The Score is Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up here to receive the free newsletter every Monday morning
At least a quarter of all current Premier League managers will jump out of their skin whenever the phone in their office rings this week. West Ham, Everton, Tottenham, Bournemouth, Leeds United; would it be a huge shock if any of these clubs sacked their manager this week? And could any of those managers really complain if the worst news came?
Elsewhere, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are now bonafide Premier League title favourites, an astonishing thing given our preseason predictions. They won their derby and Manchester City lost theirs, meaning Arsenal hold an eight-point gap.
Meanwhile, Uniteds Newcastle and Manchester might also consider that they merit being part of the conversation. If Arsenal begin to creak at any point, we are in for a marvellous title race.
This weekend’s results
Friday 13 January
- Aston Villa 2-1 Leeds
Saturday 14 January
- Man Utd 2-1 Man City
- Brighton 3-0 Liverpool
- Everton 1-2 Southampton
- Nottingham Forest 2-1 Leicester
- Wolves 1-0 West Ham
- Brentford 2-0 Bournemouth
Sunday 15 January
- Chelsea 1-0 Crystal Palace
- Newcastle 1-0 Fulham
- Tottenham 0-2 Arsenal
Arsenal
There are many bridges for Arsenal still to cross, this much we know. But as they finally become title favourites for the first time this season, extending their lead at the top to eight points, it’s worth reflecting on what makes this team so special: their swagger.
Arteta’s Arsenal have not been in this position before. Unai Emery’s Arsenal didn’t either. The last time Arsenal were involved in a title race was 2015/16 and they actually started that season poorly, drawing three and losing three of their first 14 league games. This season, they started so fast that the only way was down. They have dropped seven points in their opening 18 matches.
In these circumstances, the team that lacks the experience is expected to crack. But Arsenal are supremely confident. There is no sign of accumulated pressure that leads to emotional fatigue. They swat opponents away with the minimum of fuss and they even managed to convey that this is all great fun.
Arsenal embarrassed Tottenham. They entered a fixture that has typically been dominated by the home team and they played as if they were strolling around the Emirates against a team fighting relegation. They quietened the crowd and then fed off the noise when the air became filled with groans and boos. They were consummate and they were professional and if they can beat Manchester United next weekend, I think they might win the league.
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Aston Villa
What’s fascinating about Aston Villa in Unai Emery’s early weeks is how the squad are acclimatising to a manager who is insistent that they play out from the back and how the supporters manage too.
Friday evening was a good example, against a Leeds team that pressed high and hard. Villa were second best for long periods of the match, but their issue seemed not to be failing to play out from the back successfully, but failing to do it at all. Too often – much to Emery’s annoyance – they chose to relieve the pressure but only squandered possession.
The reason for those direct passes was because Leeds actually played pretty well, but also because there is a unique sound at Villa Park when their defenders and goalkeeper are playing passes in tight spaces, best described as a pre-emptive groan. They are deeply nervous because they have seen Tyrone Mings and Ezri Konsa make mistakes before and it puts pressure on the players.
They’re going to have to get used to it. This is Emery’s plan and he will stick to it. Mings is already recording the highest passing accuracy of his club career this season. Konsa had recorded a passing accuracy of more than 90 per cent in each of his previous three league games. That dropped to 80 per cent against Leeds because he attempted more long passes (more than 30 yards in length) than in those games. Only by sticking to the plan will the plan work.. And if you win when you don’t play well, nobody groans.
Bournemouth
It feels far longer than seven weeks since Gary O’Neil was named Bournemouth’s permanent manager. His interim spell decreed that he would not get a honeymoon period. Bournemouth’s results since the World Cup suggest that he might be heading for shotgun divorce. That appointment came shortly before the takeover was completed. Bournemouth’s new owners are unlikely to sit back and watch their team slide into the Championship with a novice manager in place who they didn’t appoint.
On Saturday, after Bournemouth’s sixth straight defeat since the World Cup, O’Neil demonstrated clear signs that he is feeling the pressure. He blamed the referee for awarding a penalty (which was soft), suggesting both that a decision by the same referee in May 2021 was relevant and that Bournemouth are suffering from an officiating agenda – “When you’re a Bournemouth fan… they’re going to uphold the decision and give a penalty against you.”
Sorry Gary, but that’s not good enough. The issue is not that Bournemouth are suffering from some bizarre refereeing conspiracy theory, but that your team has scored two goals in their last six matches and both of those were against a Championship side against whom you conceded four times. And in each of your last four league games, you have registered an expected goals total between 0.5 and 0.6. The penalty controversy was merely a handy distraction.
