high and drive at opposition full-backs because Jesus is not there to drift wide anymore.

If they are successful, and Granit Xhaka is also able to roam forwards to create a two vs two situation in central midfield, Arsenal are more than capable of passing their way around opponents at speed and Odegaard is more than happy to be the fulcrum of those passing moves. He’s not getting the space because he is constantly dribbling past players – he’s getting the space because the team is designed to maximise his space and so allow him to create chances.

That does not mean that Arsenal will not miss Jesus; he is a more complete forward than Nketiah. It also does not mean that the striker is not important in this team. But, if Saka and Martinelli pin back defenders and Odegaard and Xhaka have space and time to pick passes, Arsenal will create enough clear chances for enough different players that the absence of one centre forward need not cause everything else to fall apart. The fact that Jesus had only scored two Arsenal goals since the end of August suddenly becomes a cause for relief.

Aston Villa

No season will be defined what happens over the next week as World Cup performers are eased back into their club lives, but several matches may well be defined by who isn’t playing as much as who is. Boxing Day saw numerous examples, none more obvious than at Villa Park.

Given that Emiliano Martinez has spent most of the last week becoming a professional troll of French football, a period of celebration that began with him using a World Cup award as a phallus while standing on a stage in front of Fifa and Qatari officials, let’s just say it wasn’t a huge surprise to see Robin Olsen on Monday.

Olsen did little wrong, but even a small sample size suggests that Villa’s central defenders are far less secure with him in the team – 10 goals conceded in their last three matches. His distribution is significantly worse than Martinez’s, he has a tendency to parry shots out rather than away from goal and just never looks completely settled. This is forgivable when you don’t play much football.

That issue was exacerbated by Matty Cash also needing time off after the World Cup. Cash was deemed fit enough for the bench, but was not introduced despite Ashley Young struggling to cope with Andy Robertson’s overlapping runs. Young has performed way above expectation over the last 12 months, but he is still the second oldest outfield player at a Premier League club (after Thiago Silva) and full-back is a highly demanding role before you add Robertson to the mix.

Bournemouth

I can understand why Gary O’Neil chose to play both Dominic Solanke and Kieffer Moore in combination, particularly given Marcus Tavernier was unavailable. It allowed Solanke to be the creative force, playing off Moore who would aim to get into the box and make a nuisance of himself.

But it didn’t work out that way at all. Solanke actually largely led the line with Moore dropping deep, probably because he was frustrated at not touching the ball much (we saw plenty of this with Wales in Qatar). Not only did Moore only touch the ball once in Chelsea’s penalty area, he only touched it once within 30 yards of their goal. If the plan was to feed him crosses, that never happened.

At that point, O’Neil did decide to change the plan by bringing on Jaidon Anthony and going to a back four; Anthony made a difference. But the only way Bournemouth were likely to cause Chelsea problems is by sacrificing Moore and going for fluidity over physicality. This was proof that simply picking the target man against better teams is not always the right plan.

Brentford

Sometimes, success is built upon a very simple principle: use your greatest strength against your opponent’s biggest weakness. After Brentford’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham, Thomas Frank heaped praise upon Ivan Toney for the manner in which he has kept his focus despite a looming ban from the Football Association for breaking betting regulations.

In fact, Toney probably simply did what comes naturally. He must have missed domestic football more than most over the last six weeks and be relieved to have it back for as long as the game’s arbiters allow.

Toney found joy because Antonio Conte chose to start Japhet Tanganga, who hadn’t played a minute of Premier League football this season and looked rusty and raw. Tanganga started on the right of a back three and Brentford exposed his uncertainty and the space behind Matt Doherty at wing-back. In the first half, 52 per cent of Brentford’s attacks were down their left third of the pitch, more than the other two-thirds combined. Toney simply sat on Tanganga, either challenging him in the air for the ball, driving at him with it or making runs in behind him.

It goes without saying, but Brentford are surely going to have to try and buy a back-up for Toney in January, given the uncertainty over his future. Rules are rules, but it will also be a massive shame to lose a player at the peak of his powers for off-field misdemeanours with no obvious victims other than himself.

Brighton

It is a running joke in this – and pretty much every other – Premier League round-up column that Brighton need a goalscoring centre-forward. Brighton have always needed a goalscoring centre-forward because they are a club (we use “club” deliberately here, because it seemingly goes beyond whoever is manager or in the team) that creates lots of chances and takes very few, Flatter But Occasionally Deceive FC.

