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 with three managers making their debuts at new clubs, and none of them lost. Manchester United kept faith with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but sacked him after a miserable defeat against Watford.
Elsewhere, Liverpool pressed Arsenal relentlessly and could have won by six or seven, while there were six goals at St James’ Park and Turf Moor.
Premier League results
Saturday 20 November
- Leicester 0-3 Chelsea
- Aston Villa 2-0 Brighton
- Burnley 3-3 Crystal Palace
- Newcastle 3-3 Brentford
- Norwich 2-1 Southampton
- Watford 4-1 Man Utd
- Wolves 1-0 West Ham
- Liverpool 4-0 Arsenal
Sunday 21 November
Arsenal
From my match preview to Saturday’s game at Anfield:
“Now Arteta’s team faces another test of their resolve. Losing at Anfield, even heavily, should not cause their world to collapse in on itself as in recent years. Arteta believes gainfully in something bigger, a club now snapshotted in wider focus on its route to somewhere better. But winning on Saturday, even taking a point, would provide a mandate for that vision.”
Well, we’re about to find out about the “collapsed world” principle. Arsenal lost by four goals at Anfield and it would have been six or seven but for Aaron Ramsdale. All of the reasons for positivity were warped into weaknesses: the freshness of youth became naivety, expansive football was picked off, passing out from the back became a series of misplaced balls and easy turnovers on which Liverpool feasted.
What matters now is how Arsenal respond. They have lost badly to Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool this season, but that need not cause any huge panic – Arsenal supporters would have accepted being worse than the best but better than the rest this season. But in 2013-14, when they lost 5-1 at Anfield having gone there with their tails up, Arsenal won two of their next eight league games. The result was worryingly similar; the reaction needs to be totally different.
Aston Villa
It’s better to be lucky than good, although Steven Gerrard is out to prove that he is perfectly capable of being both. Brighton controlled the match for long periods and probably deserved to be ahead going into the final 10 minutes. Perhaps it was the belief of a new manager, Villa Park urging their team on or the confidence gained by repelling Brighton, but Villa got it done. Gerrard is the first Villa manager since Gerard Houllier to win his first league game in charge.
And if there’s one thing that Villa have repeatedly excelled at in the Premier League, it is scoring late goals. Last season, Dean Smith’s side scored 20 per cent of their goals after the 81st minute. This season, only Chelsea have scored more in the last 10 minutes of their league games.
The difference is that Villa have also been leaky in the latter stages of matches. Since the beginning of 2019-20, Villa have conceded 45 goals from the 81st minute onwards. That is why the last 10 minutes on Saturday were so promising. Having ceded the better chances, Villa faced a single shot (blocked) in the final 20 minutes.
Brentford
A step in the right direction, given their opponents had a new manager and a new mood in place and Brentford ended a run of four straight league defeats. But there are still questions to be asked of Brentford’s defensive issues.
In their first five games of the season, Brentford conceded two goals and in four of those matches allowed their opponents to take a total of 10 shots or fewer. In the seven league games since, Brentford have conceded 15 goals and have faced shots at a rate of 14 shots per game.
At first, we simply thought that this was a result of facing higher class opponents; that run has included fixtures against Liverpool, Chelsea, Leicester and West Ham. But in their last three matches, Brentford have allowed Burnley, Newcastle and Norwich, the current bottom three, to take 46 shots. That suggests a genuine issue that extends beyond the loss of David Raya to injury.
Brighton
For all the improvement in Brighton over the last 12 months, they failed to solve their biggest problem. Every Brighton supporter believed that signing a new striker over the summer was a critical requirement. Brighton signed four players over the summer and none of them play up front.
Brighton are not a team that creates a large number of chances – they rank joint 18th in the Premier League for shots. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that; Crystal Palace have only had five more shots but scored six more goals. When it becomes a problem is when that combines with the lack of a clinical finisher to score the chances they do create.
On Saturday, Brighton had 63 per cent possession and 34 per cent of the game was played in Aston Villa’s third of the pitch but they only managed six shots and failed to score. There is a tendency to overplay, but that in itself is part of the issue. Without a top-class finisher you end up trying to create high-value chances just to score.
To put it bluntly, there is only so much Graham Potter can do. A team with aspirations of breaking into the top half should not have Neal Maupay, Leandro Trossard and Danny Welbeck as their three striking options.