“We need to work hard, there are little things that can go your way or not,” O’Neil said after the game. “We’ve suffered some injuries, we’re weaker than we’d like to be. We’ve got to keep working.”
But hard work isn’t the problem. Bournemouth are not suffering for a lack of effort. They are suffering from a lack of creativity that results in a lack of goals. They need to sign at least two players in January and it would be no surprise if they tried to appoint a new manager too, should they fail to beat Nottingham Forest next weekend.
Brentford
His performances have largely flown under the radar, but it’s time to give some love to Ben Mee because he’s been one of the most consistent central defenders in the Premier League this season. Mee has missed one league game since joining Brentford – they lost 4-0 at Aston Villa.
In Brentford’s defence, Ethan Pinnock is responsible for the clearances. He has made more clearances per game (9.3) than any other Premier League regular this season (Joachim Andersen at Crystal Palace is second with 7.3). Mee is the heading champion: he has won eight more aerial duels than any other Premier League defender (James Tarkowski is second – they teach you well at Burnley).
What’s particularly impressive about Mee is that, at 33, he has become more of a passing central defender at his new club. Mee might say that he has always possessed those abilities (they were merely used less frequently at Burnley), but the number of short and medium passes he’s made this season, and his success with those progressive passes, have jumped through the roof at Brentford. A magnificent free transfer signing.
Brighton
Their 3-0 win over Liverpool was the perfect display and the perfect embodiment of Brighton’s progress. They had never beaten Liverpool at home in the top flight, and they beat Jurgen Klopp’s team at what used to be their own game: high pressing, quick overlaps, players entering the attacking penalty area from different angles and at different times and, finally, efficient finishing. Roberto De Zerbi has got this team scoring like never before and he’s done it without the wantaway Leandro Trossard. Any player who wants to leave this project in midseason wants their head checking.
The next time a supporter of an elite club, probably online and probably angrily, tells you that their club needs to spend tens of millions of pounds to create a team worthy of the club’s ambitions, tell them about Brighton. You don’t need to do that, and if you do it’s because of the pressure put upon the club to relentlessly reach their potential every season without even temporary decline and the culture the club created by spending so much in the first place. Yes, this is about Chelsea.
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Brighton’s starting XI against Liverpool cost them £30m in transfer fees to buy. It took time, because these things do. They will not be forever, because eventually bigger clubs get things right (either by appointing the right people to make the decisions or through the sheer law of averages) and money makes the biggest difference when it is blended with expertise. But right now, Brighton are better than Liverpool and they are better than Chelsea.
They future-proofed by recruiting before they sold. They maintained a culture of excellence by allowing those who wanted to leave to go, rather than overpaying to keep them or pretending nothing would ever change. They bought youth but then quickly developed that youth by giving them regular league minutes.
Three months ago, Brighton lost their manager and supporters worried that the end of the cycle had been forced upon them by the extreme wealth of others. They lost their off-field staff too. Their starting XI on Saturday contained five players aged 24 and under. And they were utterly, irresistibly dominant. Good things happen to good clubs.
Chelsea
The pressing emergency was at least relieved by an edgy 1-0 home win over an opponent who Chelsea always beat and who had the better of the first half, but there is still so much noise and chaos surrounding this Chelsea squad that it’s hard to know what happens next.
Look at the matchday squad that Graham Potter picked. There were four academy graduates on the pitch from the start, including Lewis Hall over Marc Cucurella and Kalidou Koulibaly left on the bench. Those two were summer signings and are now probably backups. They were joined on the bench by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who in the space of four days has gone from second to fourth-choice striker. He too only joined in the summer.
Chelsea have already used 27 players in the league this season, and that doesn’t include the £60m signing they paraded at half-time. Christopher Nkunku will arrive in the summer. Potter flourished with a small, tight-knit squad at Brighton that he was able to sculpt to his tactical demands.
Which made his post-match comments very interesting: “I think we’ve got to be, not necessarily careful, but I think you’ve just got to understand that we’ve got about 10 or 11 players unavailable,” he said.
“So, obviously, you can’t just sign players to replace those because in the end, you have a squad of 30 and that’s the problem. My job, I think, is trying to support the club, make the right decisions. And then to help the team improve.”
