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The result that nobody wishing to make steadfast conclusions wanted: Liverpool’s draw with Manchester City means that Arsenal are top, City are favourites and Liverpool have it in their own hands. Sit back and watch as a ludicrous title race unfolds that will surely go down to the final weekend.
At the bottom, Sheffield United and Burnley both went 2-0 up – yay – but still drew 2-2 – boo – and Luton Town were the biggest winners because they drew while Nottingham Forest, Everton and Brentford all lost. The bottom six clubs have won two of their last combined 30 league matches and one of those was the Blades beating Luton.
Elsewhere, Tottenham Hotspur took a large leap forward in the race for the top four, which may well be crucial if English teams like Brighton keep collapsing in Europe. Spurs should be cheering on Arsenal on Tuesday against Porto. Good luck with that…
Scroll down for our verdict on every team (listed in table order)…
Gameweek 28 results
Saturday 9th March
- Man Utd 2-0 Everton
- Bournemouth 2-2 Sheff Utd
- Crystal Palace 2-2 Luton
- Wolves 2-1 Fulham
- Arsenal 2-1 Brentford
Sunday 10th March
- Aston Villa 0-4 Spurs
- Brighton 1-0 Nott’m Forest
- West Ham 2-2 Burnley
- Liverpool 1-1 Man City
Arsenal
Ben White has never been a big talker. Much gets made of his ambivalence towards the sport that he excels at, largely because those of us who obsess about football cannot fathom why anyone else might not. When it combines with shyness, it can be easily misinterpreted that White does not care as much as the chest-beaters. Unsurprisingly, he says that it is total nonsense.
What is undeniable is that White is in the best form of his career to date. Signed as a £50m central defender, he has been forced to adapt to a different position with entirely different characteristics in Mikel Arteta’s title-challenging movement. Nobody is pushing Gabriel Magalhaes or William Saliba out of the team but a space opened up at right-back. White has made it his own.
Since his switch, White has slowly improved his attacking numbers and, thus, Arsenal are relying upon him more. He’s having more touches in the penalty area and the final third this season than ever before, but the biggest change is the rise in chances created since the start of 2022-23. No longer does he always play a simple pass to Bukayo Saka or Martin Odegaard; White offers a third dimension on that flank.
It’s easy to notice when he pops two brilliant crosses onto the head of Declan Rice and Kai Havertz to give Arsenal precious victory, but that is merely the inevitable result of a gradual process. White is growing as a leader by example in this team, the platform from which Saka can jump and now an attacking threat in his own right.
Liverpool
Jurgen Klopp’s final contribution to an epic Premier League rivalry with Pep Guardiola was for his depleted side to serve up a performance that had everything barring a winner. In a game drenched with excellence it was Liverpool that had the better moments and the more influential performers. But if they made Manchester City look vulnerable in their inability to press home their advantage will have made Arsenal, who end the weekend top of the league, believers again.
For those of us without a dog in this classic Premier League title fight, it was simply a case of soaking in the last act of the Klopp-Guardiola era. It is rare for a game hyped like this one to surpass expectations but that is what happened as two sides sent out by future hall of fame managers made the most of their licence to thrill. How we will miss it when Klopp walks into the sunset in May.
The German certainly edged this one, maintaining his status as one of the few able to disrupt the suffocating control of this City side. He has had many great moments at Anfield but considering the resources at his disposal here – a back four made up of a reserve goalkeeper and in Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley a pair of defenders who were in League One last season – this might rank as one of his most impressive pound-for-pound managerial feats.
Liverpool’s rhythm ebbed and flowed and after they wrestled back the initiative from City in the second half, they had the control Guardiola usually revels in. Alexis Mac Allister was outstanding in the heart of midfield, rising above a sea of talent to put his imprint on the contest, while Virgil van Dijk has rarely looked better.
Add the energy and infectiousness of Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez – a red and white agent of chaos who drew Ederson out of his comfort zone to earn the penalty which drew Liverpool – and you had a formula that should have earned a statement result. By Mark Douglas
Read more: Liverpool expose Man City weakness and show title race is no foregone conclusion
Manchester City
Pep Guardiola likened Liverpool’s press to a blood red tsunami with home players “coming for everything” for 20 second half minutes that left Manchester City on their knees.
“The best team I’ve ever seen in high pressing,” he cooed in his press conference afterwards. But among the Liverpool love-in, were there some warning signs of trouble ahead for all-conquering City?