But – and hear me out here – what if, rather than attempting again to find that striker solution, Brighton instead lean into the issue and make their attack fizz with such variety that they don’t need to use a striker at all?

Danny Welbeck, who had started 11 of Brighton’s 14 league games before the break, was unavailable on Boxing Day. Alexis MacAllister was also not present after winning the World Cup. But rather than start any of the three strikers who Roberto de Zerbi chose to leave on the bench and putting Leandro Trossard back into his attacking midfield role, Brighton’s manager picked Trossard as the nominal centre-forward, Adam Lallana as a No 10 and Kaoru Mitoma and Solly March as wingers. Pascal Gross played as a central midfielder; he’s played in five different positions in 15 league games so far this season.

It works. If every player is comfortable in two or three (or more) positions, the shape can both be incredibly fluid and hard for the opposition to predict. You can throw the names down onto a sheet of paper, but how often will they actually appear in that same pattern? 10 Brighton outfield players had touches of the ball in the opposition box at St Mary’s.

The lack of goals from the strikers only makes this approach more logical. Between them, Welbeck, Denis Undav, Evan Ferguson and Julio Enciso have played a combined 1,178 minutes in the Premier League this season and haven’t yet scored a goal between them. When Solly March, who hadn’t scored a league goal in over two years before Monday, is ahead of them, why not make fluidity your philosophy?

Chelsea

Denis Zakaria’s move to Chelsea has been a bit weird from the get-go. Zakaria had been highly-rated in the Bundesliga but his move to Juventus didn’t work out. A loan to Chelsea seemed strange given their multitude of options in central midfield. Then the manager who signed him got sacked before Zakaria had played a minute in the Premier League.

We have to accept that the quality of opposition forces us to reserve full judgement, but on Tuesday evening we saw logic for not just signing Zakaria but starting him. For all Chelsea’s army of midfielders, none are a pure holder. N’Golo Kante roams (and hasn’t been fit for too long), Mateo Kovacic likes to do the same, Jorginho is a passer and both Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Conor Gallagher see themselves as forward-thinking players. Zakaria is the only one happy to put out fires and let someone else do the more eye-catching work.

That can work in any team, but it makes particular sense in a Chelsea team that welcomed back Reece James. With James’ average position well into Bournemouth’s half, Zakaria could guard the gate, making tackles and playing simple passes when he received the ball. The only crying shame came with James’ second-half injury. Are Chelsea going to be pushed into a January signing?

Crystal Palace

Patrick Vieira was not best pleased after Crystal Palace marked the return of Premier League football by making every single home supporter wish it would go away again for another six weeks. This was a performance that had extraordinarily little to offer mitigation for effusive despair. They were second to every ball. They had two men sent off. They were sloppy in possession. They were disorganised without it. They barely created chances. They allowed far too many, even before the red cards.

Palace do need to be a little careful. Their last-second winner at West Ham before the break was their only away league victory since April, piling the pressure on their home form. Vieira’s team have largely coped with that pressure (they have only lost to Arsenal and Chelsea at Selhurst Park since the end of January 2022), but losing 3-0 to a supposedly lesser London rival is a rotten way to restart.

Before the end of March, Palace welcome Tottenham, Newcastle, Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester City to Selhurst. Four of those rank in the top six of a Premier League away table and the exception are Liverpool, who have won their last eight away games against Palace. Rough translation: Palace need to start picking up more points on the road.

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Everton

As the game at Goodison ticked into stoppage time, Frank Lampard was in big trouble. His Everton team, who had lost 3-0 and 4-1 to Bournemouth and 2-0 to Leicester in the two matches immediately prior to the World Cup break, were drawing 1-1 with bottom-of-the-table Wolves and had run out of ideas. Everton’s players were passing the ball to each other slowly, unable to work out how to break Wolves down and apparently without a predetermined plan for that predictable problem.

At that point, the Goodison crowd was mutinous. They had given Lampard more faith and patience than many outside the club believed he merited, not least – we presume – because Rafael Benitez was so unpopular before him. Lampard’s tenure had brought some progress, perhaps even some signs of sustainable recovery, but these were being lost on the cold December wind. They came back to Goodison to see proof of the work done in the previous six weeks and what they saw was a shambles. And then Wolves scored the winner.

The answer, as had always been the accusation against Lampard’s teams at Derby and at Chelsea, was to push more players forward. If you can’t pass the ball quickly enough or move into space adeptly, create overloads by instructing increasing numbers of your players into the opposition half. Wolves saw what was happening, won possession and then embarked upon a smash-and-grab counter attack that produced the high-quality chance they craved.