None of this makes sense, financially or strategically. At some point Todd Boehly is going to have to stop trying to impress his new audience by buying player after player.
Crystal Palace
Palace are probably going to avoid any panic stations this season because there are a group of worse teams and Patrick Vieira is probably going to avoid any trouble because there are more under-pressure managers. But this has been a deeply underwhelming half season.
Palace’s big problem should be that they lack a regular goalscorer to finish the chances they create – we could forgive that. Instead, despite having a collection of promising attacking midfielders, they aren’t really creating clear chances at all. They sit 19th in a table of expected goals this season, ahead of only Bournemouth.
Rather than Vieira pulling Palace away from the Roy Hodgson era and into bright new light, Vieira’s team are becoming more like a Hodgson team – at last in terms of their creativity – than he (and every supporter) would like.
Everton
A broken club. For weeks, months, years, this has been building. On Saturday, mutiny and civil war reared its ugly head. A great number of people crossed the line, and their behaviour was unacceptable. But everyone else, who kept their peace but still made their points, have been crushed by the ineptitude that has seeped into every crack at Goodison Park.
That disarray, that misery, has made Frank Lampard’s job harder, no doubt. But it has also provided him with an escape clause, mitigation for the fiercest criticism that could have come his way and, quite frankly (pun not intended) his performance in this job merits. Lampard’s best attribute was not being Rafael Benitez. It turns out that isn’t a particularly stable foundation on which to build progress or even delay the emergency.
Lampard was appointed with Everton 16th in the Premier League and four points above the bottom three, Benitez sacked because things had surely reached a nadir. In almost 12 months since, Lampard has been given five new players at a cost of £70m and two England international central defenders on low-cost deals (one free transfer, one season-long loan). Everton were forced into selling Richarlison, but the squad should have been better this season. Lampard’s trick was making these new signings look like poor players. Honestly, they aren’t.
Lampard now has a loss percentage of 53.5 per cent as Everton manager. Not only will that almost certainly take them into the Championship if he stays, it is also a worse percentage than any other permanent manager in Everton’s entire history.
The point is this: this is not all on Lampard and nobody is saying as much. He is, in part, paying for the multitude and magnitude of the poor decisions that came before him. But one of those mistakes was in appointing a relative novice for a task that required experience and specific expertise. Everton needed some certainty. They opted for a manager about whom it is still impossible to know what his greatest strengths are.
Fulham
This probably ranks someway down the list when it comes to football’s laws that could probably do with a change, but the double-kick penalty law is very odd indeed. Perhaps it is just so seldom used that nobody has thought about how unfair and illogical it is.
So here goes: if you deliberately try to double-touch a penalty, you should absolutely give away a free-kick (but in that case, nobody would do it). But let’s say you are very obviously fouled in the box as you were about to score (that wasn’t the case in the Fulham game because the penalty award was slightly controversial, but go with it).
If, because the pitch is wet, you slip and accidentally kick the ball into your foot as Aleksandar Mitrovic did against Newcastle, I can understand why the goal does not stand. But what reason is there for the penalty not to be retaken? Did that accidental double touch render the foul in the box null and void? No. Was it a deliberate offence? Clearly not. So why not just retake it, as what happens when there is deliberate encroachment?
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This is particularly salient given the new spate of opposition players roughing up the area around the penalty spot, because it makes that slip far more likely. It’s a silly rule and should be updated.
Leeds
Jesse Marsch’s optimism in the face of Leeds’ defeats is one of my favourite niche pleasures in the Premier League. Marsch walked into his post-match press conference after a loss that left Leeds with two wins in their past 17 matches in all competitions and described the evening as “my side’s most complete performance since I took charge”. Love it, love it.
Leeds did indeed play quite well, although Marsch should probably be aware that his goodwill amongst the club’s supporters does not quite extend to upselling defeat after defeat. But they have a very frustrating habit of playing very well in parts and disastrously badly in others. Ultimately, that isn’t enough for anything other than gradual decline because they allow better chances than they create and they fail to finish too many of the ones they do create.
Marsch cannot say that he hasn’t been backed, both in the sheer volume of money spent since the start of the summer and the profile of those signings. Marsch came with a reputation for developing young players, particularly those who have come through the Red Bull system. Cue £130m of new players, the oldest of whom was 25 at the time of the signing and many of whom were plucked out of that model. If Marsch is indeed fighting for his job, it’s hardly a squad that a firefighter manager would look at and think “Yes, these are my dependables”.
