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.
Arsenal provided the result of the weekend as they followed up a win over Chelsea by beating Manchester United in the early game on Saturday.
The Gunners’ bid to return to the Champions League was further boosted by results elsewhere; Tottenham could only draw with Brentford, although Chelsea did manage to bounce back from Wednesday’s result with a late goal for Christian Pulisic to beat a belligerent West Ham.
This weekend’s results
Saturday 23 April
- Arsenal 3-1 Manchester United
- Leicester 0-0 Aston Villa
- Manchester City 5-1 Watford
- Norwich 0-3 Newcastle
- Brentford 0-0 Tottenham
Sunday 24 April
- Brighton 2-2 Southampton
- Burnley 1-0 Wolves
- Chelsea 1-0 West Ham
- Liverpool 2-0 Everton
Arsenal
You can read the match piece for the details, including why Arsenal were highly fortunate to beat Manchester United on Saturday. To repeat: Bruno Fernandes missed a penalty at 2-1, Anthony Elanga and Fernandes missed good chances at 1-0, Diogo Dalot hit the bar just before Arsenal’s second goal and Cristiano Ronaldo had a goal ruled out for a marginal offside call, also at 2-1. Arsenal got the rub of the green and made the most of it.
But to repeat another point in that piece: who cares? This is the stage of the season when you don’t give a stuff how lucky you get, just so long as the result goes your way.
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Arsenal looked to have given up the ghost in the race for the top four after three consecutive defeats, but have responded brilliantly, have found a short-term striking option in Eddie Nketiah and now have their destiny in their own hands. Most crucially, they may not need to beat Tottenham in the north London derby; a draw would possibly do.
Mikel Arteta’s side face Leeds and Everton at home – both winnable – and a West Ham team next weekend who will surely rest most of their players with one eye (at least) on their Europa League semi-final second leg in Frankfurt. The trip to Newcastle is the second-most difficult assignment between now and the end of the season; they would have taken that a week ago.
Aston Villa
First, some weak rays of sunlight. A draw away at Leicester City is a decent result, at least according to pre-game expectations of Villa supporters. Steven Gerrard stopped the rot by ostensibly making his team hard to beat, defending deep and being distinctly physical in midfield. They have ended a run of four straight defeats and nine goals conceded in four league games.
And that’s where the positivity ends. This was a Leicester team far below its best with focus switched to their Europa Conference League semi-final against Roma. Villa sacrificed possession (37 per cent) and managed an expected goals total of 0.6. Philippe Coutinho was again nomadic but ineffective. Leon Bailey was wasteful. The two attacking full-backs were entirely unable to overload and create chances.
With six games to go, Villa are not yet safe. That is way below par given that Gerrard was appointed with six months of the season to go and was able to recruit extensively in January. They are unlikely to get dragged into trouble, but still have to play Manchester City and Liverpool and, more pertinently, face Burnley home and away. Burnley have been a bogey opponent for Villa (one win in their last six meetings) and are in better form than Villa.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. Gerrard was given more than half a season to work out his preferred style and to improve players who had slumped under Dean Smith. Neither has really happened. At the start of the season, Villa had aspirations of European qualification. They are behind at least eight clubs that they realistically believed they could surpass.
Brentford
Life as a supporter of a promoted club can be a grind. You expect to lose at least half of your matches and to suffer the odd humiliation against the rich and richer. You can grow accustomed to living on desperate hope rather than grand ambition. There are supporters of at least six Championship clubs who like the idea of promotion but secretly prefer the experience – ticket prices, TV scheduling, hopes of actually winning consistently – of the EFL.
Which is why these are the days of Brentford’s lives. They have suffered pronounced slumps – four consecutive defeats in October/November, eight winless matches in January/February – but have overachieved to such an extent around those patches that they were able to look up the Premier League rather than down with a fifth of their season remaining.
A Norwich aberration aside, they have been ruthless at home against the weakest teams in the league, yet they were expected to be amongst them. If that wasn’t enough, they have taken 14 points off Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham. Thomas Frank is a contender for manager of the season.
Enjoy these weeks. Live every single one of them. Clubs outside the financial elite are never truly secure in the Premier League and Brentford will surely not have a creative midfielder in Christian Eriksen’s class next season. They should revel in every moment between now and 22 May because their club has earned the right to do so.