Burnley
For a long time, the stereotype of Burnley was a defensively dour team that made the most of the chances that came their way. But we need to change that preconception. Last season, only West Brom and Newcastle United allowed more shots. Burnley continued to block shots and defend crosses, but they actually outperformed their defensive expected goals total. To translate: we should have expected them to concede even more than they did based on the quality of the chances.
And that problem has got worse over the summer. On Saturday, Burnley became the first club in the Premier League this season to reach 200 shots faced. They have kept one clean sheet all season (against Norwich) and are yet to face fewer than 10 shots in a Premier League fixture.
After the draw with Palace, Sean Dyche insisted that he was happy with Burnley’s performance level but he must be getting worried about his inability to plug a leaky defence, particularly given the rumours linking James Tarkowski with a move away from Turf Moor in January. Given that Burnley face Manchester United (twice), Liverpool, Leicester City and Arsenal between December 30 and February 12, he needs to find a speedy solution.
Chelsea
Far, far too easy. Leicester City made life too simple for Chelsea in the first 25 minutes – and set the tone for the rest of the match – but credit to the visitors for the manner in which they broke at speed to counter their opponents. N’Golo Kante was the surprise candidate; Chelsea pushed forward through the middle of an open Leicester midfield rather than using their wing-backs.
Defensively, Chelsea are immense. The loss of Timo Werner and Romelu Lukaku clearly persuaded Thomas Tuchel to operate a safety-first strategy that looked to soak up pressure without facing shots and then launch counter attacks. Chelsea have only faced 18 shots in total over their last four league games. Given that they have had 81 shots of their own during those four matches, Tuchel’s strategy is a sound one despite the unfortunate 1-1 draw against Burnley.
It also gives Chelsea a brilliant Plan B for when their strikers return to full fitness. If they can march to the top of the Premier League without Lukaku and Werner, it suggests that they will be an impossible machine to stop with them. Everybody else should be afraid.
Crystal Palace
There’s no secret as to Crystal Palace’s biggest weakness after a 3-3 draw during which Burnley twice scored from corners and equalised for a third time after Tarkowski’s flick on to Maxwel Cornet.
“We know so far they’ve got a poor record from set pieces so we thought we could capitalise as we know we’re strong from that,” said Dyche after the game, and Patrick Vieira agreed.
“When you come to Burnley you expect to suffer in the air and you have to manage and deal with it,” Vieira said.
“I think we need to improve that aspect of the game, in the modern game set pieces are massively important. We need to spend more time in training to deal with those set-pieces.”
Vieira’s right. Only Chelsea and Manchester City have allowed fewer shot-creating actions from passes in open play this season, a marked improvement from last season. But they remain prone to lapses in concentration and marking from set pieces, particularly corners.
Everton
This isn’t really on Rafael Benitez, but he must be wondering if this was the right job to take to restore his reputation in England and just what he has done to deserve such awful luck. Benitez’s team have suffered with a debilitating injury list all season. Not only did they fail to lay a glove on Manchester City, but they also picked up another injury (Demarai Gray) and saw Richarlison get the yellow card that will rule him out of next week’s match against Brentford.
There’s no shame in losing to City, but Benitez’s preferred style does lose its worth slightly when his team has no threat on the counter attack. And they have no threat on the counter attack without their best attacking players. It’s hard to see how this ends with either manager, players or supporters fulfilled without the investment that seems unlikely given the FFP restraints Benitez is operating under.
Leeds United
A good effort, given the circumstances. Leeds went to Tottenham without Rodrigo, Patrick Bamford, Raphinha and Luke Ayling and played with Joe Gelhardt as their lone centre forward and dominated the first half. Kalvin Phillips was superb for the entire 90 minutes, but was let down by the fatigue that surrounded him.
The reality is that Leeds were left grasping for air as soon as Tottenham pressed harder and higher up the pitch. They were forced to drop off from their man-marking system and Lucas Moura and Son Heung-Min were able to find large pockets of space. That ultimately decided the course of the match.
After the game, Marcelo Bielsa was hardly upbeat about the chances of Leeds signing some players in January to improve their squad depth. He spoke about needing players of a higher quality than he already possesses and pointed out that those players are expensive. But investment in January will be worth it if it allows Leeds to escape from a relegation dogfight and there are valid concerns about the energy level of the squad given the long list of absentees. More worrying than the result is that Tottenham’s players outran Leeds’ and the visitors looked tired from the hour mark onwards.
