Premier League: Man Utd’s abject surrender, Villa’s new-look attack, exciting Arsenal and a Newcastle bargain

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

Amid talk that the Premier League title race is back on, Manchester City laid down a marker by thrashing Manchester United 4-1 on Sunday.

That one-sided victory re-opened City’s six-point lead after Liverpool had beaten West Ham 1-0 at Anfield on Saturday evening.

At the other end of the table, Newcastle and Brentford both earned big victories as Burnley unravelled against Chelsea, while Aston Villa ended Southampton’s good form in style. There were also wins for Arsenal, Crystal Palace and Leicester.

De Bruyne and Man City are the epitome of everything that sorry Man Utd are not

Tottenham will play Everton in the final match of the round on Monday night.

This weekend’s results

Saturday 5 March

Aston Villa 4-0 Southampton

Burnley 0-4 Chelsea

Leicester 1-0 Leeds

Liverpool 1-0 West Ham

Newcastle 2-1 Brighton

Norwich 1-3 Brentford

Wolves 0-2 Crystal Palace

Sunday 6 March

Man City 4-1 Man Utd

Watford 2-3 Arsenal

Monday 7 March

Tottenham vs Everton

Arsenal

This column has written extensively about just how young this Arsenal team is at various points this season, but after the win at Watford, during which their goals were scored by Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, it’s worth reiterating just how exciting this team could be. Arsenal are responsible for the 18 youngest starting XIs in the Premier League this season and will surely complete the top 20 in their next two matches.

Those young players are making a massive difference, particularly in the final third. Arsenal players sit first, second, and joint seventh (with two players at that rank) for goals scored by players currently aged 23 and under in the Premier League this season. They have players ranked second and third for assists in the same age category. They rank second for saves too, because Aaron Ramsdale does not turn 24 until May.

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Mikel Arteta isn’t just giving youth a chance; he’s entirely building around it. There are 30 players in the Premier League currently aged 23 and under who have made 20 or more appearances in the division this season. Arsenal account for 13 per cent of them.

Aston Villa

Pretty much the perfect home performance. This was Aston Villa’s most dominant league victory (in terms of expected goals difference) since December 2020 and marked the first time they have kept consecutive clean sheets since August (and one of those opponents was Barrow).

But the headline news for Villa supporters was the way in which their forward line worked so beautifully together. Last weekend was the first time that Philippe Coutinho, Danny Ings and Ollie Watkins have all started together; Villa have scored six and conceded none in the two games since.

Effectively playing with three attackers forces Steven Gerrard to seek more balance in midfield. Jacob Ramsey flourished when given the licence to push forward, but he has not created a single chance in either of the last two victories. But then he doesn’t need to when the trio in front of him are making it work. Ings, Watkins and Coutinho created seven chances between them against Southampton. It also leaves no room for Emi Buendia, which feels harsh given his recent resurgence. But then those are the advantages of having deeper attacking options than they have at any point in the Premier League era.

Although Villa notionally setup as a 4-3-3 with Coutinho on the left, the system is more fluid than that. Regularly on Saturday, Watkins and Ings were playing as a front two with Coutinho allowed to roam at will. He had a cluster of touches on the left, but also drifted to the right to link up with Matty Cash or dropped a little deeper and played in the No 10 role.

This might only be a temporary solution. Unless Coutinho can be persuaded to sign on a permanent deal in the summer (and we shouldn’t rule it out, if the price is right) his absence will leave a hole and may necessitate a switch back to a different system or the re-introduction of Buendia. But Gerrard will be happy to ride this mini-wave while he can. It’s only a fortnight since we were wondering if this attacking unit could work together.

Brentford

A win that was good for the soul of every Brentford supporter. The defeat to Newcastle was deeply damaging, but Thomas Frank knew that if his team could take six points from their three games against Newcastle, Norwich and Burnley then they would have edged close to safety. If Newcastle are going to stay up anyway, Norwich and Burnley were the two crunch matches. One down, one to go.

Brentford won’t get the luxury of two penalties every week, but it was also massive to get Ivan Toney back in goalscoring form and there are few more reliable penalty-takers. Brentford’s best attacker had scored two league goals since the end of November and surpassed that total in the space of 26 minutes either side of half time.

Their victory also saw the best moment of this Premier League weekend, when Brandon Williams and Christian Eriksen briefly wrestled on the floor before Williams realised who he was staring into the face of. Cue a brief cuddle, well wishes and both players rising to their feet with a smile. It is wonderful to see Eriksen starting matches again.