Brighton
It’s a small point, given that they can coast towards the summer, but one lesson for next season is that Brighton really cannot afford to cede leads if they want to maintain their progress next season.
The results of no other team in the Premier League are as determined by the first goal. Brighton have ceded a lead in 20 matches this season and won one of them. They have held a lead only 11 times, fewer than every side bar Watford and Norwich, but have won nine of them.
But if you are going to take a lead in less than a third of your league fixtures, you better make sure you hold onto them. Going 2-0 up against Southampton and failing to win was a rare exception that must not become a habit next season.
Burnley
The great escape really is on. Burnley have taken seven points from their last three league games and are now out of the bottom three for the first time in six months. Given their fixtures (and Everton and Leeds’), they will rightly believe that they won’t fall back into it.
Canvas the opinion of plenty of Burnley supporters and they will agree that sacking Sean Dyche was a risk but that the risk was mitigated because they believed their club was heading to the Championship with him in charge. If Dyche was a perfectly good – perhaps even the best – option for getting them back up, those fans would tell you that things had gone too stale for too long.
And Burnley are playing with greater freedom under their interim coaches. Who knows if they would have collected the same points under Dyche, but the salient point is that they have collected 23 per cent of their league points this season over the last eight days. Sometimes a change is needed for its own sake.
They look different to the eyes, too. Burnley have registered more than 1.0 xG in 11 league games this season, including each of the three since Dyche left. They registered more than five shots on target in a Premier League match for only the second time this season against Southampton in midweek.
They’re passing the ball shorter: three of the nine occasions Burnley have registered a pass completion of greater than 70 per cent have been in their last three matches. Maybe it really was time for a change.
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Chelsea
Is the end of the hop-skip-kick penalty technique? Jorginho has only missed 7 of his 45 career penalties – hardly a catastrophic record – but six of those have come for club and country since the start of last season. His unique style was once seen as a cheat code. Goalkeepers are starting to work out the cheat.
The advantage of this technique is in the skip. It allows Jorginho, who constantly makes eye contact with the goalkeeper during the whole process, to determine which way they might dive and thus adjust the angle of his foot accordingly. Even if the goalkeeper guessed right or dummied that dive, Jorginho was confident that he would score if he put the ball near enough to the corner.
But something has changed, as seen on Sunday. Rather than picking a direction to dive, goalkeepers are increasingly refusing to budge at all. That puts the onus of choice on Jorginho. It also relies upon him getting the ball right in the corner, because it is impossible with his technique to generate enough power to beat the goalkeeper with pace.
Jorginho seems a little hamstrung by that choice, as he was against Jordan Pickford in the Euro 2020 final. And as soon as you lose your nerve a little, this technique quickly falls over and looks very stupid indeed when a goalkeeper simply dives the right way and falls on the ball.
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Crystal Palace
Patrick Vieira was keen to praise his players for their performance in last week’s FA Cup semi-final, but the reality is that Crystal Palace didn’t turn up. Having taken four points off Manchester City and thumped Arsenal and Tottenham in the league, they dreamt of upsetting Chelsea and barely laid a glove on them.
Perception dictates that Vieira merits great commendation for how he has overhauled Palace’s style, but they took 44 points last season and finished 14th. They are currently on for 44 points and sit 14th. That is not intended as criticism – his task in bringing through younger players and easing the reliance on Wilfried Zaha has not been easy.
But it does make the last few weeks of the season important for Vieira and Palace. Five of their last six games are against teams in the bottom eight and the exception is a home game against a wretched Manchester United. If the temptation is for players to ease off with nothing to play for, supporters will urge them to push on and aim for a first top-10 finish in seven years. That really would merit Vieira being showered with plaudits.
Everton
You can’t say that Frank Lampard didn’t have a plan. For an hour, Lampard channelled his old manager with a performance that would make Jose Mourinho weep with pride. They hassled, harried, hustled (and yes, jumped, dived and rolled) over every blade of grass on Anfield’s pitch and dragged Liverpool down with them. Then they conceded and that plan fell into ruin.
But that doesn’t mean it was the wrong plan. We saw in midweek what happens when a team with better players than Everton invite Liverpool onto them. This was the opposite of Manchester United, bar Hannibal Mejbri’s late salvo. You can turn your nose up at it if you want, but if Everton had shown this much heart in their previous 31 games they wouldn’t be in this mess.
