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
Ralf Rangnick’s tenure at Manchester United began with a win and some noticeably energetic pressing, but the major stories of the weekend were Chelsea losing their lead at the top of the Premier League and Liverpool keeping up the pace with a last-gasp winner.
Elsewhere, Newcastle finally got their first league win of the season while Leeds and Brighton rescued a point with their own late, late goals. Bernardo Silva continues to lead Premier League defences a merry dance and Steven Gerrard is fitting in just fine at Villa Park.
This weekend’s Premier League results
Monday 6 December
- Everton vs Arsenal (8pm KO)
Sunday 5 December
- Aston Villa 2-1 Leicester
- Leeds 2-2 Brentford
- Man Utd 1-0 Crystal Palace
- Tottenham 3-0 Norwich
Saturday 4 December
- West Ham 3-2 Chelsea
- Newcastle 1-0 Burnley
- Southampton 1-1 Brighton
- Wolves 0-1 Liverpool
- Watford 1-3 Man City
Arsenal
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has not scored or assisted a goal in any of his last five games for Arsenal. He has also missed golden chances during that run: missed penalty against Watford, the post struck against Newcastle from four yards, the mishit against Manchester United from a similar distance.
More worrying than all that is that Aubameyang isn’t involved anywhere near as much as he would like. Last season, he touched the ball more than 30 times in 18 Arsenal matches. So far this season, he’s done it once (Tottenham at home). One probably leads to the other – fewer touches means less active, means not ready when chances come his way.
Perhaps this is simply a result of a shift in Arsenal’s attacking strategy. Aubameyang has moved from the left back to a central striking role and Arsenal now build through their attacking midfielders and full-backs. That makes Aubameyang more of a poacher than a complete striker.
So is it time for Mikel Arteta to consider dropping his captain? Might Arsenal be better with Alexandre Lacazette in that role, or is it even worth going all in on the youth strategy and playing Gabriel Martinelli as the centre-forward with a trio of Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard and Emile Smith-Rowe behind him?
Aston Villa
There is a recipe for making yourself popular as a new manager, and Steven Gerrard is nailing it at Villa Park. First comes the wins; you have been appointed because the last guy couldn’t get enough and, for all the talk of long-term visions, there’s nothing better than some quick steps in the right direction.
But it’s about more than good results. The difference between Villa in Gerrard’s early weeks and Dean Smith’s last is night and day. There is an intensity in central midfield, a desire to press forward and create chances even when they have the lead and a hunger to deal with mid-game adversity and come back stronger that match-going supporters feed off.
This is exactly what fans wanted to see from their new manager, a team that they could feasibly believe wanted to win half as much as them and understood the power of hard work and high energy. Given Gerrard was replacing a boyhood supporter who had such a deep connection with those fans, he should be warmly congratulated for such rapid progress.
Brentford
Given how Brentford’s defending seems to have dropped off badly over the last few weeks, it’s tempting to put that down to the loss of David Raya to injury. That might well carry some weight: Raya had an excellent relationship with his central defenders that a backup goalkeeper can often struggle to replicate.
But one thing that is certain is that Alvaro Fernandez deserves to escape any censure for this decline. Fbref.com ranks all goalkeepers by a statistic they label as PSxG. It’s a technical term that basically estimates the quality of a goalkeeper’s saves based on the shots they have faced. If a goalkeeper has a positive figure, they are effectively saving their team’s goals with the quality of their saves. A negative number and they are stopping fewer shots (and conceding more goals) than we should expect.
In the Premier League this season, Wolves’ Jose Sa leads the way with +5.0, followed by David de Gea, Edouard Mendy and Aaron Ramsdale. The statistic does seem an effective way of assessing performance. Ask a regular watcher of Premier League football this season and they would probably list those four goalkeepers amongst the best they have seen.
In seventh place on that list, of the 31 goalkeepers to have started Premier League games this season, is Fernandez. His distribution may not be at Raya’s level, but his shot-stopping has been consistent. Brentford’s issue is stopping the chances, not stopping the shots going in.
Brighton
You can doubt Brighton’s ability to finish their chances and question why they keep starting games slowly away from home, but you can’t knock their resilience. For the second game in five days, Brighton conceded first, hung around long enough to give themselves a chance and then grabbed a point to leave the home supporters deeply frustrated. They scored in the 89th minute against West Ham and in the 96th minute against Southampton.