Previous Anfield slip-ups have felt like aberrations, City blown away by the intensity of the occasion or caught on the counter.
As Jurgen Klopp beamed afterwards, this felt different. Liverpool controlled this game by exerting midfield control, almost beating City at their own game with an axis of Alexis Mac Allister and the ultra efficient Wataru Endo dominating key areas. The alarm bells aren’t exactly clanging for a City team that haven’t lost since 6 December but there will be some cause for concern for Guardiola.
Take Erling Haaland, for example. His brutal brilliance is beyond doubt but he failed to exert any influence on this contest, in stark contrast to opposite number Darwin Nunez. The Uruguayan is undoubtedly eccentric – bewildering at times, still frighteningly raw and a magnet for offside calls – but few could accuse him of ever being anonymous.
Running into Virgil van Dijk in irresistible form Haaland was shackled effectively here and while he will undoubtedly score crucial goals in the run-in, is it sacrilege to point out that 10 of his 18 goals this season have come when playing teams placed either 12th or below in the league?
By contrast he has a solitary strike against top four opponents, and that was way back in November when Liverpool travelled to the Etihad with plenty of question marks swirling around them. They have rediscovered their mojo since, able to defend robustly as a unit even when injuries have deprived them of so many first choice players.
Usually when Haaland is quiet, Julian Alvarez strides forward but he was poor and that meant City lacked punch until Jeremy Doku’s late introduction. He was one of the few in sky blue to replicate the direct, decisive forward play that Liverpool produced. The winger’s impact was a rare bright spot in the second half. By Mark Douglas
Aston Villa
There’s no doubt that Tottenham were rampant, but it helped that Villa were alarmingly sluggish (and not for the first time against teams around them). Europa Conference League commitments have barely seemed to affect Villa this season, but the 0-0 draw in Amsterdam on Thursday had sapped at least half of their energy against a Tottenham side with a free midweek.
Ollie Watkins looked hamstrung after a strong early tackle. Leon Bailey completed one pass in the opening 40 minutes. Central midfield was non-existent for the 20 minutes when Tottenham took complete charge.
The game had already been lost when John McGinn kicked out at Destiny Udogie, but he was a dim personification of the general frustration. Home supporters may have cried foul about the decision to send off McGinn, but the tackle was wild, petulant, never even considering the ball and stopping a break all in one. You could merit a yellow for each one of those characteristics.
The question on the lips of those coming out of Villa Park was whether Unai Emery had over-thought this one. He opted to switch formation to a back three, perhaps to try and get his wing-backs up high and thus stop Tottenham’s full-backs doing the same. But Youri Tielemans was ineffective and it left Bailey and Watkins isolated. When the ball didn’t stick in the final third, Tottenham were able to spark counter-attacks that exposed Villa’s high defensive line.
Tottenham Hotspur
Life has not been easy for Brennan Johnson at Tottenham. When you are the replacement, in body at least, for the greatest attacker in the history of the club who nobody ever wanted to lose, a pressure is generated that is entirely impossible to cope with. Nobody could ever match up to Harry Kane and Johnson could never try: younger, more raw, less experience and in a different position. Good luck, kid.
There were steps both forward and back before Christmas. Johnson clearly has talent to take on and beat a man and his finishing was better than most gave him credit for at Nottingham Forest, but supporters began to gripe about a lack of end product and a semi-wayward relationship with Son. Patience was clearly required, but Ange Postecoglou had plans and they were unfolding quickly.
Recently, signs of Johnson finding his feet and Tottenham learning how to service a lightning fast winger with Son more central and still just as important. Johnson has seven goal contributions in his last 10 league appearances and four of those were as a substitute.
When Johnson is on it, as against Villa, he offers an entirely different dimension because defenders are scared of his pace with the ball at his feet. Twice in the first 15 minutes, Johnson skipped past Matty Cash. That leaves a full-back with two options: keep trying to stop him and risk being humiliated or back off and make life easy for the winger to pick a pass.
It also sent a message to other Villa players that Cash needed help. Suddenly James Maddison was able to run beyond his man unchecked occasionally (and score the first goal). Dejan Kulusevski stood with his arm up for half the game because he had so much space on the right flank. Even Destiny Udogie had more space to run into because Leon Bailey had dropped a little deeper to help out.
Read more: Spurs find a new dimension and send a warning to their top-four rivals
Manchester United
For all that the “bigger picture” stuff is far less appealing than Erik ten Hag would have us and Manchester United supporters believe (another 23 shots conceded on Sunday means that only Sheffield United now allow more per game in the Premier League), we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Within this team are two extremely talented teenagers.