Leicester City
The defending is indefensible, as this piece details. Brendan Rodgers might be strongly linked with a move to Manchester United, but it appears as if that would only happen at the end of the season. Judging by the boos at half-time and full-time, Rodgers has a season to save at Leicester before he can think about a promotion.
Liverpool
Whenever Liverpool are suffering, they go back to basics. And for Jurgen Klopp, basics means a renewed commitment to pressing high up the pitch. If their defence is suffering, ease the pressure by winning the ball up the pitch. If the attack is struggling (is their attack ever struggling?), create bonus chances by robbing the opposition of the ball in the final third.
Against Arsenal on Saturday, that press was relentless. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was the star, successfully forcing a turnover within five seconds of applying pressure on nine occasions (no Arsenal midfielder did so more than four times), but he was ably backed up by Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Thiago. Arsenal’s passing looked sloppy – OK, Arsenal’s passing was sloppy – but that sloppiness was forced by constant Liverpool pressure.
With Fabinho and Thiago as his midfield colleagues, a strolling passer and a defensive protector, Oxlade-Chamberlain knew that he held the responsibility for setting an energetic tone. Without the ball, this was surely his best performance in a Liverpool shirt.
Manchester City
No Riyad Mahrez, no Ruben Dias, no Kevin de Bruyne, no Gabriel Jesus (or any other first-team striker), no problem. It seems a little hasty to talk about Manchester City as a relentless machine at home in the Premier League given the five dropped points against Crystal Palace and Southampton at the Etihad this season, but on afternoons like this, when they dominate possession, territory and the chances, it does all feel a little futile. The only question was whether City would win by one goal, two, three or more.
And yet this was an interesting win for City, because we saw glimpses of their next age. Cole Palmer started his first ever Premier League match as a nominal false nine, although with the fluidity of the role that is natural in City’s system. James McAtee came off the bench for his Premier League debut.
What is so noticeable about these youngsters – and the same applies to Phil Foden – is just how entrenched within the City ethos they are at such a young age. As Gary Neville said on commentary, it is as if David Silva’s last act in Manchester was to create a series of clones of himself in various physical forms.
And that’s why Pep Guardiola prefers to keep his youngsters in the City youth teams and training with the first-team squad rather than being sent out on loan. Although those competitive minutes can be crucial for a young player’s development, Guardiola believes that being taught the City way – and that is more than a tagline here – is more beneficial to them and their club than learning under a manager with completely different ideals.
Manchester United
This is how it ends. Not with bangs and whistles, nor with high-profile clashes between senior players and reports of training ground bust-ups. But with the dispiriting mood of resignation that comes with another sorry defeat against a better organised, better coached and better prepared opponent. Do not let their current guise fool you: Manchester United’s team is packed full of excellent players who have been made to look ordinary by the system and environment in which they operate.
Manchester United wanted this to work but wanting something badly is never enough. And United wanted this to work because having a club legend manager, and that manager reaching his peak at the club where he was so loved, represented something unique. It suggested that there was something deep within Old Trafford that made them special. They had tried gun-for-hire managers and here was their refreshing antidote. Unfortunately, logic, sense and coaching ability rules such romantic intangibles. They are not unique. They are a rich club in a league of rich clubs where your failings will be exploited if you leave them exposed.
Hopefully they have learnt that lesson now, although it takes a double dose of optimism to believe in that today. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer leaves his beloved club with them closer to the bottom of the Premier League than the top. His legacy as a popular individual, as someone close to United’s heart, is not in doubt. But he is proof that good intentions are less powerful that successful experience and tactical acumen. If that sounds a little harsh, those are the standards by which we should judge financial superclubs and their managers.
Over the last few months, Manchester United’s players have come in for a huge wave of criticism from their own supporters. That is one of the indirect results of appointing a legend manager: you are more emotionally connected to him than them and that can cloud your judgement.
These players are underperforming; nobody is suggesting any different. But good managers make good players better, not worse. If anything else was true, there would be no benefit in having an excellent coach at all; you’d simply pile more and more players on top of each other and wait for it to click. And that is effectively what Manchester United have done. They became a control experiment for the benefits of high-level coaching.