And Graham Potter’s side have become experts at this. They have scored five goals in the last 10 minutes of their matches this season, almost unmatched in the Premier League. They also take 0.88 points per game from the matches in which they concede the first goal, a record that only West Ham and Manchester United can beat. Potter might like them to start games quicker and avoid having to rely on comebacks, but it’s a handy habit to have.
Burnley
The lack of chance creation is becoming a real issue for Burnley. On Saturday, they registered a 0.7 expected goals figure against Newcastle United; nobody has done worse than that since West Brom in December 2020. That grim news was only made worse by Maxwel Cornet limping from the field with a thigh injury. Burnley cannot afford him to miss more time than is necessary with an extended absence due to the Africa Cup of Nations around the corner.
In raw numbers, the attacking issues would not be a disaster – Burnley rank 18th for shots and 16th for shots on target this season. But when you combine that with a defence that is creaking, conceding more shots than any other team in the league, it leads to the conclusion that Burnley aren’t doing anything well enough at the moment. And that puts them bang in trouble.
Chelsea
There was a statistic doing the rounds on Saturday about Chelsea’s attacking performances in the first 14 games of their last three seasons, which put Thomas Tuchel comfortably behind both of Frank Lampard’s seasons. That is meaningless without context: Tuchel’s rise has been platformed by his ability to make Chelsea secure defensively, something they weren’t under Lampard.
But it does also raise the question of what happens when the defending slips. Against West Ham, Edouard Mendy had his worst game in a Chelsea shirt, fully responsible for West Ham’s first goal and partly culpable for their third. The deflection on Arthur Masuaku’s cross was wicked, but Mendy did seem to react a little late. For the second goal, Chelsea were undone by a routine long ball.
Has that immense defensive record distracted us a little from Chelsea’s underperforming attack? For all the praise for defenders chipping in with goals, it is reasonable to wonder whether that is sustainable. Tuchel must find a way to get Romelu Lukaku better service rather than simply crossing the ball into the box and hoping he finds room to win a header between two or three central defenders, which is what Saturday’s game was eventually reduced to.
Crystal Palace
There’s not an awful lot we need to say about a tight defeat away at Manchester United, particularly when it could have been so different had Jordan Ayew not missed a presentable chance at 0-0. But it seems a good time to show some love to Marc Guehi, who is becoming the latest Chelsea academy graduate to look like life at Cobham has done them a great service.
Guehi grew into the Swansea first-team to become one of the most composed defenders in the Championship at the age of 20. Now a year older, he is the new captain of England’s Under-21 team and the flagship central defender in Patrick Vieira’s Palace team.
“He really wants to fulfil his potential and his work ethic and concentration is really good,” Vieira says. “This is why I believe he has the attributes to one day be an international player. He’s really calm and composed and his competitiveness is unbelievable. It’s a pleasure for myself and my staff to work with him.”
And it’s easy to see why he likes him. Guehi does the ugly side of defending perfectly well, but it’s with ball at feet that he’s most impressive. He loves to step out and drive forward with the ball, rather like Antonio Rudiger does at Chelsea. Doing that at 21, in your first top-flight season, takes some talent and some confidence too.
Everton
In the aftermath of Everton’s Merseyside derby humbling, owner Farhad Moshiri went on Talksport to explain why he was keeping the faith in Rafael Benitez turning this ship around. Not only was that a bold strategy when Everton are in such a mess on the pitch, but it’s also bizarre behaviour for a Premier League owner. The best are seen but not heard, delegating responsibility to effective operators.
By Sunday, that public missive looked even more silly when it emerged that Everton had sacked Marcel Brands as the club’s director of football. Brands can have no complaints because his transfer record at Goodison is pretty wretched, but then it was pretty wretched when he was given a new contract in April this year, presumably with Moshiri’s say so. It doesn’t exactly scream of a club engaging in much joined-up thinking.
And that’s the problem with Everton, a club seemingly constantly looking for an escape route out of the knots they tied themselves up in. Brands’ replacement will be the third director of football appointed during Moshiri’s tenure. They have burned through an unhelpfully high number of managers and wasted obscene money to barely improve the first team – at least in comparison to their peers – or league position. At what point does this long-term growth strategy actually come together?
