Arsenal are top of the Premier League, the only side with a 100 per cent record after three matches. That’s because Manchester City were part of a stone-cold classic at St James’ Park, drawing a game 3-3 that they both should have won and could so easily have lost.
Elsewhere, West Ham are the only team to have lost all three matches but the mood is somehow worse at Leicester City after home defeat to Southampton. Fulham’s fine start continues with a west London derby win over Brentford, while Nottingham Forest scored and conceded late. They are one of five teams who have won, drawn and lost one of their three games.
One of those five are Chelsea, who were torn apart by a buoyant Leeds team with new faces and a manager in Jesse Marsch who is determined to prove people wrong. As for Chelsea, they may need more than their £180m-worth of new signings to make a coherent, consistent team.
This weekend’s results
Saturday 20 August
- Tottenham 1-0 Wolves
- Crystal Palace 3-1 Aston Villa
- Everton 1-1 Nottingham Forest
- Fulham 3-2 Brentford
- Leicester 1-2 Southampton
- Bournemouth 0-3 Arsenal
Sunday 21 August
- Leeds 3-0 Chelsea
- West Ham 0-2 Brighton
- Newcastle 3-3 Man City
Monday 22 August
Arsenal
Last season, Martin Odegaard was chiefly used as a deep-lying playmaker by Mikel Arteta. That was through necessity: with Alexandre Lacazette as a relatively immobile centre forward, Arsenal looked to create chances for their striker in the penalty area. Odegaard did shoot, but not often from inside the penalty area – he had 18 shots from inside the box all season.
Gabriel Jesus’ arrival allows Odegaard’s role to be tweaked, and potentially for his attacking impact to increase significantly. That’s because he’s a totally different profile of centre forward, drifting wide and deep and happy to link moves together as much as he is to finish them off. One example of that: Lacazette completed 19 dribbles last season; Jesus is already on 11.
With Jesus moving away from the penalty box with such regularity, Odegaard has clearly been told to make late runs into the box in the same way that Ilkay Gundogan might for Manchester City. On Saturday, he scored twice from inside the penalty area and both were first-touch finishes. That could well become a dangerous weapon for Arsenal.
Aston Villa
This is going really badly quite quickly. Having been so determined to move away from Ezri Konsa and Tyrone Mings as a central defensive partnership, Steven Gerrard was forced to go back to the same pair on Saturday and watched on as they got pulled around and pulled apart by Palace’s fluid attack. In reserve, Calum Chambers must wonder when his chance will come to replace Konsa and Villa supporters are wondering the same.
But nobody played well. Gerrard has regularly bemoaned individual errors costing his team, but when virtually none of your starting XI performs adequately in such an important match to set the tone for the next few weeks, it suggests that something is a little broken.
“The get-out is to say that we don’t have enough in the building,” said Gerrard after full-time, before going on to explain why he wouldn’t be using that excuse despite, well, detailing it as an excuse. But that’s not reasonable, I’m afraid. Gerrard has been given seven new players since he took over. This is a better squad that the one Dean Smith got sacked with.
Is it performing any better? Marginally, if so. Gerrard has now taken 38 points from his 30 league matches in charge, a significant sample size. Smith took 33 from his last 30 in charge, but then, to repeat, this is a stronger, deeper squad and that return saw Smith lose his job. There are murmurs within Villa’s support along the lines of “What would the old gaffer have done with this investment?” and Gerrard cannot escape that while results limp along.
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But at some point, the uncertainty amongst fans will spill over into resentment if all the spending doesn’t provoke on-pitch improvement and they continue to find it difficult to work out what this team actually wants to be under this manager. Villa’s next four games are against West Ham, Arsenal, Manchester City and Leicester; they lost all four of the corresponding fixtures last season.
Bournemouth
This is hardly groundbreaking analysis, but boy do Bournemouth need to get Dominic Solanke fit. The difference between them and Fulham so far this season is Solanke’s injury. Scott Parker’s side have had 5.3 shots per game so far this season. We can mitigate much of that by their fixture list (playing the two best teams in the league so far this season in their first three matches is mighty difficult), but Bournemouth also only had seven shots at home to Villa.
Against Arsenal on Saturday, Parker played Philip Billing in an advanced role. Billing scored 10 league goals last season, so that makes some sense. But he failed to have a shot, create a chance and Bournemouth missed his presence in central midfield. Solanke missing three matches (City, Arsenal, Liverpool next weekend) wouldn’t be too damaging given their slim chances of results in those games anyway. After that, he needs to be back fit and firing.