This is Lampard’s biggest problem, and why this could fall apart quickly: we have seen all this before. His teams either play safe and struggle to create chances, reliant upon opposition mistakes or moments of individual brilliance. Or they play more expansively, push forward and get caught out on the counter attack. It doesn’t seem to matter which players are in the team (Everton signed nine in the summer, remember) – the issues still recur. After a run of four points from their last 24 available, Lampard is fighting for his Everton future.

Fulham

The key to avoiding relegation from the Premier League, particularly as a promoted club, is to avoid concentrating on scoring lots of goals and instead concentrate on conceding as few as possible. The least prolific attack in the league often stays up. The worst defence almost never does.

With that in mind, the greatest compliment to pay to Fulham is that they have stayed true to their attacking ideals and still be successful. The team rated across the board as the third most likely to be relegated at the start of the season is safely in the top half with almost half of the campaign played. They have conceded 26 goals, as many or more as all but five teams in the division, and only one team has faced more shots on target. So far, it doesn’t matter because they are entertaining and attacking and it’s working.

Look at the number of times that teams have scored three or more goals in a Premier League game so far this season. Top of that table are, unsurprisingly, Manchester City with eight. Then, equally unsurprisingly, are the league leaders Arsenal with seven. Newcastle are third, with six. And then it’s Fulham, level with Brighton.

A promoted team being joint-fourth by that measure is highly unusual. Last season, Brentford scored three or more goals on six occasions and were heralded as a new breed of promoted side because of their entertainment value (Watford and Norwich did so five times between them). Fulham have done it five times in 16 matches. They are ahead of even Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds team by the same measure.

Leeds

Play against Manchester City on Wednesday evening.

Leicester

So bad it’s hard to know where to start. We might repeat that Danny Ward’s form this season has been a downgrade on Kasper Schmeichel in 2021-22 and even that was becoming an issue, but then Leicester had kept clean sheets in seven of their previous eight matches. We might say that Daniel Amartey started the game poorly and Wout Faes followed suit, suggesting the lack of an experienced natural centre-back, but those two were the central defensive combination during that run of clean sheets.

We might wonder whether Luke Thomas, at 21, is still learning the game and so will occasionally be lost at sea as he was against the imperious Miguel Almiron – there is certainly something in that. There are also clues in Leicester’s shambles in the lack of a natural holding midfielder (Boubakary Soumaré is not that), Patson Daka’s struggle to maintain possession and Leicester’s tendency to grind to a halt when Youri Tielemans plays badly (which does happen occasionally).

But more than all that, Leicester just looked ill-prepared to face a quality opponent. They crumpled virtually from minute one and they never seemed likely to get back into a match that was rarely even a contest. Brendan Rodgers spoke extensively about slightly vague intangibles, ticking everything off the bingo card: “attitude”, “aggression”, “mentality”, “organisation”, commitment”, “courage”.

But they all basically point to the same thing: a team that spent weeks getting ready for the second half of the season and were then completely exposed as soon as it recommenced. If you’re a Leicester supporter, you have every right to be fuming.

Liverpool

Nothing indicates just how much Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool have shifted our expectations of full-backs than the fact that Andy Robertson is now the defender with the most assists in Premier League history (54) and he did so in almost half as many matches as Leighton Baines in second. Third on the list is Trent Alexander-Arnold, who is 24 years old.

Of course this all makes a degree of sense. It isn’t surprising that Robertson and Alexander-Arnold register lots of assists because their role in this team is, in part, to create chances. When the criticism begins, particularly towards Alexander-Arnold, it is mitigated by the attacking returns.

Robertson, though, is close to complete. He is a superb defender, both positionally and because of his (often underappreciated) recovery speed. He has had comfortably more touches of the ball in the attacking third of the pitch than Son-Heung-Min and Marcus Rashford in considerably fewer minutes. He is actually creating chances at a quicker rate than Alexander-Arnold this season, despite taking fewer attacking set pieces. He is not a big tackler and does not often attempt to intercept passes, but he has only been dribbled past seven times this season.

The arguments about Alexander-Arnold will never cease; they will simply rise and fall in volume, ebb and flow according to his and Liverpool’s form and England’s progress or otherwise. On the side, Robertson quietly gets on with roughly the same job without the same mania. He is sensational and sensationally consistent. As if he only cost £8m.

Man City

Play against Leeds on Wednesday evening.