Moshiri deserves little of the blame for Everton’s rut – he supplied the money and must be as baffled as any supporter about how it has been squandered. But at a time when fans are infuriated about the gross wastage on transfer fees and unconvinced that Benitez is the right fit, or the right identity, for his position, it stings a little to hear the owner so publicly discussing the club’s future and giving no indication that he was about to sack the most important person at the club after him. If they concede early against Arsenal on Monday, things could get ugly in the stands.
For much more on Everton’s malaise, you’ll want to read this piece.
Leeds United
Patrick Bamford’s late, late equaliser evidently tempers some of our angst about Leeds United’s season, but only some of it. In terms of results, Leeds do appear to have turned a corner – eight points (and only one defeat) from their last five games.
But the injury curse hasn’t been lifted yet. Bamford’s return to the team is clearly welcome, but Leeds lost both Liam Cooper and Kalvin Phillips to injury against Brentford. If Phillips is out for an extended period of time, it is a season-changer for Leeds. There is no team in the Premier League, with the possible exception of Declan Rice at West Ham, who are more reliant on one player to set the tone for how the rest of the team performs.
Marcelo Bielsa’s tinkering also had an effect on the team. The loss of Cooper and lack of first-team central defender on the bench didn’t help, but Bielsa’s response was to move Phillips to centre-back, Daniel James to centre forward, Tyler Roberts back to be a No 10 and Jack Harrison, the substitute, to the left wing. That’s an awful lot for a team to acclimatise to in an instant.
There’s an argument that if Phillips is going to miss a few games, then Leeds’ next run of fixtures (Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City) might actually be better than the matches against those teams around them against whom Leeds must avoid defeat. But that’s a very positive spin; better to hope it was merely precautionary.
Leicester City
“If you analyse the Premier League, there’s a lot of set-pieces going in from the front post area. It’s not just us, it’s other teams.”
That was Brendan Rodgers’ response when asked after the defeat to Arsenal about Leicester’s inability to defend in set-piece situations. It sounded weird then and it sounds more weird now. Leicester are wretched at both marking and spotting the runs of opposing players and it’s getting worse.
Without wanting to sound too melodramatic, this is now becoming such an obvious problem that Rodgers’ continued inability to solve it could begin to put his job under pressure because it is placing such a frustrating ceiling on Leicester’s ambition. Make no mistake, Leicester supporters are getting very angry.
Liverpool
“Divock Origi is an incredible football player,” Klopp said after Saturday’s 1-0 win over Wolves. “He is great in these moments. He doesn’t need a lot of run up, he doesn’t need a lot of time to get into a game, especially not in this game today. He’s one of the best finishers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Klopp is regularly prone to hyperbole in the maelstrom of a late winner, but his verdict hardly feels misplaced. Origi has come in for plenty of stick from Liverpool supporters who believe his presence as the direct backup for one of their magnificent front three is proof of a squad thin on adequate replacements for their stars, but you cannot fault Origi’s record.
Time and again he answers the call when it matters most. He has scored some of the most important goals in Liverpool’s recent history, not because they won trophies but because they provided a huge shot of momentum when Klopp needed it most. He has scored a Premier League goal for every 163 minutes played during his time at Liverpool, ranking him in the top 40 in the history of the division.
And it is far harder than it looks. This is not a computer game. It is not easy to hang around, barely getting a start and yet having to train your hardest every day and then come off the bench in the case of an emergency. Origi has proven time and again that he is able to sprint from a standing start. He might well get the chance to enhance that reputation in January during Afcon. But in Klopp’s eyes, it would be hard to be any more appreciated.
Manchester City
Bernardo Silva was the difference-maker again, but then we have already written many hundreds of words about Bernardo being the difference-maker – what’s new? Instead, it is wonderful to see Raheem Sterling back in his pomp. Sterling now has a goal or assist in five of his last City appearances and he is finding space close to goal again.
Sterling is also far more involved – his five Manchester City games with the most touches of the ball have been his last five. That’s down to two things: 1) he’s not being substituted after 70 minutes as has often been the case this calendar year, and 2) he feels more confident. It’s pretty clear that Sterling’s belief took a hit after City signed a £100m player in his position and rumours linked him with a move away from the club.