Leeds’ big gamble is spending £30m on Georginio Rutter, a club-record purchase who has scored 11 goals in 58 Bundesliga games. Patience will be needed given Rutter’s age and inexperience, but do Leeds have time for patience? They face Brentford, Everton, Forest and Southampton in their next five league games. This goes south very quickly if Leeds can’t take at least eight points from those four fixtures.
Leicester
“We have a great game at the weekend, it is the perfect type of game you want to come in to. We played very well a few months back when we played them. We know it will be tough going there and that is where you have to show your mettle as a team and have that resilience” – Brendan Rodgers, before Leicester played Nottingham Forest
“Let’s not pretend we are not [in a relegation battle]. It is going to be a very challenging second half of the season” – Brendan Rodgers, after Leicester played Nottingham Forest
Rodgers had repeated his missive again this week that he is not a miracle worker, that his Leicester squad was ravaged by injuries and that the club were still paying the price for transfer market mistakes. And he’s right: there are numerous absentees, the bench is uninspiring and Jamie Vardy, the leader and goalscorer, has slowed down alarmingly quickly.
But this squad should still be better than this. Leicester shouldn’t be so pathetically reliant upon James Maddison and they should at least be able to offer a little fight and resilience. The most damning statistic of their season is this: Leicester are the only club in the Premier League not to take a single point after conceding the first goal. Everyone might as well have gone home after Brennan Johnson’s opener.
Rodgers’ acceptance that Leicester are in a relegation battle (albeit simply a statement of the bleeding obvious) might also talk him into trouble. He has demonstrated that he is a fine coach before, but Rodgers hardly strikes as the perfect coach for a relegation battle. He is a builder, not a firefighter.
Whether Rodgers stays or not, and whether Leicester go down or not, it’s impossible to avoid the nagging suspicion that Leicester are reaching – or have already reached – the end of a cycle. They rose so impossibly high that they briefly touched heaven, but the fall has been long and expensive. Better to have loved and lost and had the time of your life than none of the above, but it doesn’t make the decline any easier to stomach.
As a slight aside, look at the list (according to Transfermarkt) of the Leicester players out of contract in the next 18 months: Maddison, Vardy, Wilfred Ndidi, Kelechi Iheanacho, Dennis Praet, Luke Thomas Luke Thomas, Jannik Vestergaard, Marc Albrighton, Alex Smithies, Youri Tielemans, Caglar Söyüncü, Daniel Amartey, Ayoze Pérez, Nampalys Mendy, Jonny Evans, Ryan Bertrand. That’s, erm… everyone?
Liverpool
If Liverpool’s league season is not already a write-off, keep playing as they are and those formalities will be complete. They are 10 points off a top-four place and have scored fewer goals, conceded more and taken fewer points than at this stage of any of Klopp’s other seasons in charge. Even when they were staving off the cries of crisis, it was rarely pretty. In their 14 league matches since the 9-0 win over Bournemouth, Liverpool have won two of them. Last season, they won 21 of their 38 league games by more than one goal.
A cycle of negativity has now enveloped Liverpool. That wry laugh after Danny Welbeck’s goal is Klopp’s least alluring mannerism. It suggests: “It is funny how badly this is going and how little I can make a difference and if I didn’t laugh, I’d cry”. The only surprise is that Klopp didn’t get it out after Liverpool had conceded roughly a minute after his half-time team talk had ended.
Injuries have been an issue all season, pointing to the exertions of last season. No team can relentlessly chase high-end excellence without something giving; even Manchester City are suffering from that. More signings might have painted over those cracks and Klopp’s insistence that Liverpool can’t do so has certainly generated huge ire against FSG. For balance, Liverpool have recruited Cody Gakpo, Fabio Carvalho, Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Calvin Ramsay since the start of 2022. But yes, the midfield is a problem because Naby Keita and Curtis Jones have not kicked on as Klopp hoped.
More than all of that, the body language is rotten. Look at the way heads drop whenever Liverpool concede, or how Mohamed Salah trudged straight off the pitch at full-time. Liverpool’s poor form might be down to physical fatigue, but it has broken their spirit. And that takes longer to fix.
If this looked any different, we would believe that Liverpool were simply part way through an extended transition. They have rebuilt the attack – and are acclimatising accordingly – and are suffering because the midfield rebuild has not begun in earnest yet. But transitions are not supposed to come laced with such rampant negativity. During them, morale holds because everyone can see the end goal. Right now, Liverpool don’t seem able to see anything at all bar their own fall into disarray.
