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.
This was supposed to be the week that we finally found out which way the title race was going to go, but a pulsating 2-2 draw between Liverpool and Manchester City means the gap stays at just one point and the race, it seems, will go down to the wire.
It was a dramatic set of games at the bottom of the Premier League too with Everton pulling themselves away from trouble after a disastrous defeat to Burnley during the week.
Defeats for Watford and the Clarets also helped Frank Lampard feel a little better about his chances of keeping the Toffees in the top flight.
This weekend’s results
Friday 8 April
Saturday 9 April
- Everton 1-0 Manchester United
- Arsenal 1-2 Brighton
- Southampton 0-6 Chelsea
- Watford 0-3 Leeds
- Aston Villa 0-4 Spurs
Sunday 10 April
- Brentford 2-0 West Ham
- Leicester 2-1 Crystal Palace
- Norwich 2-0 Burnley
- Manchester City 2-2 Liverpool
Arsenal
Arsenal did have a chance to buy new players in January. There were three obvious positions that could have been strengthened: backup left-back, central midfield competition for places and a new striker as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was leaving. Ultimately, the club – and Mikel Arteta – decided to stick with what they had. And for a while, that seemed to work.
Arsenal have been on the end of some bad luck since. Kieran Tierney is probably the one player they could afford to lose least and he has been ruled out until next season. Thomas Partey was working brilliantly as a No 6 who allowed Granit Xhaka to roam; he is injured, too. That has had a knock-on effect. With Nuno Tavares struggling badly, Xhaka was asked to fill in at left-back and suddenly Arsenal had a central midfield combination of Martin Odegaard and Albert Sambi Lokonga. Brighton exploited those deficiencies.
The temptation is to curse Arsenal for their January inactivity. Tierney has suffered regular injuries throughout his career – his absence is no huge surprise and nobody really fancied Tavares to deputise effectively. Alexandre Lacazette is simply not in good enough form – over an extended period of time – to play as a lone striker for a team with top-four aspirations. Given what has happened since, Arsenal have abdicated their position of strength.
But then it isn’t easy. With Tierney, Xhaka and Partey all cemented first choices, the club would either be targeting players – for which they would pay a premium – to sit on the bench or try to make a landmark signing who would be a guaranteed starter but risk breaking the harmony that had already been established. It is easy to opine in hindsight, but far harder in the present. Arsenal do not have enough disposable income to throw money at a problem like a new-money superclub.
Arteta shares responsibility. By picking Xhaka at left-back – where he is absolutely not a natural – he forced Odegaard to play much deeper. Suddenly the connection between midfield and attack was absent. And Arsenal didn’t even get the benefit of added defensive protection. Odegaard is many things, but a regulation central midfielder is not one of them.
And the most damaging psychological blow is that it is Tottenham who are primed to take advantage of their stumble. Ultimately, that comes down to Lacazette again. The difference between Spurs and Arsenal is not that Antonio Conte has been able to get his team in rude health in a far shorter space of time than Arteta, although that’s arguably true. It’s that Tottenham have two of the best attacking players in Europe who are able to blow opponents away in a manner that Arsenal are simply not capable of.
For Tottenham to fire, it is enough for Kane and Son to be on form. For Arsenal to fire, every element of the team must work and its most important components must be available. They aren’t and they aren’t.
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What has happened to Danny Ings? Last season at Southampton, Ings put 44 per cent of his shots on target, had almost exactly one shot on target per 90 minutes played, scored with 18 per cent of his shots and 42 per cent of his shots on target.
I’ll save you a second number dump, but Ings is significantly down on every one of those figures this season, some of them starkly so. Over the previous two seasons, Ings ranked as the most efficient finisher in the Premier League according to the quality of chances (and service) he got.
The general idea was that at Villa, where he would get better service from more capable creative players, he would thrive. Instead Ings is behind the eight ball in terms of goals according to the quality of his chances and has scored four from open play all season. Ings can only get bett… no.
Brentford
Well done to Bryan Mbeumo for scoring and improving one of the worst shooting records in the Premier League this season. Before Sunday, the Frenchman had scored three times from 53 shots with a total expected goals figure of 7.4.
In terms of the difference between his xG and his actual goals total, that made Mbeumo the least efficient finisher in the Premier League. The bad news is that the player second on that list is Gabriel Jesus and he also scored on Sunday.
Brighton
Graham Potter would suggest, with some evidence, that this result has been coming. Even Brighton cannot extend a run of one goal in 102 shots without finally taking enough chances to win. That it comes in a fixture they would have been expected to lose, thanks to Potter exploiting Arsenal’s frailties, makes it more sweet.