Still, this is now Everton’s worst-case scenario. They clearly still have time to save themselves, but they have fallen into the bottom three for the first time this season with weeks of it left, have Burnley in better form and their goalscoring has dried up.
And if they do go down, Anthony Gordon is going to light up the Championship.
He deserves to be called out for his first-dive (although the acting was very funny), but the manner in which he ran Trent Alexander-Arnold ragged and repeatedly took on his man to create opportunities after the break made him, in this writer’s humble opinion, worthy of being named Man of the Match despite being on the losing team. How Everton supporters must wish that they could clone another four of him.
Leeds United
Leeds find themselves in an odd position due to the form of the teams below them. For the past three weeks, it seemed as if Leeds were only one win from guaranteeing Premier League safety. In that time they have won three league games and drawn the other and yet head into Monday’s trip to Selhurst Park still – surprise, surprise – needing another win to ease any suspicion of being dragged back into trouble.
To do so, Jesse Marsch must improve their record against the Premier League’s middle pack. Losing all nine of their matches against the current top six is one thing, but Leeds have played 11 matches against the teams currently positioned between ninth and 15th and won only one. The good news: the one win came via Raphinha’s 94th-minute penalty against Palace in November.
Leicester City
There is no cause for hot takes after a grubby 0-0 home draw against Aston Villa, given the changes that Brendan Rodgers made. There is a lingering split between Leicester supporters who believe that they should be grateful for their lot and those who would like Rodgers to be a little less possession-heavy.
The satisfaction (or otherwise) with this league season really does depend on where you stand on that point: are Leicester the team who have failed to beat Burnley, Brighton and Aston Villa at home or the team that hasn’t lost a single home game against non-Big Six sides?
We also probably need to start talking about Leicester’s strikers. The only goal by a Leicester striker in their last 10 games in all competitions was Kelechi Iheanacho’s stooping header against Manchester United.
Patson Daka has had two shots in his last seven league appearances (some of which were off the bench). Kelechi Iheanacho has had two shots on target in his last 11. Even Jamie Vardy, aka the man you cannot keep quiet, has had more than two shots in only two of his last 11 league games.
The two issues are surely related. With Rodgers preferring possession to quick counter-attacks, Leicester’s chances often come from passing moves that create overlaps for advancing attacking midfielders. In this team, to be a striker often involves playing a subservient role in which you busy central defenders without seeing much of the ball. In 90 combined minutes against Villa, Vardy and Daka had 21 touches of the ball in a team that completed 460 passes.
Liverpool
There’s not an awful lot more to add that isn’t in this piece, but Divock Origi remains one of the most fascinating footballers. Jamie Carragher made an excellent point on Sky Sports during the game that if Liverpool weren’t facing Everton, Jurgen Klopp wouldn’t have turned to Origi so soon. Origi is the man of magical moments and he saves them for the occasions when they will mean the most to Liverpool.
It is so much harder than it looks. Origi had played 71 minutes of Premier League football before Sunday. He had started one match since December. And he was asked to come on in the tensest, most fevered atmosphere imaginable to save his team’s pursuit of the Premier League title. Fast forward half an hour and he had played a pivotal role in the first goal (with his first touch) and scored the second.
Origi is loved at Liverpool; that goes without saying. The hug that Klopp gave him at full-time was absolutely joyous and every home supporter in Anfield would queue for hours to do the same. If he does indeed leave this summer, as seems likely, he will be remembered more fondly than many who cost more money, who scored more goals and made more appearances. And they will miss him.
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Manchester City
The coincidence was too perfect for sweeping statements to be avoided. Friday brought concrete reports that Gabriel Jesus was wanted by Arsenal in the summer and they made total sense. At which point Jesus scored the first hat-trick of his Premier League career and we interpreted it as a statement that he believes he still has a vital role to play.
It’s more complicated than that, of course. First, Manchester City are the heavy favourites to sign Erling Haaland in the summer, a move that would drastically limit Jesus’s regular starts (and he’s only started 17 league games this season). Clearly there would be a role for him as a backup striker (and shifting to a system with a ‘proper’ centre-forward might actually aid him here), but Jesus is 25 and surely wants to be leading the line for a Premier League team. given his international ambitions.