This is not all on Solskjaer; again, nobody is really arguing that. Somewhere along the way Manchester United got lost. They probably placed too much focus on sponsorship and marketing deals (although they insist otherwise). They probably didn’t have an effective succession plan in place post-Alex Ferguson and in case his replacement didn’t work out. They were too easily bewitched by Solskjaer’s short-term hit after Jose Mourinho’s scorched earth exit. And they were too slow to accept Solskjaer’s own failings. They have become a transfer market magpie, chasing after glamorous signings because they can not because they have identified a system into which they would fit snugly. And they are learning the hard way the illogicacy of each of those missteps.
But criticising United’s hierarchy is not the same as defending Solskjaer. If he did indeed repair the mood post-Mourinho, he also leaves the club in a lower position than his predecessor and failed to win a trophy. That rebuilt mood has also evaporated in recent weeks as he struggled to integrate new signings and lacked the courage to change the team to address the slump. He is sold as a decent man who wanted the best for his club, but is that not the absolute minimum we expect from every manager. If your greatest strength is not actively wanting to undermine your employer, or simply being an antidote to your predecessor, that itself is telling.
Where Manchester United go next says everything about the issues within the club’s structure. More sensible and savvy clubs have succession plans in place in case of emergency – do they? Appointing a caretaker before an interim before a permanent manager suggests that United lacked such a plan. The timing is instructive too: we could all see where this was going and yet United waited until one game after an extended break – during which other clubs changed managers – and a fortnight after Antonio Conte left the job market.
That is the sign of a broken club, a complacent club or an arrogant club. It’s hard to know which camp Manchester United sit, but this episode has proven that they have no VIP pass to trophies or Champions League participation. English football is not a meritocracy – money matters too much for that – but there are plenty enough apex predators and ambitious, forward-thinking owners to leave a superclub grasping at its own identity.
There is a natural floor for Manchester United – the wealth, the history, the clout all ensure that. But United are a club that for decades judged themselves by their short distance from their lofty natural ceiling rather than their floor. The damning indictment is that nobody really seems to know in which direction they will lurch next.
Newcastle United
This was a difficult day to judge Eddie Howe’s Newcastle on anything other than slight first impressions. Howe himself was absent after testing positive for Covid-19. He will have watched on and been impressed with his team’s vibrancy in attack, in particular the work rate of Joelinton and signs that Allan Saint-Maximin can quickly return to his best form.
But for all the glamour names being linked with Newcastle – and most of them are attackers because that is how the transfer gossip industry tends to work – Howe will only keep them up if they make significant improvements to the defence. Karl Darlow should probably be replaced by Martin Dubravka (or a January signing), Newcastle need at least one central defender (Tarkowski is an obvious option) and probably also need a left-back if Paul Dummett isn’t back any time soon.
It is just far too easy to create chances against Newcastle, and that has been true throughout the last 18 months. They allowed more shots than any team who stayed up in the Premier League last season. Only Watford and Norwich have a higher expected goals against total this season.
And that is not Howe’s usual forte. He has spoken eloquently about philosophies and looking to create a team that enjoys playing front-foot football (and all that makes sense after Steve Bruce’s tenure), but Newcastle’s defending has been substandard for far too long. Howe must prove that he can do gritty, gutsy management or he will be a Championship manager next season.
Norwich City
If Dean Smith was appointed to give Norwich more steel and resilience, traits that match their new manager’s personality, this was a superb start. Having won their last game under Daniel Farke, Smith will not try to take all the credit, but this was still a landmark victory.
On the previous 36 occasions in which they had trailed in a Premier League match, a run stretching back to 2016, Norwich had lost. That run is truly extraordinary, no points from a possible 108 having fallen behind.
Smith hasn’t yet fixed anything at Carrow Road – although taking them off the bottom in his first match is a good start – but ending that run in his first match really does feel significant. They have appointed the best possible manager they could have found.
Southampton
No huge need for panic, given that Southampton had 12 shots in the first half to Norwich’s one and should have been in front long before Grant Hanley’s winner, but Ralph Hasenhuttl will again be ruing his side’s inability to finish their chances.
Che Adams rediscovering his goalscoring touch is a big plus for Hasenhuttl, but around him Southampton are painfully wasteful. So far this season, Adam Armstrong, Mohamed Elyounoussi, Nathan Redmond, Moussa Djenepo and Theo Walcott have had 83 shots in the Premier League and have scored three goals between them. Southampton simply don’t create enough chances to allow that level of profligacy.