Brighton were not really punished for their dismal run. They won one of 11 Premier League games between 3 January and 8 April and only dropped three positions. After the win against Arsenal, they are level on points with Crystal Palace and above Aston Villa. A first finish in the top half remains within their grasp.
It’s now on Brighton’s players and Potter to earn it. They must avoid regressing back to the mean. They must capitalise on the stuttering form of those directly above and below them. They must convert the great season that drifted into a decent season into a good season.
Burnley
What a difference four days makes. You wonder if Sean Dyche regrets his post-match joke about Everton not knowing how to win. It was a momentary lapse, relief after a rotten period, but Dyche knows better than to celebrate early.
Burnley could not control Everton’s result against Manchester United, and that was certainly a blow after Thursday night, but it should have steeled them to tighten up the gap against Norwich. To allow Norwich, this Norwich, to have 17 shots and score twice against you without conceding is a humbling blow to Burnley’s hope of staying up. All the good work of Thursday is undone.
“It was a huge setback after a huge step forward,” said Dyche after the game. “It might come easier in a strange way when people write you off. Virtually everyone will think we’re done, but we don’t think that.”
That’s a wonderful way of upselling a disastrous result, and there’s something in Burnley being at their best when their backs are against the wall. But they also probably need at least four more wins to survive. They’ve only won four of their last 34.
Chelsea
The overwhelming mood will be one of relief. One victory, however handsome, will not erase the painful memories of Wednesday evening, but Chelsea will at least travel to Madrid with some much-needed momentum. They don’t need me or anyone else to tell them that winning by two clear goals in the Bernabeu will be far harder than winning by six, seven or eight at St Mary’s.
Still, it is worth praising one aspect of Chelsea’s dominant performance even after two damaging defeats. In the worries about underfiring forwards (Timo Werner, Romelu Lukaku), defenders who are out of contract this summer (Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen) and midfielders whose contracts expire at the end of next season (Jorginho, N’Golo Kante), the form of Mason Mount has flown a little under the radar.
It’s an opportune time to mention Mount (two goals and an assist on Saturday). In the Premier League this season, only three players (Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min) have contributed more goals and assists. He’s also at least five years younger than any of those three and the second youngest regular starter in Chelsea’s midfield or attack (behind Kai Havertz).
The next step is for Mount to produce regularly against the best teams in the league. He has been something of a flat-track bully this season: 11 of his 18 league goals and assists have come against Watford or Norwich and a 6-0 win against Southampton. Against Big Six teams, he has two assists and no goals.
Crystal Palace
No matter. Conor Gallagher was subdued throughout, Marc Guehi made one of his first major mistakes in a Palace shirt and Wilfried Zaha was lucky to score after missing the same penalty twice, but Patrick Vieira’s side hadn’t lost in seven games or conceded in four.
They are also forgiven for thoughts immediately turning to Wembley next weekend. Palace are the clear exceptions to the rule in the FA Cup semi-finals, but Chelsea have proven their fallibility of late. It’s time for Vieira to really make himself popular in Croydon.
Everton
It says an awful lot about how disorganised Everton’s midfield has been recently that they were so desperate for Fabian Delph to return after four months out. It says an awful lot about how bad Manchester United were on Saturday that Delph made such a difference on his first start in such a long time.
It might seem a little like damning through faint praise to commend players for running about and making their presence felt, but Everton supporters will tell you that their team has barely even managed that over the last few weeks. Delph is 32 and probably won’t be a Premier League regular again, but he did at least seem to care. He made tackles, positioned himself to break up attacks and generally made a nuisance of himself. Couple that with Ben Godfrey’s excellent display as a clearance machine and Everton set the right tone for once.
Their hard work isn’t over yet. The damage done in the 3-2 defeat against Burnley in midweek hasn’t been fixed even after Burnley lost to Norwich. They will not face such a lily-livered and miserable opponent as Manchester United between now and next season. This cannot be a one-off. There is an excuse for a lack of quality, but never a lack of effort. But at least Everton have an example to follow for the rest of the season. And at least the gap is back to four points.
Leeds United
On Saturday, at around 4.30pm, I went on Twitter for my 143rd doom scroll of the day. Leeds United were 1-0 up away from home, and my timeline was peppered with Leeds supporters bemoaning their team and manager. Even after the game, when Leeds had added two more goals to win 3-0, the general mood seemed to be one of demoralisation. One name was mentioned in every tweet: Bielsa.
Look, I get it. Marcelo Bielsa was a wonderful Leeds manager because he created a legacy that was sure to last beyond his tenure. Jesse Marsch may well be a very fine football manager, but he is unlikely to inspire the same feelings. He is not Bielsa and nor does he want to be.