Brentford
Bitterly disappointing after the brilliant win over Manchester United. Then, Brentford started like a train, 2-0 up inside 20 minutes. On Saturday, they started like an Avanti West Coast train, bullied by Fulham and 2-0 down over the same period before going on to lose 3-2.
But then this was a theme of Brentford’s first half season in the Premier League before Christian Eriksen arrived. When Thomas Frank’s team won matches, they usually missed the chance to build serious momentum. Between August and mid-January, Brentford won six league matches but took only two points from the six matches that immediately followed them. That included poor defeats at Brighton (2-0) and Southampton (4-1).
There’s no point in panicking. Brentford would have taken four points from Leicester (a), Manchester United (h) and Fulham (a). But Frank will be emphasising the point to his squad that all games are born equal. You have to be as fierce at Craven Cottage as you do against Manchester United and Leicester, or you will be punished.
Brighton
Is there any player who better sums up Graham Potter’s Brighton than Leandro Trossard, the scorer of their clinching goal against West Ham? Now 27, he has spent the last three years learning and growing at the Amex. He is no star and there is no ego, just a hard-working and talented player thriving in an environment made perfect for his development.
Trossard’s consistency of output and performance is striking. He scored or assisted 11 league goals last season, 10 in 2020-21 and eight the year before that. In his last three full seasons in England he has recorded shots at a rate of 2.4, 2.0 and 1.8 per 90 minutes and created chances at a rate of 1.7, 1.5 and 1.9 per 90.
But Trossard has also been taught to play in a variety of different roles without any obvious drop in his impact. Last season alone, he started five league games as a left wing-back, one game as a left midfielder in a four-man midfield, five games as a left winger, six as an advanced central midfielder, one as a right winger and 14 as a central forward.
But then that’s Brighton: in 38 league games last season, Potter started 10 different players as a centre forward and all of them bar Neal Maupay also played in a different position. Given that Maupay was the one single-function striker, perhaps it is no surprise that he is the one who may be leaving in this window. It’s Graham Potter’s total football world and we’re all living in it.
Chelsea
A lot is made of players having to acclimatise to Premier League football, particularly those who are a little older and have played all their football in a markedly different football culture. Some of that borders on unnecessary arrogance: the “can he cut it in this great league of ours” principle. In most situations, a good player is a good player everywhere.
But watching Kalidou Koulibaly on Sunday, you get the point. It was a display that contained almost no positive aspects. Jesse Marsch told Brenden Aaronson to try and drag Koulibaly towards him and then move the ball quickly with his first touch. Too often, Koulibaly got too close to his opponent and that left him flat-footed and facing his own goal. He also dallied on the ball, looked clumsy in the tackle and inexplicably got himself sent off when the game was already over.
Koulibaly will be coached through the issues. Perhaps Thomas Tuchel will conclude that playing him and Thiago Silva as a combination is too much of a risk against nippy, slight attackers. The potential arrival of Wesley Fofana will obviously help.
But there are some questions for Tuchel too after Sunday. Why did he wait so long to make a change when it was clear Leeds were causing Chelsea problems? When those changes came, why on earth did he leave Ruben Loftus-Cheek as a one-man central midfield given Leeds were having so much success in that area against two midfielders? And why did he sign another wide player in Raheem Sterling only to then chase an over-the-hill centre forward (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang) in the last fortnight of the transfer window?
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We should not overreact; Chelsea were excellent against Tottenham and should have won the match and things don’t break apart in the space of a week. But £180m has been spent on this squad, at least £80m (and probably more) is coming and it’s still quite hard to work out what this squad is. An afternoon as rotten as this doesn’t help.
Crystal Palace
Midway through last season, Patrick Vieira spoke to Wilfried Zaha about his need to get closer to goal. Vieira believed that Zaha was such an accomplished finisher, and so good at getting in behind defenders, that he would be wasted as just a winger.
It’s something that Vieira reiterated towards the end of last season: “We play in a way that allows him to create more chances, that allows him to be more in front of goal and then it is about him taking those chances. He missed a couple of those chances this year but I believe next season his target has to be around 20 goals.”
That target of 20 goals a season seemed very far-fetched given that Zaha had never even scored 15 goals in a season in his career. But why not? Zaha has three goals so far this season and has been one of the best-performing players in this nascent Premier League campaign. He has also become an elite goalscorer, at least over a small sample size. Since the beginning of the calendar year, Zaha is on 12 Premier League goals. Only Harry Kane and Son Heung-min can beat that.
Everton
I’m not sure who had Alex Iwobi down as the breakout central midfielder of this Premier League season, but they are allowed to feel very smug indeed. For all Everton’s struggles to keep their heads above water under Frank Lampard, it is Iwobi who is most leading by example. Having broken through (and signed by Everton) as a winger, he has quickly become a combative, creative central midfielder.