Man Utd

There’s hardly any reason to grumble about anything after a comfortable home win and clean sheet with a patched-up defence, but it is fascinating to watch Antony during his early months in the Premier League. Rarely have we seen a player who is quite so unpredictable and for whom the gap between his best and worst is so wide. That’s great entertainment value.

It’s clearly going to take some time to settle, and Antony doesn’t turn 23 until February, but when you spend £84m on a 22-year-old you do expect him to be a little less rough around the edges than this. That shouldn’t be interpreted as pure criticism – it’s very interesting to watch this street footballer grow accustomed to this new environment.

We consider unpredictability to be an asset in attacking players, but there comes a tipping point. Sometimes you get the impression that Antony’s team-mates aren’t quite sure what he’s going to do next. Sometimes it is beating a defender and producing a cross, other times it’s a shot from 35 yards that leaves those around him raising their eyebrows as if to ask if he’d even thought of passing.

Erik ten Hag has a quandary with his wingers. Anthony is still learning, Jadon Sancho, we are told, needs time to get himself ready to play competitive football, Anthony Elanga is raw and Marcus Rashford is going to have to play as the centre forward if a better option isn’t found in January. Ten Hag could really do with the second most expensive signing in the club’s history beginning a run during which he produces consistently to pull United into the top four.

Also, because we should end on a wholly positive note, I think Casemiro might be the non-attacking player who has settled most quickly into the Premier League in my memory. The man is ludicrously unflappable.

Newcastle

There is plenty we could say about Newcastle after they moved into the top two: Sven Botman’s authority, Miguel Almiron’s continued miracle season, Chris Wood as a damn effective third-choice centre forward, Eddie Howe as Manager of the Year. We’ll also likely get plenty of chances to cover all that over the next few months; Newcastle are going nowhere.

For now, let’s look at a table of World Cup minutes by players at each of the clubs competing towards the top of the Premier League:

Manchester City – 4,572 minutes
Tottenham Hotspur – 3,600
Manchester United – 3,587
Chelsea – 3,303
Liverpool – 1,790
Arsenal – 1,700
Brighton – 1,542

The top seven on this list account for seven of the current top eight in the Premier League. Spot the exception: Newcastle United basically had a six-week break. Kieran Trippier did start two matches and Fabian Schar played 136 minutes as Switzerland got to the last 16, but Bruno Guimaraes barely got a chance with Brazil, Callum Wilson was only there to be used in case of extreme emergency or extreme luxury (like when you’re thumping Iran) and Nick Pope was a training partner for Jordan Pickford.

That has to make a difference. Newcastle do not need to spend the next two weeks easing players in gently – Trippier, Bruno and Schar all started at Leicester and only Wilson’s illness barred him from doing the same. The other high performers in the squad – Joelinton, Botman, Almiron – didn’t even go to Qatar. They have bags of confidence, bags of money to spend in January if they wish and now bags of energy too.

Nottingham Forest

There are several themes to Nottingham Forest’s return to the Premier League, and the minority of them make for pleasant viewing. In general, they have conceded goals in batches far too easily, as if allowing one goal breaks their confidence in one blow.

Specifically in their away games against the biggest clubs, Forest’s players appear to suffer from imposter syndrome. They are too timid, too respectful and yet somehow simultaneously unable to defend their own goal. This is bizarre given their performances and results at home to those teams over the past 12 months. It isn’t so different, you know.

At Old Trafford, both of those things happened in combination. Forest conceded twice in less than four minutes, once because they failed to track a run from a set piece and once because they failed to track a run in open play. If Forest do stay up, it will not be because of their second-string defenders. Forest’s inability to take their medicine and keep the game tight for a period of several minutes while they regroup is deeply frustrating.

Forest also showed Manchester United too much respect. Steve Cooper’s biggest annoyance will not be that his side lost (that will happen in this division), but that they lost the game without United playing particularly well. United had Aaron Wan-Bissaka playing at right-back and Luke Shaw in central defence in a back four for the first time. Why were they not in the faces of those defenders? Why were they not trying to force mistakes?

If this season is going to end in anything other than relegation, Cooper’s players are going to have to replicate the gusto and gumption of their home performances away from the City Ground. That’s now one point away from home, a 1-1 draw at Everton.

Southampton

See here’s the thing. According to virtually every Premier League manager we heard from before the break, the World Cup would allow them to work with the players they had available, a second preseason if you will. That made particularly sense for the new managers: Unai Emery at Aston Villa, Roberto de Zerbi at Brighton, Graham Potter at Chelsea, Julen Lopetegui at Wolves, Nathan Jones at Southampton.