There’s also an argument that Saturday’s goals make the case for why Jesus might be sold for a significant transfer fee. Jesus has now scored 12 goals in all competitions for City in the last calendar year – nine of those have come in 4-1, 5-1, 5-0 or 6-3 wins. That’s a little bit one-eyed (Jesus has also scored against Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool this season), but the suspicion remains that he has not quite developed into the ruthless finisher, or world-class versatile forward, that City need. That will not stop him being excellent elsewhere.
Manchester United
Even by now-normal standards, this has been an extraordinary week at Manchester United. Not because they have announced the appointment of their new manager or lost another game in shambolic circumstances. Nor even because, with a month of the season remaining, the interim coach of one of the biggest clubs in the world has conceded that they have no chance of competing in the Champions League next season.
Instead, it’s the brazen honesty surrounding the toxic atmosphere at the club that is most startling. In midweek, Ralf Rangnick spoke openly about the difficulties that will face Erik ten Hag when he takes over; Rangnick mentioned how obvious the issues are to everyone involved, the need for “open-heart surgery” and “two, maybe three, transfer windows”.
Which all seems to have given United’s players free rein to speak candidly about the mood at the club. On Saturday, after the defeat against Arsenal, Paul Scholes revealed that Jesse Lingard had told him that the dressing room is a “disaster”. Scott McTominay subsequently cut out the middle man by telling journalists that United have a “whole load of problems in terms of players, staff, everything higher up”.
To an extent, this honesty is welcomed. As Rangnick alluded to, the only way Manchester United get back to anything approaching their best is for the severity of the situation to be laid bare. If that means that directors, technical staff and owners need to see the dirty washing aired out in public, so be it. If that all makes Ten Hag’s task in persuading his bosses of the need for systemic change, great.
But it’s still a remarkable situation for a club this wealthy and this historically significant to find themselves in. Gary Neville once described a Liverpool-Manchester United fixture as “Dog & Duck vs Red Lion”, but nobody really expected that, seven years on, there would be fights breaking out in the pub car park and glasses being thrown across the bar. And if the interim period has taught us anything, it is that you can never truly conclude with any confidence that there are not deeper depths to which your club can plunge.
Newcastle
The redemption of Joelinton is complete. For the best part of two-and-a-half years, Joelinton was a forlorn presence in and out of Newcastle United’s team. Nobody ever doubted the hard work, but Joelinton was the £40m striker who could not score.
Eddie Howe’s plan was to convert Joelinton into a box-to-box central midfielder who drifted left (into his best position) but battled to win back possession in a team that needed to battle to make any progress. A tweet did the rounds on Saturday morning: the only two Premier League players who have made 30 tackles, 30 interceptions, 30 clearances, 30 completed dribbles and won 30 headers this season are Declan Rice and Joelinton.
On Saturday afternoon, with Howe rotating his team to give fringe players a game and fatigued players a rest, Joelinton returned to the role that had previously proved so difficult. Before this weekend, the Brazilian had taken 41 shots in the league this season and scored twice. So, of course, he had three shots against Norwich and scored twice. The first was a fabulous curling finish with his right foot, the second a poacher’s finish with his left.
That is the importance of confidence. Moving into a central midfield role didn’t just help out Newcastle because his attributes became vital in a struggling team. It also gave Joelinton the belief that he was a crucial part of a team that he must have feared had left him behind. In the next few weeks he will be named Newcastle’s Player of the Season; good on him for making that happen.
Norwich
A seven-point plan on Newcastle’s first goal that proves why Norwich City are going down:
- 1) There is no pressure on the ball in midfield when Sean Longstaff has the ball. He takes his time and picks a long pass down the right channel.
- 2) Dimitris Giannoulis misjudges the flight of the ball and skews his header sideways, allowing Jacob Murphy to gain possession.
- 3) Murphy backheels the ball through Giannoulis’s legs to Emil Krafth, whose run has been spotted slightly too late, thus giving him time to assess his options.
- 4) Krafth passes back to Murphy, whom Giannoulis has inexplicably allowed to run past him without a challenge. Newcastle are now in Norwich’s penalty area.
- 5) At this point, there are three Newcastle players on the edge of the box asking for the ball. None of them has a Norwich player within 10 yards of them. Where on earth are the midfielders tracking back?
