The Score is Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 (postponements permitting!) Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Monday morning
A decimated Premier League programme after a spate of Covid-19 postponements, but that only means more detail on the eight teams who did play. Leeds United’s crisis goes from bad to worse but Arsenal have their new first-choice striker. Elsewhere, Liverpool and Tottenham played out a thrilling draw while Chelsea lost more ground in the title race.
This weekend’s Premier League results
Saturday 18 December
- Leeds United 1-4 Arsenal
Sunday 19 December
- Newcastle United 0-4 Manchester City
- Wolves 0-0 Chelsea
- Tottenham 2-2 Liverpool
All other matches were postponed following Covid-19 outbreaks.
Arsenal
Am I falling for it again? Yes. Are we right to believe in a better Arsenal? Maybe. There are elements of this team that really do feel immune to the usual cycle of joy and despair that this club have submerged themselves into over the last five years and more.
Firstly, Saturday’s win was invaluable with so many other teams unable to play. We have become so used to this scenario, Arsenal travelling away to a team down on its luck and ceding all of their advantages in a miserable whirl of individual mistakes and collective disorganisation. Instead, Arsenal seized upon Leeds’ frailties and won the match in the first 30 minutes. They exposed the holes in midfield, passing with a zip and intensity that their opponents could not match.
This has been a year of overhaul at Arsenal, but one that brings with it real reason for cheer. Twelve months ago, Mikel Arteta’s team were 15th in the Premier League and on a seven-game winless league run. Mesut Ozil was still an Arsenal player, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had signed a massive new contract and seen his form drop off a cliff, Willian was still starting matches despite supporters being angry about his signing and the club had committed a PR disasterclass by making redundancies and asking players to take pay cuts before giving the Brazilian a bumper deal.
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And away from all the constant noise, the numbers indicate the progress. Arsenal have taken 73 points from 40 matches in the last year, two fewer than Liverpool. Look at their team from the match before that cut-off point (which I accept is pretty arbitrary): Willian, Eddie Nketiah, Nicolas Pepe, Mohamed Elneny, Dani Ceballos, David Luiz, Bernd Leno. Those seven players have made a combined nine league starts this season, three of them have left the club and none are first choice.
In their place, a new, youthful team. It’s a statistic this column has updated regularly over the last three months, but the 16 youngest starting XIs in the Premier League this season have all been selected by Arteta. Those young players – Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith-Rowe and now Gabriel Martinelli – have not merely been placeholders in the team but leaders of it.
We should insert a little circumspection at this point. That final game before the cut-off was a 2-1 away defeat against Everton and the last fortnight proves that Arsenal are still perfectly capable of repeating that trick. The great frustration of Arteta’s Arsenal is that for every two steps forward they take at least one more back and we should not – cannot – believe that that same pattern will not continue. It’s also only a few weeks since Arsenal supporters were seriously wavering on their faith in Arteta being the best solution to them avoiding such an infuriating loop.
But there is a difference this time. A year ago, it was Arsenal’s senior players who were causing their club the most strife. Now when mistakes are made, it is because the team is filled with youth and young players will never develop without setbacks along the way. As long as there is belief that their club has committed to a new age, at least trying to change, mistakes are forgivable. And if Arsenal can build an attack around Martinelli, Martin Odegaard and Emile Smith-Rowe in the same way they have built a defence around Ramsdale, Ben White and Gabriel Paulista, they will improve over time rather than regress. And that’s all Arsenal fans ever really asked for.
Chelsea
Chelsea evidently wanted their match at Molineux to be called off. They made it clear that they had asked the Premier League for a postponement due to Covid-19 cases and had that request rejected. They are right that greater communication from the league would be useful so that we all have more understanding and the decision-making process doesn’t feel so ad hoc.
But then Chelsea played in the manner of a team that didn’t want to be there, and that is far less understandable. Their bench, severely depleted, still cost as much to buy as Wolves’ entire starting XI. They made two changes to their team and one of them was to bring in N’Golo Kante. The team that started the game was plenty good enough to win the game if they had performed at their best.
This was a grim, lethargic match, but then Chelsea had been given plenty of evidence that Wolves were more than comfortable with that. The onus therefore fell on Chelsea to accelerate the tempo and force victory. Thomas Tuchel’s side wholly failed to do that.
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And that matters. If we are indeed set for a repeat of 2019-20, with two or more teams both running the marathon at a sprinter’s pace and thus requiring more than 90 points to be in a position to win the title, Chelsea cannot afford these slip-ups. They are now six points behind Manchester City and City have only dropped seven points since the opening day. Lose their coattails and it will be mighty hard to keep up.