Brighton

Another defeat and another defeat without Adam Webster. Brighton probably merited a point and reverted to type by missing the presentable chances they did create, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that Webster is the glue that holds this defence together (particularly since Dan Burn left for Newcastle).

Brighton have played 16 matches this season without Webster in the starting XI and have won only three – two of those three were against Championship opposition in the EFL Cup. His injury setback cost him a place in the side against Newcastle and probably means he misses matches against Liverpool and Tottenham too. Not an ideal time to be facing some of the best forwards in Europe.

Burnley

The positive spin was that games in hand would allow Burnley to pull themselves out of the bottom three. Victories over Brighton and Tottenham have certainly made survival a distinct possibility, but Sean Dyche’s side have almost caught up on their fixtures and are still in the relegation zone.

Nobody really expected Burnley to beat Chelsea, but Dyche admitted that it was worrying to see how quickly his side capitulated after conceding the opening goal. Their mini revival was platformed by a return to defensive principles and a run of seven games in which they only conceded three times. They conceded more than that in 23 second-half minutes on Saturday.

We would normally expect a team to escape trouble by relying upon their home form, but you wonder if the opposite might be true for Burnley. Dwight McNeil was jeered by supporters at Turf Moor against Chelsea (something Dyche could not understand after the match). Given the freedom with which they played away at Brighton, and their run of fixtures on the road – Brentford, Norwich, Watford – it may be their away form that saves or condemns them.

Chelsea

How helpful is it to have Reece James back after his hamstring injury? James has played only 17 league games this season (two of those substitute appearances) but has scored or assisted 11 goals. Chelsea’s other regular right-back or right wing-back, Cesar Azpilicueta, has contributed to one. They are night and day.

And suddenly Thomas Tuchel’s side had an extra dimension. Against Burnley, James had more touches in the opposition box than his own and the majority of his touches were over the halfway line. His recovery pace allows him to sprint back into position in a way that is simply not possible for Azpilicueta. That makes a difference to Chelsea. In James’ last 15 starts for the club, they have scored 37 goals. In the last seven games he’s missed, they have scored only nine.

Chelsea fans interrupt minute's applause for Ukraine by chanting Roman Abramovich's name

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Also, we should commend Tuchel for the force with which he criticised Chelsea supporters who chanted Roman Abramovich’s name during the minute’s applause to offer thoughts and sympathy to those in Ukraine. Nobody is saying that you can’t thank Abramovich for the manner in which his money changed Chelsea’s modern history, but pick your damn moments. Doing so during that applause was a stupidly misguided and misjudged move. Some things are bigger than football and the tribalism it provokes.

Crystal Palace

“It was a really good performance,” said Patrick Vieira after the 2-0 win at Wolves. “I loved every single part of the game. I think we played really well, especially in the first-half. And in the second-half when we were a little bit tired we showed difference in the game – we defended well when we needed to. Overall it was a really good team performance. I think the first-half was one of the best [of the season].”

What’s so interesting about Saturday’s mightily impressive win at Wolves was how little possession Vieira’s team enjoyed. That statistic was skewed by a second half in which they defended deep to repel their opponents and hold onto their lead (Roy Hodgson football, broadly), but even in the first half Palace established a two-goal lead with 40 per cent possession.

We have spoken a lot in this column this season about Vieira’s attempts to change Palace into a team that tries to dominate possession, but the three matches in which they have had the least of the ball (Wolves away, Manchester City away, Brighton away) have returned seven points. Conversely, they have only won one (at home to Nuno’s Tottenham in September) of the nine matches in which they have had the most possession.

That is not to say that Vieira’s attempt to change Palace’s style is foolhardy; he has a preferred philosophy that he was presumably appointed to implement. But this season has been a repeated battle between a manager shifting the mindset of a group of players (without being able to make wholesale changes in the transfer market) and trying to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Everton

Frank Lampard has never been in a relegation battle. He didn’t finish lower than 15th during his formative years at West Ham, then played exclusively for title-challenging clubs, was appointed by Derby County after they finished sixth and then got the Chelsea job. How much preparation do those experiences provide for what now follows?