There were two obvious issues with that positive spin. Firstly, every manager and club were being given the same opportunity, rather mitigating the advantage. Some managers clearly bid farewell to more players than others, but all were able to work with their coaches on tactical plans and lesson-learning from the first 15 matches.

The second issue is what then happens when you fall flat on your face in your first match. It stands to reason that some supporters were always going to be disappointed after the first round of games after the restart. But when your manager has had the best part of two months to perfect their plans and then you immediately get thumped, it arguably puts you in a worse position than where you started. That is the situation facing Rodgers, Lampard and Jones.

But it’s arguably worst of all for Jones. He was appointed on 10 November and immediately lost 3-1 at Anfield – no shame there. He then had an extended period of time with his new players, only two of whom went to the World Cup. Having watched them in training, he made five changes to the team and changed the position of two of the five outfielders he kept.

Southampton then conceded twice in the first 35 minutes, one of which was a tragicomic own goal, and proceeded to miss every chance to get back into the match until it was too late. Jones was forced into making two substitutions at half-time and then answering questions about potentially dropping his goalkeeper at full-time. Maybe playing again four days later is a good thing.

Tottenham

Let’s make a few assumptions: Antonio Conte wants Tottenham to win every league game; Conte would pick the best team available to him, in his opinion; Conte would not leave out his captain unless he felt that he was unable to perform at a higher level than his understudy.

I also fully accept that player welfare is a significantly underappreciated topic and that said welfare doesn’t only refer to physical fatigue but mental exhaustion. If Hugo Lloris was not ready – physically or mentally – to play then of course he could not start.

What I don’t understand is Lloris being named on the bench if that was the case. It meant that he would have had to prepare for the match in exactly the same way. It meant that he must have trained as if he would be starting, because what if Forster had gone injured or sent off in the opening minutes? I don’t understand why Lloris was available to come on as a substitute in the first minute of the match – if required – but not available to start the game? It seems baffling.

I’m also not saying for certain that Lloris stops the first goal from happening by gathering the initial deflected shot. But I do firmly believe it. And if that shot is saved, maybe Tottenham have a firmer grip on a top-four place.

West Ham

I can’t be the only one who can’t work out what is happening with Lucas Paqueta at West Ham. At Lyon, Paqueta was most often used as the central attacking midfielder in a 4-2-3-1, the same position as in England so far. But in France he was encouraged to drop deep to pick up possession and drift wide to create overloads.

Evidence of that all-round game was seen at the World Cup with Brazil, where Paqueta played alongside Casemiro in a midfield two and drove forward with the ball. In both of these roles, Paqueta demands to get on the ball and thrives when pushing forward with it.

At West Ham, it’s just not happening. Paqueta is barely creating chances, ranks low for touches in the opposition box and isn’t completing dribbles enough either. He’s a wispy spirit in West Ham’s attacking midfield, running around without actually offering much of note as his confidence drains away from game to game.

Given Tomas Soucek’s ropey recent form, surely it is time to try Paqueta alongside Declan Rice in Soucek’s place? Vladimir Coufal could stay back if there is a worry about having too many adventurous players on the pitch, but Paqueta could add some drive and energy from deep without Rice having to do four jobs at once.

Wolves

We would be wise not to take much of what we saw during Lopetegui’s Premier League bow as hard evidence of anything at all, not least that Wolves left Merseyside with all three points. Wolves have always been at their most dangerous when counter attacking and Everton are more generous than most teams at leaving themselves exposed to them. It was, for more than one reason, a slightly fortuitous result.

The same applies to some of the team selection decisions. Joe Hodge is unlikely to become a regular in central midfield, although having him alongside Ruben Neves did allow Joao Moutinho to roam forward without fear of being caught out of position and then made Moutinho more effective. Hwang Hee-chan started to the right of Diego Costa, but one or both of those will lose their place if the January transfer window goes to plan. Wolves have already announced the signing of Matheus Cunha.

We can source some insightful information. Lopetegui is clearly going to stick with his preferred 4-3-3 formation, which is a tweak from the 4-2-3-1 that itself was a shift from the three-man central defence. The manager shifted the formation in-game to a three-man defence that aimed to sit deeper and create more space for a counter – that worked perfectly. Goncalo Guedes was left on the bench and his Molineux career has already reached its damage limitation phase. Lopetegui is likely to try and tighten up the defence before shifting focus to improving the attack – Wolves had 13 touches in Everton’s penalty area, their lowest in a league game since April.

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