But he does deserve a little better than this. Leeds’ game at Watford was tetchy, nervy and, at times, barely watchable, but then what do you expect from a fixture between two struggling clubs when the away side must not lose and the home side must win? If the accusation is that Marsch has made Leeds boring, a) good, the chaos thing had stopped working under Bielsa, and b) the 3-2 victory over Wolves in their last away game was one of the most chaotic Premier League matches I’ve seen in recent seasons.
For the record, Leeds have taken 10 points from their last four league games, more than they managed in Bielsa’s last 10. Nobody is expecting any Leeds supporter to suspend their adoration and admiration for their former manager – so much of football fandom is governed by emotion rather than reason and that is to be celebrated. But moaning about his successor when your team is winning (and subsequently goes on to win more handsomely) seems harsh. Marsch was given a remit to keep Leeds in the Premier League and they probably need five points from their last six games to secure it.
Sometimes it won’t be pretty. Sometimes you will crave the mania of Bielsa-ball. But given how clear an identity Leeds had under Marsch’s predecessor and how hard we knew it would be to shift that in the midst of a relentless run of matches, he deserves great credit.
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Leicester City
On Thursday, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall was comfortably Leicester City’s best player but was let down by those around him. Leicester – or, more accurately, he – created chances that they spurned. Dewsbury-Hall is fun to watch in that mode: the worse those around him play, the faster he zips around the pitch to try and make up the difference.
On Sunday, Dewsbury-Hall got his reward with his first Premier League goal and his second assist. He was again the best player on the pitch and, in the absence of Jamie Vardy, is becoming the tone setter in Leicester’s starting XI. Brendan Rodgers agrees.
“Since he’s broken into the team I felt throughout the season it was what we were missing,” Rodgers said post-game. “ Just in terms of intensity. The team was missing intensity and pressure and he has brought that. He typifies everything we want to be. He has good industry, a cultured left foot and he’s very honest.”
It might be too late for a call-up before the World Cup, but Dewsbury-Hall is probably closer than any of his teammates. A reminder: he didn’t make his Premier League debut until December 5 last year.
Liverpool
When was the last time Liverpool made this many mistakes in a match and so many different types of error? They were guilty of meek headers that invited pressure. They were repeatedly hassled and mugged by Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva in midfield. They occasionally knocked the ball more direct but overhit their passes. They failed to hold the ball up in the final third of the pitch. And they were caught out in the full-back areas. Boy were they caught out.
Klopp has repeatedly scoffed at suggestions that Trent Alexander-Arnold has defensive frailties. And, in most games, they are not relevant because his attacking contributions far outweigh any concerns and because opposition teams rarely commit so many players forward against Liverpool. Manchester City are not most teams.
Guardiola’s strategy appeared to be to pass the ball slowly from side to side in their own half. All the while, one or both of the full-backs crept forward like thieves in the night. Eventually, when they reach their position, a diagonal ball is chipped over the top for one of those full-backs to control it on their chest and survey the lie of the land.
Liverpool will therefore consider this to be a victory of sorts. They made those mistakes but survived. They deserved to lose on the balance of play, an ultra-tight offside call and a series of squandered opportunities costing their opponents. They also became the first team in the Premier League this season to take points off Manchester City after they had gone ahead, another perfect statistic ruined. To do it once is unusual; twice is vaguely unthinkable.
Those comebacks were fuelled by the belief that they can hurt City with the same press that can leave them a little exposed when it is bypassed. They caught Guardiola’s team napping at the start of the second half and they remained a latent threat with their own runs beyond the line, this time using the wide forwards. Judge City’s panic by the number of recovery runs Kyle Walker makes – there were plenty.
Manchester City
There can be something dissatisfying about a draw in a high-profile league fixture. Perhaps that subconsciously reflects a shift towards extremism of opinion in the media – a draw disallows the hot take. Perhaps it suggests that the players have settled in some way, chickened out of the showdown last round. More likely is that it leaves us a little short. We rush to watch these games because they purport to tell us which of the best are the very best. A draw postpones the answer.
But not here. If Liverpool probably did settle for a point in the final 10 minutes, when it was Manchester City who hurried forward with the greater urgency, for the previous 80 these titanic title challengers wrestled with each other in a state of glorious chaos. Some high-profile league fixtures are chess matches. This was Kerplunk mixed with Operation: all bangs and whistles and moving parts and steady hands and whoops and cries and Ederson rolling the ball casually along his own goal line, which deserves a category all of its own.