Man City
There’s no escaping that the goal that allowed Manchester United to get back into the derby was deeply unfair. I can believe that, by the application of the law, you can make a case for the goal standing. But then the rule is an ass. If a player chases a pass that is intended for him and starts in an offside position, taking multiple defenders with him, he has to be interfering.
City’s problems, however, go beyond one concession of one goal. There have been a number of explanations for a mini-post World Cup funk – physical fatigue, emotional tiredness, slight lapses in attitude – but they are all represented the same way: City pass the ball, usually slowly, until a point that someone misplaces a simple pass. There is a pass-the-parcel game of guilt, interminable slow exchanges of possession until the music starts and someone skews the ball out of play.
City did improve. In the 25 minutes immediately after half-time, their midfielders carried the ball forwards rather than passing it sideways and they played it quicker too. Just as at Stamford Bridge, the substitutes changed the game. Guardiola has been trying to get Jack Grealish to get one specific run – the out-to-in, slightly delayed scamper that puts you in the perfect position for a pull-back. That is what Raheem Sterling perfected and what Grealish must learn.
Then they were undone by a more recently acquired bad habit. Last season, Manchester City scored the first goal in 28 of their 38 league matches. The reason they won the title was their ability to hold onto those leads: 27 wins and one draw. This season, City have dropped nine points already after scoring the first goal.
City just about remain in position to make a title assault – we have seen them embark on winning runs plenty of times before. But unless they bring more dynamism to their passing, they remain the Erling Haaland team and too many opponents are realising that, if they stay in the game, City are vulnerable.
Man Utd
In the aftermath of a derby day win, Erik ten Hag spoke about Manchester United’s improved resilience and he was right to make the point. Since the 6-3 defeat at the Etihad, United have fallen behind against Everton and won, done the same against City and conceded late against Chelsea before finding an equaliser. Seven points from losing positions is only three fewer than United had managed between the start of 2021-22 and that Etihad defeat. United have gone from 0.5 points per game when conceding first to 1.75 points per game. It’s a handy habit.
Resilience is a symptom of confidence; you do not come back from adversity unless you believe that you are able and you believe that everyone around you is equally sure. That is what has returned to Old Trafford. Look at the way Aaron Wan-Bissaka retained possession and played clever passes in opposition territory – that’s new. Look at how easily Luke Shaw has settled into a new role – that’s new too. Look at how Marcus Rashford came back from spurning two chances in the first half to make the difference in the second.
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Ten Hag is right; it is too early to talk about the title race. Not because Manchester United are not in it, but because to immediately point focus to the end goal would a) risk losing focus from what is required to get there, and b) risk removing the enjoyment for supporters of the journey. This was far less than great fun for far too long – why wouldn’t you want to revel in it for a while.
Newcastle
Newcastle will play far better than this, and the injury to Bruno Guimaraes is certainly a worry, but Eddie Howe’s team marches on thanks to some penalty good fortune and the continuation of an astonishing defensive record.
We are halfway through the season and Howe’s team have conceded three fewer goals than any other team. This is the manager around whom the biggest doubt was whether he could organise a defence and he’s got the meanest defence in the league. This has been a baffling Premier League season for many reasons. Nothing is weirder than that.
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Nottingham Forest
Something is bubbling at the City Ground and the locals have waited a long time to see it. Nottingham Forest’s 15 points from their last 10 league games is at least 10 more than West Ham, Everton or Bournemouth. Steve Cooper’s team are unbeaten in eight home games in all competitions.
The principal reason for the improvement has been Cooper’s shift from a back three to a 4-3-3 formation. Some people think that adding an extra defender automatically makes a team more defensive or more defensively solid, but for Forest the opposite was true. With the wing-backs pushing forward and only two central midfielders (Forest used a 3-4-3), the central defenders were asked to move out to the wings to cover and none of Forest’s central defenders (Joe Worrall, Scott McKenna, Steve Cook, Cheikhou Kouyate, Willy Boly) really had the speed to do that.
In the 4-3-3, it is the two wide central midfielders who are responsible for covering when the full-backs push on. That leaves the two central defenders to defend the penalty area, something Forest’s really are good at. It isn’t quite true that Forest have stopped giving up high-quality chances (Harvey Barnes should have scored twice at 0-0), but they are certainly allowing fewer shots in total. Suddenly, only four Premier League goalkeepers have kept more clean sheets than Dean Henderson.