Iwobi was brilliant in the 1-1 draw with Forest, producing pretty much the complete performance. He created four chances, more than anyone else on the pitch. He also had more touches and made more passes than any team-mate. But it was his work without the ball that was so prodigious: 17 gains of possession, a figure almost double that of any other Everton player. Pairing him and Amadou Onana together might be a potential solution to keep Lampard out of trouble.
Fulham
Mitro is on fire. This is not to overlook the creativity of Andreas Pereira, who made four chances against Brentford. It is not to downplay how well Tim Ream and Tosin Adarabioyo are doing, at least according to pre-season expectations. But Mitrovic was always likely to be the spearhead of Fulham’s survival bid and it is working.
If the simple aim is to provide Mitrovic with enough service to allow him to shoot at will, that’s working too. The Serbian missed four presentable chances against Brentford but now has the air of a man who will pick himself up, dust himself off and take the fifth opportunity. For probably the first time in his career, Mitrovic is loving Premier League football.
The statistics are impressive. Mitrovic has taken 15 shots and nobody else had more than 10 by the end of Saturday’s action. He has had seven headed shots, two clear of anyone else. His eight shots on target is also more than anyone else in the division. And this is all before Harry Wilson, Fulham’s most adept creator of chances, is fit.
Leeds
The breakout match of Jesse Marsch’s time in England to date. Leeds were not just better than Chelsea and they did not just beat them. Every single player won their individual battle (with the half-exception of Sterling vs Rasmus Kristensen in the first 30 minutes). Leeds flustered Chelsea without the ball and were rampant with it.
They were courageous too, knowing they needed to attack at pace and with numbers. If some supporters feared that the high-intensity, energetic clashes and clangs of Marcelo Bielsa’s football would leave Elland Road with him, this was the most persuasive evidence yet that it can live and thrive with Marsch.
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And you have to give the manager credit for that. He was not (maybe still not, although those doubters must be turning) always popular here, but he promised that last season was about safety and this season was about moving forward. His new signings have settled in remarkably quickly and several players – Rodrigo the chief among them – look transformed after a pre-season with a new manager. Were it not for the late collapse against Southampton, Leeds would be one of two teams on maximum points. That really is something.
Leicester City
The mood when Southampton’s winning goal went in told you everything you needed to know. The boos and jeers, the sound of seats clattering as home supporters decided they had seen enough, the air so thick with disillusionment that Brendan Rodgers could have cut with a rusty knife. It was all there.
Had you avoided all Leicester City-related news since the end of last season and did not know the identity of the starting line-up, you could still have predicted the sorry tale: no new incomings, a manager uneasy about the lack of investment and a group of supporters unsure whether to back their very capable manager or the owners who they have trusted implicitly until this point.
Leicester have been caught in transfer window suspension, most of which really isn’t their fault. They are also hamstrung by their wage bill and previous annual losses and goodness knows how much the financial impact of Covid-19 on the owners’ businesses is making life difficult.
None of this has to matter – buying too few players can be better than buying too many – but it clearly does matter when the manager feels that plans have been changed behind his back and the uncertainty over key players leaving seems to have blunted the rest of the team. Neither Wesley Fofana nor Youri Tielemans were in the team on Saturday. That is deeply unhelpful.
But this is still an excellent side on paper. It contained at least six players (Vardy, Barnes, Dewsbury-Hall, Maddison, Ndidi and Justin) who would all probably move up the league not down if they were sold. The defensive issues are obvious, but just as alarming is that a fine front six has managed eight shots on target in three matches so far. Leicester should actually be grateful that five of them have been goals.
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Rodgers’ job was to set aside his own misgivings and squeeze more out of what he has. That just isn’t happening. Leicester are performing well in patches but are being punished for their mistakes and making too many of them in the first place. All the while, the mood gets a little more sour.
In their next five league fixtures, Leicester face Chelsea, Brighton and Tottenham away from home. It’s a little daunting right now. Home fixtures against Manchester United and Aston Villa – sides in some disarray – provide reason for patience and faith, but then Leicester have only taken 19 points from their last 12 home games. In that run, they have failed to beat Brighton, West Ham, Everton, Villa, Brentford and Southampton.
Liverpool
Any trip to Manchester United needs no artificial hype, but the chance to address the flaws in draws against Fulham and Crystal Palace and pour more pressure upon Erik ten Hag so early in his tenure should not be missed.
A helpful way to achieve it might be avoiding conceding the opening goal, an unhelpful habit that Liverpool have picked up either side of the summer break. In their last seven Premier League and Champions League matches, Liverpool have conceded first.