What’s interesting is how quickly the perception of Chelsea’s squad has shifted, particularly in midfield. When they were purring in the autumn, it seemed that whoever Tuchel picked stepped up. Now, the form of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ross Barkley and Saul Niguez is holding Chelsea back. Hakim Ziyech and Christian Pulisic are also struggling and Callum Hudson-Odoi and Kai Havertz have performed in fits and starts. What previously seemed to be the deepest squad in the Premier League is slowly appearing to contain a fair few Jacks of all trades and too few masters.
Leeds United
Is this the beginning of the end? Or are we much further down that road and we simply wanted to believe that things would change so we ignored the indications of a full-blown crisis? As soon as Kalvin Phillips was ruled out for two months, Leeds’ season changed. They were struggling in midfield with Phillips in the team. Without him, they barely have one.
We know that Leeds have a spate of injuries. We know that every time a player returns another one seems to limp off with another; Jack Harrison and Stuart Dallas both got knocks on Saturday. But then this has been happening for so long that it feels awkward to talk about how much Leeds might improve when they have a fully fit squad because such a thing may not exist until it is too late.
That simply must provoke spending in January. Marcelo Bielsa has repeatedly insisted that injuries allow for those on the fringes of his first-team squad and in the Under-23s to get valuable game time, but the truth is that these players are not yet good enough to play together en masse and avoid defeat.
It is admirable for Bielsa to prioritise their development, but there comes a time when the positive impact of competitive minutes is overshadowed by the psychological impact of playing in a team that is barely able to defend their own goal. Leeds need fresh blood, because even if other players return from injury the current squad is going to be broken by having to play every game and suffering regular defeats.
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Leeds United's crisis can't be down to bad luck alone with Bielsa also to blame10 December, 2021But even then, Leeds’ current slump is pretty disappointing. When teams are plunged into crisis and begin to slip down the table, we expect to see some resilience and fight. That is particularly true under a coach like Bielsa, who demands – and achieves – such an emotional buy-in from his players.
But where is Leeds’ fight? They have conceded 16 goals in their last four matches. Against two admittedly higher-class opponents, they have allowed 52 shots in their last two matches and conceded 15 percent of last season’s shots on target faced total in their last 180 league minutes.
If nothing else, it suggests that Leeds do not have a plan B under Bielsa. For all the praise they metrited last season for their front-foot football and intense pressing that unnerved many of their Premier League opponents, it isn’t working with these players and that has been apparent for some time. That doesn’t bode well for a potential relegation scrap.
There are positives. Leeds have a run of decent home games to come and the teams below them aren’t picking up many points. Unless Newcastle United reinvent themselves in January, Leeds might only need five wins from their final 20 matches to stay up. They face Newcastle and Burnley at Elland Road in January and points earned in those games will count double.
But even if Leeds do stay up, where does that leave Bielsa? With his rolling contract strategy leaving his position vulnerable at the end of the season, there is a growing suspicion that he is getting a little weary of this battle and that a mutual split in May – whichever division Leeds are in – could suit both parties.
Liverpool
Two points dropped? Certainly. Liverpool held a lead and the requirements of this title race suggest that allowing any opponent back into a match should be deemed deeply inadvisable. Jurgen Klopp’s team had won six league matches in a row and yet will head into Christmas worried that they have ceded extra ground to Manchester City.
If Afcon goes ahead, it demands that they must make the best use of Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah before it.
And yet Liverpool didn’t deserve to win. Their makeshift midfield struggled to cope with Tottenham, who created more clear-cut chances than we are used to any team inflicting upon Klopp’s team.
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Add in a dreadful mistake from Alisson and two points dropped quickly transforms into one gained.
But we have to talk about the officiating, not least because Klopp reacted so angrily to it.
“I have no problems with any referees, only you,” Klopp said to Paul Tiernery after full-time, incensed at the decision not to award a penalty.
“If you don’t think that this is a penalty, you’ve never played football.”
For what it’s worth, the penalty was a touch-and-go call. Klopp can feel more aggrieved that Andrew Robertson was shown a red card for his tackle and yet Kane only received a yellow for his. Both were worthy of the same punishment.
With Kane out of control, he should have been dismissed and that would clearly have shifted the pattern of the game.
That said, there’s an argument that Liverpool fared better with 10 men than 11. With Robertson sent from the field, Klopp made the decision to sit back and soak up pressure, thus ending the end-to-end basketball football of the first 70 minutes. Given the number of chances Tottenham created, that decision earned Liverpool a point they may have risked squandering otherwise.
Manchester City
Manchester City are kings of the winter. They have an unrivalled ability to embark upon a series of consecutive victories, swatting aside lower-ranked opponents as if they were not there. They have now won eight straight league games without trailing for a single minute. In half of those matches they have scored the first goal in the opening 10 minutes and effectively won it at that point.