We hardly need deep statistical analysis to determine why this was such a wonderful football match – the best two sets of players in the league and the best two managers too – but the principle reason for its super-high entertainment level lay in the determination of both teams to play the best version of their style rather than compromising on that style to counteract the strength of the opponent. The only thing Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola respect more than each other – there was a comically exaggerated bear hug at full-time – is their own style of getting things done.
But if Liverpool will consider a 2-2 draw as a form of victory, given their comebacks, it is potentially more significant for Manchester City. They maintain their one-point lead at the top, and both Klopp and Guardiola believe the other will win each of their remaining games. That would make it a rerun of 2018/19 – for 98 vs 97, make it 95 vs 94.
They also dominated the chances, the possession and the territory. They forced Liverpool into a culture of cynical fouls, with Virgil van Dijk even flustered enough to hack Kevin de Bruyne from behind. There will be frustration at the ceded leads but, ultimately, City retain the power in a fight where power is everything.
Manchester United
As bad as it gets. Manchester United may have only lost 1-0, but do not let the fine margin of defeat fool you. United were playing the division’s crisis club, who had conceded nine goals in their previous three games and are still staring down the barrel of relegation. And Everton didn’t even play brilliantly. If United had played like that against a supposed title challenger – at least according to pre-season expectations – they would have been thumped.
Ralf Rangnick has failed; that we can now say with some certainty. The circumstances of his remit were very odd: a long-term builder appointed for a short-term project with vague promises of being part of the rebuild that now seem to have evaporated. But at the very least we expected him to organise the team and re-enthuse some of the players. It speaks badly of them that they look just as disorganised as they did under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (albeit in a very different way), but it is damning of him too.
The lack of joined-up thinking – and therefore joined-up football – is astounding, really. In David Winner’s book on Dutch football, Brilliant Orange, he speaks to former Netherlands international and ex-Manchester United player Arnold Muhren about how members of a team become at one with each other on the pitch.
“It’s a thinking game,” Muhren says. “It’s not running around everywhere and just working hard. That’s how to play football: with your brains and not your feet. You don’t have to be a chess player, but you must think ahead. Before I had the ball I knew exactly what I would do with it. I always knew two or three moves ahead. Before I get the ball I can already see someone moving in front of me, so when the ball arrives I don’t have to think about it.”
Watching Manchester United (particularly on Saturday but also at various points under Rangnick and Solskjaer), that quote jumps to mind because it is entirely absent in their play. Watch Saturday’s game back. Every time a player in red gets the ball, they take an extra second to plan their next pass. Nothing seems automatic; no style or process appears ingrained within them.
Add in the culture of the club, in which so many promising or proven players (Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Paul Pogba and even Cristiano Ronaldo) seem to lose the spark that suggested their great potential or excellence, and you have a mess.
That mess matters. Failing to finish in the top four (they are six points behind Tottenham) would hurt United financially, but their form between now and the end of the season could make a lasting difference beyond May. Erik ten Hag has to decide whether he wants this job, or whether United are likely to swallow him up and tarnish his own reputation. If he watched Saturday’s game against Everton, you wouldn’t blame him for shutting the laptop screen and taking the phone off the hook.
Northern Notebook
The “Northern Notebook” is i‘s weekly look inside the biggest football clubs in the north of England, providing insight, analysis and news on the burning issues of the day.
Click here to read this week’s edition on the fitness coach Erik ten Hag wants at Man Utd, how Erling Haaland ‘has decided’ on his next club and Newcastle’s plan to sign Leeds star Kalvin Phillips.
Newcastle United
One of the knock-on effects of Newcastle’s slight downturn in form was that it persuaded Eddie Howe to give Bruno Guimaraes a chance to impress in the starting XI. Guimaraes has had a slow start to life in England purely because Newcastle were winning games when he arrived and so Howe understandably saw little reason to change a winning formula.
Subsequently, this was his first start at St James’ Park and Guimaraes immediately ingratiated himself to supporters. He was the game’s best player against Wolves, accounting for almost as many tackles as his team-mates put together. If there is one thing that Newcastle lack, it is dynamism in midfield. Jonjo Shelvey is a passer, Isaac Hayden a defensive shield. Joelinton has done fabulous work as a forward/midfield hybrid, but you can’t continue to do two jobs forever.
For more on Guimaraes, read Mark Douglas’ piece from the match.
Norwich City
Oh hello. If nothing else, Norwich are going to set a new Premier League record for the number of times I write in this column “that’s that” in terms of their chances of staying up. OK, it’s still incredibly unlikely given that they are seven points from safety, have played a game more than the team in 17th, are still bottom and play current top-half teams in five of their last seven games. But it’s nice not to be mathematically down until May, which now seems likely.