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Not only is that a bizarre trait for this team, it has also come out of nowhere. In Liverpool’s 20 matches where there has been a goal scored before this run of seven games, it was Liverpool who scored first in 17 of them. If this new pattern has made them wary of trying to start matches in full throttle, they should be brave and do so against United.
Man City
There will be conclusions that must be drawn. People will discuss the tactical recklessness of playing with a back two and how difficult it can be to change it when you realise that your opponent is hurtling forward on the counter attack. They will point out that Manchester City created so many chances that they should have won, and that Nick Pope was probably the game’s best player despite conceding three goals. They will watch Kevin De Bruyne’s pass on repeat, comparing it to the perfect game of Frogger.
More importantly, this was a game of pure Barclays (and only partly because it was a match between two teams owned by states with dubious human rights records). Had Newcastle scored a late winner, having gone behind and subsequently pegged back to 3-3 and then dominated by a relentless City onslaught, it would have become part of my conversation about the greatest Premier League matches and that is only slightly due to recency bias.
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Manchester City matches can often be perfunctory, the opening weekend win over West Ham a perfect example. They can be so irrepressibly brilliant that it stops being a contest as soon as they take a two-goal lead; opponents merely put their hands over their faces and cry “mercy”. But when they get pegged back or suffer their bizarre periods of defensive incompetence, there is no better team to watch in the country for better and worse. City inadvertently enter chaos mode and there is nowhere you would rather be than witnessing it.
Who knows if this makes any difference outside of Sunday’s bubble. You would suspect that City could quite easily snap back into total control – Palace at home, Forest at home, Villa away. But if nothing else, Sunday suggests that, like in every great monster, there is just enough of a flaw to create enough doubt to keep you engrossed.
Man Utd
For all the defensive calamity at Manchester United, and their lamentable ability to resist any form of organised press high up the pitch, do not overlook how big a problem it is that their attack is also broken. Some teams can deal with chaos because they back themselves to outscore opponents; United are woefully falling short of that.
United have scored more than once in three of their last 14 league matches. When it clicks it clicks – three goals vs Brentford, three vs Norwich – but in their last 10 games they have registered an expected goals figure of lower than 1.0 in six of them.
In his latest column for the Sunday Times, Wayne Rooney insisted that Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford should not be starting. That’s entirely reasonable: Ronaldo is a toxic presence and Rashford looks very broken. But who are the other options? Anthony Martial is a central striker who has scored three fewer league goals in the last 18 months than Ben Mee. Jadon Sancho is a winger who seems to have grown tired of making runs for passes that never come. Bruno Fernandes and Christian Eriksen could play in a front three, but then it isn’t their natural position and Fernandes looks frustrated too.
And that is the problem. It’s not just that Manchester United’s starting XI looks so bereft of confidence. It’s that there is nobody behind them pushing them for their place in the team or showing any evidence that they deserve to replace them.
Newcastle
There are times when watching Allan Saint-Maximin that you become convinced that he could be the best winger in the world, when full-backs like Kyle Walker are terrified of committing themselves and end up cycling backwards until Saint-Maximin beats them anyway. During the first half, there was one run where Walker back-tracked 40 yards towards his own goal and then allowed Saint-Maximin to put the ball on a plate for Miguel Almiron and yet Walker would still consider that he made the best of the situation. In those moments, he is simply unplayable.
Of course he isn’t always like this and that’s part of his charm. Saint-Maximin would not have joined Newcastle if he were consistent, either across consecutive months or consecutive minutes in the same match. He is unpredictable in both the absolute best and occasionally the most frustrating way. There are halves of football when you wonder why Saint-Maximin cannot always play at this level and wish he would before concluding that you are just lucky to have caught one of the good ones.
That is what makes him so extraordinary. For when Saint-Maximin is at his peak, there is no more fascinating Premier League player to watch. He is the professional escapologist: roll up, roll up and watch a man shimmy down three blind allies and escape each one and then produce a white rabbit from underneath his headband.
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There is sometimes end product and there is sometimes wastage. There are sometimes smiles and sometimes grimaces. There are times when you want to shake him silly and times when you want to lift him above your head for the crowd to adore. But when he is at his best, Saint-Maximin makes a match several times better no matter what else is going on around him. He is a catalyst for Newcastle but, more than that, he is a catalyst for entertainment itself.
Nottingham Forest
Two points dropped rather than one gained, given Everton’s late goal. But Forest would have taken four points from their opening three fixtures when trying to acclimatise a massive group of new signings. Now come free hits against Tottenham and Manchester City during which they will hope to avoid any shellackings.