Sterling spoke eloquently this week about the importance of self-belief in his game. It’s something we often discuss with footballers but also are guilty of forgetting when identifying why things aren’t working. Too often, the criticism comes before the diagnosis. It’s brilliant to see Sterling flying again.
Manchester United
We should resist going overboard here, because there was an awful lot of “best performance in years” and “the revolution has started” stuff on social media at half-time when Manchester United were drawing 0-0 with Crystal Palace. This will take time. Players do not get to grips with Ralf Rangnick’s demands after a few training sessions. And the goal did come from an unlikely source and a piece of individual magic.
But this was a different Manchester United, even if we should expect any manager at Old Trafford to win fixtures like this. Rangnick picked a new formation (4-2-2-2, similar to the one Ralph Hasenhuttl uses at Southampton) and there was clearly more organisation to their pressing. They had plenty of shots in the first half, but too many of their shots were speculative. Rangnick will look to improve that quicksmart.
But there was also a greater control to United’s play with and without the ball. Palace enjoyed a dominant spell after half-time (perhaps the biggest question for United’s season is how much energy playing pressing football when in three competitions takes out of them), but Rangnick’s team avoided leaving themselves exposed to the counter attack against one of them most effective counter-attacking teams in the league (although Palace are undergoing their own shift under Patrick Vieira). They kept their first clean sheet at Old Trafford in 235 days, an extraordinary drought for a club of this size and with such wealth.
And for now, that’s enough to suggest that Rangnick will be able to shift the style of this team’s play within a short period of time as long as the players buy into it. That itself is important. United’s players have come in for stinging criticism over the last 12 months. More than anything else, the appointment of Rangnick removes their places to hide. He is clear as to what he wants, he tells the media and supporters what he wants and so publicly makes it clear to the players what he needs from them. You either buy into it, or you don’t. Rangnick taking up a position of responsibility after his spell as manager suggests that they would be foolish not to get on board.
Newcastle United
There’s a time for insight and a time for considered thought. And then there’s a time for simple conclusions: my goodness me Newcastle United needed that win. It had been 195 days since their last league win, a run that had taken the support from general unease to outright melancholy. They are not close to survival yet, but with a run of fixtures in December that might well not return a single point, Eddie Howe knew that he needed a good news story in a sea of misery.
It’s amazing how quickly a forlorn situation can take on a new lilt with three points and a ray of warming winter sunshine. Had Newcastle lost on Saturday, they would have been six points (plus goal difference) from safety, requiring to break a Premier League record of failing to win any of their first 14 matches and staying up. All of a sudden, you looked at the table on Sunday morning and thought “huh, they’re only six points off 11th, the January transfer window is around the corner and they won’t lose anyone to Afcon”. And that’s why we keep coming back every week for more.
Norwich City
On Friday, Dean Smith outlined what he believes is the next step for his Norwich City team after an excellent start to his time in charge.
“Our next step is to go on and create more chances. We have become harder to beat, we’re having less big chances against us,” Smith said. “It is being braver on the ball, having more possession and creating bigger chances.”
That’s interesting, because Norwich are indeed having more of the ball. Before the Newcastle game, Norwich had only three times in Premier League history had more than 58 per cent possession away from home: against Southampton in 2019, Wolves in 2020 and Hull City in 2013 (when Hull had a player sent off).
Against Newcastle, Norwich had 68 per cent possession but that was clearly impacted by Ciaran Clark’s early red card. Against Tottenham on Sunday, Smith’s team had 59 per cent possession. That seems a remarkable figure given the profile of the two teams.
But the challenge for Smith is to build up Norwich’s possession so that they can create clearcut chances without sacrificing any defensive stability. For all their possession against Tottenham, their opponents were able to soak up pressure and then counter. Spurs had 17 shots to Norwich’s 10 and the visitors only managed one on target.
Southampton
According to Opta, since Ralph Hasenhuttl took charge of Southampton in December 2018 (and that is long enough ago for us to call it a firmly established trend), they have dropped 71 points from winning positions. That happens to every team from time to time and they are slightly punished for being a Premier League ever-present, but Southampton’s total is 15 points higher than any other club.