The trip to Tottenham on Monday is something of a free hit, a match from which Everton aren’t expected to take anything. But it comes before a cluster of incredibly important league matches that Lampard must juggle with FA Cup progression that offers a chance to win Everton’s first trophy in 27 years. In ten weeks’ time he could be a Goodison hero, if everything goes to plan. He could also be clinging on to his top-flight managerial career if it doesn’t.

Leeds United

You need to do nothing more than read this piece about Leeds impressing in Jesse Marsch’s first match in charge before being undone by familiar mistakes.

Old problems rear their head again for Leeds as Jesse Marsch era begins in defeat

Leicester City

Leicester have become a very strange team indeed. For most of Saturday lunchtime’s fixture against Leeds, it was as if they were the side with a new manager trying to work out how to make this team work and struggling. They played long balls over the top, a perfectly serviceable tactic given the presence of Jamie Vardy, Leeds’ high defensive line and Pascal Struijk being booked early on for pulling Vardy back.

But for a period of 15 minutes at the start of the second half, Leicester could barely make a pass. And for all the happiness of those supporters who left the King Power after a first home win in 2022, Leicester should have lost the match given the number of chances they allowed Leeds to create. Rodgers has been in charge for more than three years and it’s sometimes very hard to know what this team’s style actually is.

Still, there were two obvious positives. The first is that Leicester won with their Plan B. Rodgers clearly knew Vardy could only give him an hour due to his injury rehabilitation, but the introduction of Ademola Lookman and Kelechi Iheanacho spooked Leeds. Rather than looking long, Leicester used short passing between their attacking players that led to Harvey Barnes’ match-winning goal.

And Leicester also kept another clean sheet (although, yes, they were very fortunate to do so). Leeds had 10 corners and didn’t score from any of them, which is as rare as blue moons and flying pigs in Leicester. This marks the first time in more than two years that Rodgers’ team have kept consecutive league clean sheets.

Liverpool

Virgil van Dijk became a Premier League record-breaker on Saturday night, as he avoided home defeat for the 60th straight match as a Liverpool player. That statistic is a little tenuous, not least because the player he surpassed was Lee Sharpe, but it is indicative of Van Dijk’s immense impact at Liverpool. As a leader by example, it is hard to think of many Premier League signings since Eric Cantona at Manchester United to have made such a difference to their new club.

More than any niche statistic or even in his own performance (which is almost always commanding), the best way to judge Van Dijk is, like every great defender, how much easier he makes it for his defensive partners. Dejan Lovren, Joe Gomez, Joel Matip and Ibrahim Konate; all are good defenders in their own right but were (or are, in Konate’s case) able to settle and grow in the team because the person next to them makes them feel so at ease. In that scenario, picking Van Dijk is to pick one-and-a-half players.

Manchester City

It’s hard to know how much we should apportion credit to Manchester City and how much of Sunday was merely a damning indictment of United given the gulf between the two clubs (more on that next), but there are few things we really must credit Pep Guardiola and his team for:

1) Guardiola clearly spotted that right-back was Manchester United’s weakness, whether they picked Aaron Wan Bissaka or Diogo Dalot. The selection of Jack Grealish over Raheem Sterling was a surprise, but Guardiola’s reasoning was that Wan Bissaka is pretty good against pace but struggles a lot more against quick feet.

Grealish was excellent on Sunday (and, just as importantly, looked to be having great fun), but it was the combination that did for Wan Bissaka, who received precious little help. This is the advantage of picking players in multiple positions. Bernardo Silva, Grealish, Joao Cancelo and Phil Foden are all comfortable in the area to the left edge of the penalty box and at times all four occupied it to drown Wan Bissaka. Riyad Mahrez became the latent threat, comparatively starved of possession and yet the scorer of two goals.

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2) Watch City’s second goal again on repeat and in slow motion. See how quickly they respond to chances being curated either through excellent passes or saved shots. In the space of five seconds, three players in blue were not just the first to react but also predicted where the ball might go. Bernardo goes left in case the ball breaks that way. Foden stays where he is in case the ball spills out. Mahrez hangs right on the edge of the box. Kevin De Bruyne is in the middle, where the ball eventually lands. They play the percentages like no other team in England.

3) But if you want to watch what makes City brilliant, forget the endless passing around statues and the 92 per cent possession over a 15-minute period. Instead, watch the six seconds after they lost possession on the edge of United’s box when they were already 3-1 up. Six different City players chase the red shirt. When they inevitably won it back by crowding United out, one of them actively celebrated and the others made movements to show for the ball. That is why they are so good.