That might not be easy. Forest are currently allowing shots at a rate of 20.3 per match, which really isn’t sustainable. Norwich allowed the most shots in the Premier League last season, and their shots-faced-per-game figure was only 16.6. Dean Henderson has been excellent in each of the last two games, but he is not a superhero.
But one positive in defence is the attacking endeavour of Neco Williams, who has replaced Djed Spence wonderfully well. That combination of right wing-back and right-sided forward was Forest’s greatest asset last season; Williams might well be able to replicate Spence’s threat.
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In three matches, Williams has had eight shots, double the number of any other full-back in the league. Three of those shots have come from inside the penalty area, demonstrating just how high up the pitch he is venturing. When Johnson moves centrally, Williams can overlap and whip the ball into the box. He has created five chances so far, four of which were from crosses into the penalty area.
Southampton
Well, well. More evidence that the best thing for Southampton would be a rule change that allowed their opponents to start with a one-goal lead. Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side have taken four points from the last two matches having conceded first. They have taken three points from the last five matches in which they have scored first. Football isn’t really supposed to work like this, but you see if Hasenhuttl cares.
Southampton are going to be impossible to predict this season, particularly given the arrival of a group of young players who will both produce flashes of brilliance and make mistakes as they develop. They will lose games after leading and win games after trailing. They will fall apart when we expect some steel and steel themselves when we expect them to fall apart.
Whether that’s a compliment to Hasenhuttl given he’s been at the club for almost four years is open to interpretation, but the neutral doesn’t give a stuff. Any unpredictable, baffling, volatile team is good by us.
Tottenham
It might not be the priority for Tottenham fans who are instead wondering whether it matters if Kane and Son aren’t really clicking as long as the team is grinding out results, but you wonder what Djed Spence is thinking right about now. Antonio Conte is easing in most of Spurs’ summer signings, but Spence has now been left out of the matchday squad for both of the last two weekends. In the era of nine substitutions, that’s not great.
Conte would stress that it’s more about practicality than causing offence. In the win over Wolves on Saturday, he started with Ivan Perisic and Emerson Royal as the wing-backs and had three more on the bench – Matt Doherty, Ryan Sessegnon and, at a push, Japhet Tanganga. Perisic can also play on the right. You only need so many options.
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Still, that leaves Spence a little out in the cold. With Conte stressing after his signing that he was bought by the club rather than because he wanted him – and knowing Conte’s love of his own dependables – Spence must be wondering when his chance will come. Getting on the bench would be a start.
West Ham
Things are not going right for David Moyes at the start of this season. He has clearly made the decision to ease his new signings in gently, leaving Gianluca Scamacca, Flynn Downes and Maxwel Cornet on the bench since they were signed at a combined cost of £60m. He had already lost £30m central defender Nayef Aguerd to a serious ankle injury in pre-season.
That hasn’t really worked. West Ham still look leggy and predictable and Michail Antonio isn’t playing like a striker that has had a summer off to recharge. Declan Rice is still being asked to do two or three jobs and struggling to spin all of the plates simultaneously. Tomas Soucek is still looking like a player who isn’t quite sure what his role is.
Then, on Sunday, Moyes did need to throw in one of his new signings. With Craig Dawson and Aguerd out injured, Thilo “John” Kehrer was handed his first start in English football. He dived in on Danny Welbeck to give away a penalty and provoked Moyes to admit that he should perhaps have not been so quick to throw his centre-back straight into the team.
West Ham play Aston Villa away from home next weekend, before their two biggest matches of the season (Chelsea and Tottenham). Their attempts at a third consecutive top-seven finish for the first time in their history are hardly dead yet, but this league season does need to get going soon. Moyes’ side join FC Halifax Town as the only professional teams in England yet to score a league goal this season.
Wolves
Last season, Wolves didn’t have enough shots. No team that survived relegation had fewer than them; only Watford and Norwich were more shot-shy.
Now, Wolves are having plenty of shots but aren’t scoring from enough of them. On Saturday against Tottenham, they had 20 efforts on goal but failed to score and were eventually punished. Only three times in the last three full seasons have Wolves managed more in a Premier League game (coincidentally, one of those was a 1-0 defeat to Spurs). They have now had 40 shots without scoring since Daniel Podence’s opener against Leeds on the opening weekend.
Bruno Lage will stress that the goals will come, particularly with Raul Jimenez fit enough to come on as a substitute against Tottenham. But it needs to happen quickly. Wolves face Newcastle, Bournemouth and Southampton before a run of games against Liverpool, Manchester City, West Ham and Chelsea.
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