Four quick theories for that:
1) Fitness: Southampton struggle later in games because Hasenhuttl’s style relies upon organised high pressing which is draining both physically and mentally. Which leads to…
2) Personnel: Southampton do not have a deep squad, which means that when Hasenhuttl is forced to make changes the quality in the team drops off and allows opponents to dominate. But there’s also an issue with…
3) Approach: No team cedes that many leads without it, in part, being a systemic issue. Southampton have a tendency, particularly after half-time when holding a lead, to drop back and try and defend it rather than pushing for a second. Again, that may play into fitness issues with the press. And, finally…
4) Individual mistakes: Alex McCarthy got injured on Saturday. Rather than instructing the bench that he needed to come off, he stayed on the pitch. Cue James Ward-Prowse dropping back to his own goal to defend an area McCarthy couldn’t get to and playing Brighton onside. Hasenhuttl was visibly angry about it after the game.
Tottenham
One positive spin on the number of Tottenham midfielders who have either declined (Dele Alli, Harry Winks, Giovani Lo Celso) or left (Moussa Sissoko, Erik Lamela) over the last two years is that it creates opportunities for any player who is capable of stepping into the breach and coping with the pressure. The early signs are that Antonio Conte might well fall in love with Oliver Skipp.
In the first half against Norwich, with Tottenham deliberately ceding possession to their hosts, Skipp’s defensive work was impeccable and his energy really does make a difference in midfield. After half-time, with Tottenham looking to be a little more proactive, he stepped forward and made a number of progressive passes. Every single one of his passes in the Norwich half went to a teammate and no player on the pitch won possession more often.
It was only Norwich, and there are questions about Skipp’s ability to compete with some of the Premier League’s elite midfielders, but he is a 21-year-old enjoying his first season in Tottenham’s first team who has played under two different managers, at least two different formations and alongside more senior teammates who have too often underperformed. That suggests a maturity that will serve him well.
Watford
In Xisco Munoz’s seven league games in charge this season, Watford allowed their opponents an average of 1.56 xG per game. In Claudio Ranieri’s eight league games in charge, Watford have allowed their opponents an average of 2.29 xG per game.
There is one very obvious explanation for this. In those eight games, Ranieri has faced Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Leicester City. Watford’s Premier League survival will not be determined by their results in these matches and survival is all they need this season. Between now and the end of January, Watford play against Brentford, Burnley, Crystal Palace, Wolves, Newcastle and Norwich.
But defensive intensity isn’t something that a team can generally switch on and off like a tap. Losing to Manchester City is no surprise and no cause for alarm, but Watford allowed the obvious star performers – Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling – far too much space in the final third. They regularly got dragged infield and then seemed surprised when City switched play to find one of Foden or Bernardo in space on the wide edge of the penalty area. Every opponent Watford will face will punish them if they are that slow to press the man in possession so close to their goal.
West Ham
A magnificent victory that owed much to good fortune (Mendy’s brain fade for the first goal and Masuaku’s freak goal for the third), but so what? When you are punching above your weight against one of the richest clubs in the world, you need a little good luck.
And this was a win engineered by David Moyes, whose two substitutions totally changed the course of the match. At half-time, Moyes spotted that Ben Johnson had been unable to get high enough up the pitch to stop Reece James at source. He brought on Masuaku and told him to press James and push forward himself to pin him back when West Ham had possession.
Then, when Kurt Zouma pulled up with a muscle injury, Moyes went for the courageous option of playing Pable Fornals in a midfield two rather than the easier, more obvious options of changing formation to play with two central defenders or bringing on Mark Noble in midfield.
Fornals may not have had much of a hand in the winner, but that’s not the point. Moyes sent a message to Chelsea that he was not content to try and defend a point but instead wanted to push on for three. His bravery was rewarded. West Ham have now beaten three of last season’s top five at home this season, scoring 10 goals in the process.
Wolves
Wolves were unfortunate not to take a point given the timing of Liverpool’s goal, but they have now scored one goal in their last five league games and – more instructively – have only managed a total of 2.6 xG across those matches. Almost half of that figure was accumulated in the 1-0 win over West Ham. Only Norwich have now scored fewer goals this season.
This isn’t necessarily an issue. As with Chelsea’s section, those attacking issues are overshadowed by a solid defence and Wolves are still overachieving in eighth. But they aren’t creating a high number of chances, aren’t particularly adept and converting the chances they do get and the quality of those chances created are slightly hampered by Wolves being a little sluggish to move the ball in the final third.
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