Manchester United

Those second-half statistics, which bear repeating because they are so humiliating: 21 per cent possession vs 79. No shots vs 14. No shots on target vs five. That Manchester United only conceded twice after the break should be something to cling to, such was City’s dominance. But then that only exacerbates the embarrassment. City used to be noisy neighbours. Now it’s United who are drawing the curtains and taking the phone off the hook in case anyone calls.

Manchester United's attacking output in the second half today vs. Manchester City. #MUFC pic.twitter.com/Y8psTg6SCG
— The Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) March 6, 2022

Ralf Rangnick arrived with a plan, a team of midfielders who would press as a unit and force City into shorter passing sequences than they would like. It worked in the first 30 minutes when United provoked mistakes and were a threat on the counter. But City were merely waiting for the press to drop in intensity, which it was always going to do. At that point they picked passes and crafted attacking moves as if they were playing at double speed compared to their visitors.

You can excuse a lack of quality in the isolation of one game. The most miserable conclusion for any United supporter is that they were outclassed by City because City are light years ahead. But that excuse doesn’t wash in the wider picture. Manchester United have spent over a billion pounds under several different managers to create a team of individuals that do not seem to fit together; City and Liverpool created a team. They reflect the club, a statue to gross wastage, reactionary thinking and a transfer policy that focuses on who is famous and expensive and who other big clubs purport to want. That is so weak, so pathetic a policy that it becomes anti-policy; it shows.

But you can never excuse a lack of effort. We can understand that being passed off the pitch is demoralising and nobody likes chasing shadows at the end of a match that was supposed to be competitive. But Gary Neville was right to call out the lack of application and effort. There were thousands of supporters in the away end who paid good money to at least witness a team trying. United chase a global fanbase but what must any of them thought about such abject surrender?

That too is a reflection of the club. At Liverpool and City, those two clubs who United used to call their peers, they would not stand for this. They – the supporters, the boardroom, the staff – would demand better, they would not stop until they had achieved it and they would be listened to. Can we be confident in the same route being followed by United, a club where history and notoriety and revenue is everything and nobody seems to notice that the team is either unable or unwilling to compete. Good luck to whoever agrees to walk into the lion’s den next.

Newcastle United

Had you spoken to most Newcastle United season ticket holders the day after the January transfer window ended, they would have enthused about the potential impact of Kieran Trippier, the cover provided by Chris Wood and Matt Targett and the excitement that a box-to-box midfielder such as Bruno Guimarães provides. But Dan Burn was the signing that impressed them most. Newcastle were too weak, too easy to score goals against. They believed Burn was the difference-maker.

And so it has proved. Burn has played four matches for his hometown club and Newcastle have won three of them, conceding only twice. Half of their league clean sheets for the season have come in those four games. He wins headers, he organises those around him and he communicates effectively. If £13m looked a high price then, it’s a steal now.

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A word too for Ryan Fraser, the one currently fit Newcastle player who Eddie Howe already knew when he took this job. With Allan Saint-Maximin unavailable recently, supporters might have worried where the creativity in this team would come from. Now Saint-Maximin does not deserve to dribble his way straight back into the team. Fraser has contributed 28 shot-creating actions in his last seven appearances; he had created 12 in the rest of the season before them.

Norwich City

One thing that really annoys me about football managers is when they pass the buck to the officials for their team’s underperformance. I fully understand why – doing so deflects criticism of them and your own role in defeat – but it does let them down. One of the reasons Marcelo Bielsa was so easy to warm to at Leeds was his steadfast refusal to blame refereeing decisions and his brutal honesty in assessing his own performance.

After their defeat to Brentford, Dean Smith claimed that Norwich had “been VAR-ed”; he claimed that the second penalty should not have been awarded because Ivan Toney put his foot across to initiate contact. Go and watch the replay for yourselves and try and work out where Smith’s logic is. Ben Gibson was also guilty for the first penalty – again it was stonewall.

Smith was not VAR-ed; he was Norwich-ed. They missed a brilliant chance to take the lead and then made stupid mistakes that ultimately cost them any chance of taking a point. And given the results around them, that is probably that for their hopes of staying up. They have taken 12 points from Smith’s 16 games in charge. The suspicion that he was being brought in to oversee next season’s promotion charge has been proved correct.