That alone would not be enough for Forest to push this quickly up the table (and, very obviously, they are nowhere near safe yet). As well as the defensive solidity, Morgan Gibbs-White and Brennan Johnson are showing signs of becoming one of the most exciting counter-attacking combinations in the division.
Johnson has taken some stick from Forest fans online this season for his decision-making, but he is still 21 years old and in his first top-flight season. Only Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli have more goals this season of the Premier League’s 21-and-under brigade; that’s good company to keep.
As for Gibbs-White, there was a good deal of nonsense written about his transfer fee over the summer, while Wolves fans lauded the transfer fee received because they signed Goncalo Guedes (left out of the matchday squad this weekend) with it. Gibbs-White is a game changer in this Forest team: dropping deep, running at players, knowing when to pass and when to hold onto the ball. If he and Johnson can fire with Taiwo Awoniyi providing a physical presence when required, Forest can stay up.
Southampton
A huge week for Nathan Jones, who has beaten three Premier League teams in three competitions – sitting at the bottom of the table has never felt so good. Jones has found some organisation amongst the defensive chaos. We remain to be convinced that Southampton can continue the run when not facing Everton but, for now, there is new hope.
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And isn’t that just incredibly Southampton? You can sack Ralph Hasenhuttl. You could change every player in the squad, every coach on the training ground and every seat in the stadium. Southampton would still find a way to randomly win three games when everything looked lost and engineer at least one of those victories having conceded the first goal and through James Ward Prowse’s free-kick brilliance. This is Southampton Football Club heritage.
Tottenham
I’ll use my colleague Oliver Young-Myles for this one, because he says exactly what I think:
“In the reverse fixture, Lloris spilt a Bukayo Saka effort into Gabriel Jesus’ path to score a tap-in, gifting Arsenal a lead that they did not relinquish; this time he shovelled a Saka cross-shot directly into his own goal to gift Arsenal a lead that they did not relinquish.
“During his time at Spurs, Lloris has committed 24 errors leading to goals in the Premier League, half of which have been against “Big Six” opponents. It was Lloris’ first ever own goal in the Premier League coming in his 354th appearance. What a time to get it. As was the case at the Emirates, Lloris’ mistake set the tone.”
And his mistakes so often seem to. There used to be a cliche that Lloris made “rare mistakes” so often that they could not possibly meet that definition. Now Lloris sets the tone in these big games. It might not be Spurs’ biggest problem, but they need a new goalkeeper this summer.
West Ham
Amid some stiff competition, West Ham are the champions of the “spent a lot more money than you think and still bang in trouble” league. David Moyes had spent the week hoping that a draw at Leeds and FA Cup win over a Brentford scratch XI would cause an upturn in mood and performance. He was, again, badly wrong.
West Ham’s supporters have now turned. They cheered ironically when West Ham had shots and again when Moyes brought on Said Benrahma. Like Grady Diangana before him, Benrahma has become a slightly unlikely cause celebre for the upset Hammer. In their defence, he does currently seem to be the only West Ham player capable of taking on and beating an opponent. “What happened to Jarrod Bowen?” is one of about 35 different questions they are asking.
You cannot blame those supporters for wanting Moyes out. Their team simply does not create enough chances, everyone knows they don’t create enough chances and yet nothing has seemingly been done to improve their chance-creating ability. There are no obvious attacking strategies, no system for getting the best out of the players signed. And boy have West Ham signed some players; Moyes cannot say he has not been backed. The club have spent £230m on transfer fees over the last 18 months, presumably drastically increasing the wage bill. And for what – for them to sink into the bottom three?
The only question is whether Moyes lasts until the home game against his former club Everton, and whether Frank Lampard lasts until the away game against his former club West Ham. Prepare yourselves for the misery derby.
Wolves
As with Aston Villa, there is an acclimatisation process required for Wolves supporters as their team learns to play through the press under their new manager and they learn to watch it without shrieking and gasping and assuming the worst is going to happen. Julen Lopetegui is happy for Wolves to counter when the opportunity suits, but he also wants them to pass through any high press to create spaces for the best midfield in the bottom half – Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, Matheus Nunes.
See the evidence from the 1-0 win over West Ham, even if Wolves were hardly fluent or dominant: Lopetegui’s team completed 244 passes of between five and 15 yards in length, the most they have in any game this season. There will be a revolution and it will probably keep Wolves up because Daniel Podence is lethal against the worst teams in the league.
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