Also, where has this Teemu Pukki been all season? Finally we saw the combination of pressing effort and composed finishing that has been missing from his game for too long of this season. Norwich have an option to extend his contract by another year in the summer. Surely he’s worth keeping for the inevitable Championship automatic promotion push?
Southampton
This wasn’t quite another 9-0, but then again in both of those defeats Southampton had a player sent off before the 15-minute mark. This was just as humiliating, given that Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side were completely dismantled by a Chelsea team who have had their own recent issues.
What is it about Southampton that makes them so prone to such shellackings? Is it simply a potential byproduct of a pressing system with non-elite – and possibly tired – players? When the energy in the press drops slightly, but the players do still try and press, they are passed around and give up a series of excellent chances.
If that’s true, you wonder whether Hasenhuttl might be better implementing a damage limitation mode for those occasions when Southampton are outclassed early in matches. Rather than continuing with Plan A, hounding opponents with little success, they could simply drop deep and dig in for 15 minutes until the fear of potential embarrassment has dissipated.
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Tottenham
When you have Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, you have a chance. When you have Kane and Son, you have two cheat codes. Tottenham struggled in the first half, just as they did against Newcastle a week earlier. No matter: Kane creates four chances, Son has three shots and scores them all. They are ruthless individually and sensational as a pair.
The rise of Kane as creative force is one of the most extraordinary career developments in recent seasons. Not content with being the elite goalscorer, whose productivity we expected to trail off and then got tired of waiting, Kane is now an elite creator too and the goalscoring hasn’t really declined either.
In Tottenham’s last four league matches, Kane has recorded 25 shot-creating actions (passes, dribbles or free-kicks earned). By way of comparison, Marcus Rashford has recorded 28 shot-creating actions in the Premier League all season. The most satisfying moments of Saturday’s win over Villa was Kane quickly scanning over his right shoulder for Son’s run before flicking a header perfectly into his team-mate’s path. They have an understanding like almost nothing else in European football now.
Watford
From last week’s column:
“Watford have taken seven home points this season and more than double that number away from home. They have lost their last eight home league games… There is now an emergency situation with Watford’s home form. They need to more than double their points total at Vicarage Road against Leeds, Brentford and Burnley.”
And now they can’t double that home points total because they lost 3-0 at home to Leeds. And with it surely goes any chance of staying up. Watford have now lost their last nine home games, one off the Premier League record set by Sunderland in 2005.
It’s fair to ask what Roy Hodgson has really improved, given that he has taken eight points from his 11 league matches in charge. Time for a third managerial change of the season to take us down the final straight?
West Ham
And from The Score on 21 March:
“David Moyes’ side looked incredibly weary after 120 minutes against Sevilla on Thursday… but then that can be no surprise given that Moyes picked nine of the same outfield players. For all West Ham’s excellence in the Premier League, this needs to stop now. West Ham are in the quarter-finals of a European competition and they have just beaten the competition specialists. Now is the time to rest and rotate in the league.”
And again. Moyes picked eight of the same XI that started against Lyon (and played for half of the game with 10 men) against Brentford and then watched on as they looked tired out. Is that any surprise? If you’re going to look like a team that is focusing on European competition (and that would be totally understandable), you might as well not pick your first team.
Wolves
Before Wolves lost their second game in the last three – and both against clubs who have grand ambitions but have spent the season fighting in the bottom half – Bruno Lage took the chance to ask his club publiclyto invest in the squad this summer.
“Behind Wolves come teams that are ready to invest a lot, like Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle and Leicester,” Lage said. “They are ready to invest and improve and fight for different competitions. The challenge is for us to create and build the right team to fight against all the teams in the Premier League.”
That followed Lage’s comments on Ruben Neves, who he accepted could feasibly leave the club if a mega-money offer came in. Lage admitted that recruitment had been hard over the last two transfer windows because the club were looking for players in a certain price bracket but who also could be sold for profit down the line if they impressed.
Lage has picked a good time to make his points. Wolves were limp and lethargic against Newcastle on Friday night, but they were also without Neves, Raul Jimenez, Daniel Podence and Leander Dendoncker, and Pedro Neto and Nelson Semedo were not fit enough to start. This squad has overperformed this season, but it is also light on depth.
Lage is attempting to avoid becoming a victim of his own success. Whether or not they are playing European football next season, Wolves cannot afford for their squad to be weakened and, if they sell Neves, it will be very hard to avoid that eventuality. Suddenly Lage would worried about becoming tainted through the inability to turn water into wine.
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