Tottenham
Perhaps Antonio Conte would have planned it this way, given the choice. As the half-time whistle blew, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was filled with boos as an unhappy crowd voiced their displeasure at their team’s continued inability to have a shot on target and preferred safe sideways and backwards passing to penetrative balls into feet.
Cue Conte presumably ripping into his players at the break. Tottenham were a totally different side in the second half. They were aided by a drop in Leeds’ energy and the goals themselves contained strands of good fortune, but finally we saw a Tottenham team intent on making things happen rather than waiting and hoping that they might.
And Conte enjoyed every minute of it, screaming with delight on the touchline after each goal and riling up a crowd that was suddenly on his side. We should remember that his title-winning first season at Chelsea started slowly, as the players gradually learnt to meet his demands. But Conte’s first task is always getting fans behind his methodology in order to persuade those players that they must commit entirely to the project. On that point, he has laid down his first marker. And at least they have had a few shots on target now.
Watford
If you’ll forgive me for being a little self-indulgent, one of the best things about a weekend analysis column in which every team has a section is that it allows for praise to be poured upon the victorious team when the side that lost inevitably – and understandably – draws all of the post-match attention.
Manchester United were rotten at Vicarage Road; they left themselves open to a well-organised and well-prepared opponent intent on punishing those flaws. But Watford could easily have been forgiven for edging their way into the match in search of some home comfort. Since their third goal against Aston Villa on the opening day, Watford had played four-and-a-bit home league games and conceded 11 times, scoring only once.
But Claudio Ranieri understood what his team must do. They had to start on the front foot, exploiting the obvious lack of confidence amongst Manchester United’s players; they should have opened the scoring long before Josh King eventually did.
Ranieri also knew that United would respond after half-time; we have seen that pattern in their away games far too many times before. They were assisted by Harry Maguire’s foolish mistake, but after that never once tried to sit on a one-goal lead. Instead, they went for the kill, soaked up pressure when they had to and then punished a ragged United in the closing minutes.
Whether a central midfield of Tom Cleverley and Moussa Sissoko will be able to dominate so easily against better prepared opponents than Solskjaer’s Manchester United is open to fair debate. But these felt like three bonus points for Watford. For the first time, we saw a blueprint for how Ranieri hopes to make them more effective at winning possession high up the pitch to protect their defence.
West Ham
Back to earth with a bump as a four-game winning run came to an end in a match during which West Ham barely got going. After the game, David Moyes said he accepted that afternoons such as these would pockmark West Ham’s season.
“If you expect us to be sort of on it every game, then we’ll be having these questions more, quite a bit, because we’re not going to be there,” Moyes said. “We’re not at that level yet to play at the highest standards every single game this season.”
That’s both completely understandable, but also proves why there is a ceiling on the potential of clubs outside the financial elite. West Ham have a settled team, and that provides its own advantages in Moyes’ system. But he also doesn’t have the personnel at his disposal to change a game that is slipping from their grasp (Vlasic, Yarmolenko and Lanzini were the game-changing substitutes and two of those sit firmly on the fringes of West Ham’s first team now).
While the three teams above West Ham have a greater strength in depth, they also have individual brilliance that Moyes’ side lacks. The magic of this team lies in the strength of the whole. But that decrees that when several elements are below par, so too is the team. As Moyes rightly says, that is to be expected.
Wolves
The Premier League middle pack is bunched together (Wolves are only six points above Watford in 16th), but Bruno Lage is quietly going about his business and his team have snuck into the top six without anyone really noticing. Hands up who didn’t realise that no team in the division has taken more points than Wolves over their last seven matches – *raises hand*.
Search “Bruno Lage” on Google, and the first “people also ask” question is “Is Bruno Lage a good manager”. That feels appropriate – he arrived in England with very little known about him in this country and Wolves are not a particularly entertaining team to watch. Lage has dropped Adama Traore, from whom so much of their unpredictability was expected.
But Lage has made Wolves difficult to beat – recent Crystal Palace aberration aside – and, right now, that’s plenty good enough while he imprints his style on the players and takes his club out of the Nuno Espirito Santo era. Few predicted Wolves to be top-six hopefuls at this stage of the season.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3xaSS9g
Post a Comment