Southampton

This does tend to happen to Southampton, heavy defeats that appear almost out of nowhere. Ralph Hasenhuttl’s system relies upon aggressing and their press working. When neither happens, they become desperately easy to play against. Aston Villa scored four times and could easily have added two or three more to that total.

But Southampton were also flummoxed by the absence of Mohammed Salisu through a hamstring injury. The Ghanaian has been their best defender this season and they have lost one of their last 12 matches with him starting.

Without wishing to single players out for criticism, the drop off to Jack Stephens is significant. Southampton have only kept clean sheets in two of the last 18 league games Stephens has started, and in one of those two he was substituted after 37 minutes.

Tottenham

The positive spin (and it takes some selective vision) of Tottenham being eliminated from the FA Cup is that Antonio Conte will enjoy some full weeks on the training ground with a group of players who desperately need improving.

You can argue that Conte effectively saying his players are either not good enough, not mentally tough enough or both is unhelpful (and it’s certainly a niche motivational strategy), but it must be incredibly frustrating for him to watch his team play so excellently against Manchester City and Leeds and then flunk against Burnley and Middlesbrough. Their FA Cup exit – in such meek circumstances – when you haven’t won a trophy in years was verging on unacceptable.

Now Conte desperately needs some consistency. Tottenham’s results since the start of year are comically up and down: win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, loss, win, loss, win, loss. They have an ability to beat the best and lose to the worst. That only makes for a mid-table team.

Watford

What on earth do we say about Watford’s home record, other than that it is going to take them back down to the Championship? Watford, under their three different managers, have taken the same number of away points as Leicester and more than Newcastle, Leeds, Burnley, Norwich and Everton, each of the clubs around them.

But at Vicarage Road, they are shambolic. Watford have now lost ten of their last 11 home league games and the exception was the 4-1 win against Manchester United that ended Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s tenure. In their last four matches there they have conceded three, four, two and three goals and the appointment of Hodgson doesn’t appear to have done anything to address the issue.- Those opponents included Crystal Palace (four goals) and Norwich City (three).

Perhaps the answer is hard to find because there is no answer. If Watford sit back and try to defend, they eventually get picked off. Hodgson saw evidence of that theory against West Ham last month when they had 35 per cent of the ball but lost 1-0. So they try and attack to atone for their defensive frailties, score twice and still concede three goals to lose.

It all feels a bit bleak. Watford are not done yet, but they have Everton, Leeds, Brentford and Burnley all to play at home and have taken seven points at Vicarage Road all season. It would take a monumental shift to change the mood now.

West Ham

David Moyes’ away record against Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premier League is a thing of absolute wonder: won – 0, drawn 21, lost 45. In isolation there was little wrong with West Ham’s performance on Saturday teatime; they created chances and Moyes may well believe that they merited a point. But it is still an extraordinarily barren run.

Does this sort of thing become self-fulfilling? The pattern is so established that Moyes is clearly aware of it and so must his players be. This is pure conjecture, but at what point do you feel like defeat is inevitable because you are usually defeated in the same circumstance?

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The wider picture is that West Ham’s season is in danger of drifting after a run of two wins in seven league games, a limp midweek FA Cup exit and a Europa League draw that has paired them with the competition’s specialists. Thursday’s game at the Sanchez-Pizjuan is huge.

Wolves

“Ki is a good example of a young kid who wants everything to happen (quickly),” Lage said after the defeat to Palace. “When you are out or your team-mate is playing, you are not training with intensity or preparing yourselves. Then, when you have the chance, these things happen.

“I have too many kids in my team and sometimes they don’t work the way they should work. They are not prepared the way they should and after these kinds of things happen… These things happen (the injury) because they go to the limit and are not prepared. Sometimes Ki doesn’t work with the same intensity.”

Although Lage did extend that criticism to other young players, he is no fool. This was an incredibly inflammatory interview in which he hung Hoever out to dry. Relationships can easily be repaired, but that is the type of stinging attack that will take some repairing.

It also reflects both how quickly an overachieving season at a non-elite club can unravel; Wolves have now lost three on the spin – and how, at those non-elite clubs, only the best is good enough if you are to maintain overachievement. That is what has clearly irked Lage most: he knows that when intensity in training drops, everything suffers. And that harms his own reputation.

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Premier League: Man Utd’s abject surrender, Villa’s new-look attack, exciting Arsenal and a Newcastle bargain

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