- 6) One of these players is Allan Saint-Maximin, who actually plays a loose pass across the penalty area. Luckily, Grant Hanley has got drawn in the wrong direction, meaning that Sam Byram has to sprint across but is late and misses his kick.
- 7) Byram charging across to fill the space has left Joelinton in literally 15 yards of space inside the Norwich penalty area. He scores.
You cannot stay in the Premier League if you defend like this repeatedly. Norwich do.
Southampton
The headline news from the 2-2 draw at Brighton was not James Ward-Prowse scoring another free-kick or Southampton coming from two goals down to take something out of a Premier League game for the first time in over a year, but the horrible injury sustained by Tino Livramento.
“We are not sure yet, but it does not look good,” Ralph Hasenhuttl said after the game after Livramento had required oxygen when leaving the field. “He’s very frustrated because he knows it could be a long break out. He will come back stronger.”
There is no good time to sustain such an injury, but the end of the season is worse than most. It can ruin your pre-season, meaning that it takes longer to come back to full fitness and leaves you playing catch up.
For teenagers, the worry is that it can affect your body shape and pace irrevocably. After a brilliant breakout season at Southampton, we wish Livramento all the best. He’s good enough to play for England one day.
Tottenham
Let’s revisit those points made after the 1-0 home defeat to Brentford, because they are incredibly pertinent again:
- 1) “Tottenham really must learn to start quicker in matches” – Tottenham had two shots in the first half against Brentford.
- 2) “Matt Doherty is suddenly very important for Tottenham. For this shape to work, the wing-backs have to get high up the pitch and they have to be brave in demanding the ball and taking on their opponent. Against Brighton, Emerson Royal and Sergio Reguilon just didn’t do it enough” – Against Brentford, Emerson and Ryan Sessegnon attempted four crosses between them and created one chance.
- 3) ‘That majestic front three finds things a lot more difficult when opposition defences stay very deep’ – And the same again here.
- 4) ‘The one disadvantage of your front three being brilliant is that, when they aren’t performing at their peak and you need to call upon your reserves, the drop-off in quality is massive’ – Lucas Moura did go on one good run after being brought on, but Antonio Conte didn’t make a single attacking change until the 86th minute despite Kane, Son and Kulusevski all struggling to make an impact. He clearly doesn’t trust the reserves.
If we suspected that Brighton’s success might send a message to Tottenham’s upcoming opponents, that has been proven correct.
Brentford were forced to pick two new centre-backs, a new wing-back and their second-choice holding midfield player, but it didn’t really matter. If you reduce the space behind your defence and are courageous enough to push forward against Spurs, you can unsettle them. Now the Champions League is slipping away for a team we assumed were in rude health.
Watford
Scroll up to the Brentford section and read the bit about the Premier League being a bit of a slog for supporters of promoted clubs because you spend time, money and effort to follow your team to matches where they have very little hope of winning.
Cut to Watford’s away end at the Etihad, forced to watch their side lose 5-1. If anyone was surprised, they haven’t been watching Watford for long. Since the beginning of 2013, Watford have played Manchester City 15 times in the Premier League and FA Cup. They have lost all 15 of those matches, the longest losing streak by any English league side against another in the game’s history.
In their last five meetings alone, Watford have conceded 26 goals. Cross your fingers for the FA Cup third round draw next January.
West Ham
I’m glad that David Moyes is finally making changes to his Premier League starting XI with the Europa League semi-final coming up, but West Ham’s central defence is going to be very interesting against Arsenal next weekend. Kurt Zouma and Angelo Ogbonna are injured and likely out for the season. Issa Diop is the latest to pick up a knock and may also be out for a little while.
That left Craig Dawson as West Ham’s only fit centre-back. He promptly got sent off against Chelsea and will miss next week’s game. Might we see the ultimate defensive pairing of Declan Rice and Mark Noble?
Wolves
This isn’t intended as criticism because he suffered a horrible injury and it would be no slight on Raul Jimenez if he changed the way he played as a result, but watching Wolves recently I do wonder if Bruno Lage is going to have to adapt to how they play with him in the team.
In 2019-20, Jimenez’s first season in the Premier League, no player in the division scored more headed goals than him – five from 28 headed shots. This season, Jimenez has played 2,253 minutes in the Premier League but had only 10 headed shots and failed to score with any of them. For that first season, he was the elite target man centre forward in the country. Perhaps that has now changed.
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