There’s little doubt that City got lucky at 2-0 on Sunday; Ederson’s foul on Ryan Fraser achieved the unthinkable by uniting everyone on social media following the game. But in the second half, Pep Guardiola’s side achieved the type of suffocating control that persuades their opponent to stop trying to even get the ball back, let alone attempt to score. They starve the life out of teams, suck the energy out of crowds and thus start matches with at least a one-goal psychological lead.
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The key to troubling Manchester City has always been to score first, sending them into a panic spiral caused by unfamiliarity that can lead to them snatching at chances and over-committing players. Concede first and you might as well give up. You are forced to chase the game and leave spaces in midfield. That is exactly what they want.
And City have got better at avoiding the panic spiral. They have scored 22 times in the first half of matches this season and conceded only once, an outrageous record. Their defence still has odd moments where players make rash decisions (hello, Ederson) or lose concentration, but they are currently on course to concede 19 league goals this season which would be the fewest for a completed league season in their history and the third-fewest in Premier League history.
Finally – and we’re at the risk of concluding that it is now Manchester City’s title to lose – they have already played Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Leicester away from home. In this form, it’s hard to imagine anything stopping Guardiola’s team.
Newcastle United
Manchester City are plenty good enough without offering them gifts. Whether Martin Dubravka called for the ball and then hesitated or Ciaran Clark assumed his goalkeeper was coming for the ball and left it is unclear, but either way it was a horrendous defensive mistake that it’s hard to envisage any other club in this season’s Premier League making. Eddie Howe has not improved Newcastle’s defending. If he has improved their attacking it is because he is throwing more players forward.
You cannot compensate for individual mistakes such as the one that haunted Newcastle’s opening five minutes. But you can ask why Clark was starting at all when Fabian Schar was on the bench and Clark had got himself sent off with another mistake nine minutes into his last start. Howe has a huge amount of work to do in January, but buying two central defenders should be high up on his list.
It wasn’t all negative against City. They did respond both at 1-0 and after half-time. Joelinton has been transformed into a very effective box-to-box midfielder whose energy sets an example to players around him who should know better than to need it. He is one of Howe’s few success stories so far.
But this club is simply waiting for the transfer window and that is a dangerous game. It is hard to get multiple deals done in that short window, harder still to get the right type of personality and then gel the new team together over the course of a busy schedule. Newcastle are somehow not yet cut adrift after one win in 18 league matches. By the end of January, they might be.
Tottenham
A different Tottenham! So far under Antonio Conte, Spurs have been largely unable to create clear chances at a high volume but have been pretty good at taking the chances that did come their way. Against Liverpool, they created good chances but largely wasted them. Conte would have been furious had they not got a positive result.
The numbers bear that out. On Sunday afternoon, Tottenham registered their highest expected goals total in a Premier League match since January 2, a home game against Leeds. Not only have they had two different permanent managers since that day, they also matched the xG figure against one of the best teams in the league. That is hugely encouraging.
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Given the upheaval in both teams, it is hard to make any lasting conclusions. This was a brilliant advert for playing on through the Covid-19 issues if at all possible, end-to-end football players by starting XIs who clearly need some time on the training ground to learn how to control a match as a unit. That’s hardly Conte’s forte; he much prefers control to chaos.
But with Spurs supporters needing a little shot in the arm (yes, you’ll have to ignore that pun), this home performance came at just the right time to persuade them that Conte can make a difference in the short term despite the manager’s insistence that this ship will take longer than he’d previously hoped to turn around. If the 3-0 home defeat to Manchester United in October was abject, here was proof that they can compete with the best. Tottenham are unbeaten in five league games since. And Harry Kane finally has his first home goal since May.
Wolves
There’s no secret to Bruno Lage’s plan to make Wolves successful. Increasingly, new managers discuss their intentions to match some mythical historical precedent for how their clubs should play: the [insert club X] way. Lage is happy to make Wolves effective, however it takes.
Wolves’ last seven league results are a tribute to binary numbers: 1-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-1, 0-1, 1-0, 0-0. Only twice over that run of fixtures have either team even managed more than 1.5 expected goals in the match; Liverpool and Manchester City in their recent 1-0 victories. Wolves have become the most boring team in the Premier League, on the basis of their results at least.
But then so what? Lage has no obligation to entertain and he will quickly be under pressure if results suffer. If Wolves’ manager reasons that forming a solid defence and then knitting together an attack is their best hope of sustainable improvement then who are we to doubt him?
Wolves 0-0 draw against Chelsea understandably drew stinging criticism from Chelsea supporters who accused Lage and Wolves of anti-football. But again, they have no duty to create a spectacle. If your expensively-assembled attack cannot find a way to score, that’s your problem not theirs. Lage has got Romain Saiss and Max Kilman playing brilliantly, Conor Coady continues to lead Wolves and they have played each of the top three in recent weeks, conceding two goals. Entertainment can come later.
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