Kobbie Mainoo has garnered effusive praise since breaking into the team at 18. There’s an easy explanation: United were crying out for a competent, dynamic, forward-thinking central midfielder because Scott McTominay isn’t quite at the level required, Casemiro can barely do the defensive bits anymore and Sofyan Amrabat has been unfit for purpose from the moment he arrived. Mainoo is clearly good, but he’s also an antidote to everyone around him.
I wonder if Mainoo’s success has overshadowed Alejandro Garnacho’s progress this season. It’s very easy to forget that Garnacho is also extremely young and raw.
There are only two players in the Premier League to have made more than 25 appearances this season aged 20 and under. Evan Ferguson is one and Garnacho is the other; Garnacho has also started six more games.
The consistency is not quite there yet, exactly as we would expect from a teenager. But Garnacho has now scored eight Premier League goals and provided five assists since his debut. He’s also having to deal with the pressure of being one of the leaders of Ten Hag’s attack way ahead of intended schedule.
Obviously there’s a whacking irony to Garnacho being the winger to step up most, given the £75m option out on loan, the £85m option on the bench and the £25m option who can barely manage that. But he’s direct, he’s fearless, he is very good at winning fouls and he’s contributing in an area where Manchester United badly need help.
West Ham
I’m happy to accept that this is a slightly tenuous segue, but watching Nayef Aguerd look shaky on the extended highlights of West Ham’s unsatisfactory draw with Burnley on Sunday, it got me thinking about how badly things had gone for some of Morocco’s heroes from the 2022 World Cup.
Aguerd was picked to start the World Cup semi-final against France, but then had to pull out with a thigh injury. Before Sunday, when he was really poor, Aguerd had started three West Ham games in 2024 and the aggregate scoreline in them was 0-11. He is no longer first choice and could well leave in the summer.
But he’s not the only one of that team to falter badly. Sofyan Amrabat’s loan move to Manchester United has been an abject failure. Hakim Ziyech was then at Chelsea but is now on loan in Turkey. Bono has gone to Saudi Arabia, followed by Romain Saiss who is on loan there from Qatari club Al Sadd. Sofiane Boufal is also in the Qatari Stars League, while Jawad El Yamiq is in the Saudi Pro League too.
Of the other starters in the semi-final, Achraf Dari is on loan at Charleroi from Stade Brest and so missing their excellent season. Azzedine Ounahi was the boy wonder but has been in and out of the Marseille side. Noussair Mazraoui is at least still at Bayern Munich but has started only 13 league games this season. Add in a last-16 defeat at the latest Africa Cup of Nations and you have a bumpy fall from grace.
Wolverhampton Wanderers
As part of our recent deep dive into Wolverhampton Wanderers’ improvements this season under Gary O’Neil, we focused on how he had used wing-backs to improve Wolves’ attacking intent and relying upon the energy of Joao Gomes and Mario Lemina in central midfield to protect the defence.
Fast forward a couple more matches and Rayan Ait-Nouri and Nelson Semedo have now overtaken those 2022-23 numbers. Saturday’s home victory against Fulham offered the perfect embodiment of the principle, with Ait-Nouri scoring the first goal and Semedo’s shot causing the deflected own goal for the second.
The pair had 35 touches between them in the final third and only two more touches in their own penalty area than Fulham’s. Even when the performance isn’t perfect, Wolves’ wing-backs decree that creating moments of danger is never far away.
Read more: How Gary O’Neil transformed Wolves from relegation fodder to top-eight hopefuls
Newcastle United
Play Chelsea on Monday evening.
Brighton
Roberto De Zerbi has come in for some stick of late for seemingly abandoning all pragmatism and ignoring Brighton’s defensive organisation problems, so this was a welcome return to winning ugly. An own goal, a lucky VAR call not to receive a red card, a decidedly grim second half and keeping the ball in the corner during eight minutes of stoppage time. These can also be things that Brighton supporters like.
Part of that was because Carlos Baleba and Pascal Gross played as a midfield combination in which Baleba did an awful lot of running around and nice passing and Pascal Gross made the actual tackles and the nice passes too. That pair have only started seven games together this season and the only one of those Brighton have lost was the 2-1 defeat at Manchester City. Perhaps that is the pairing that can add a little steel to Brighton.
There’s also another point to make about the recent criticism of Brighton: this team is still very young indeed. The starting XI that beat Forest contained seven players aged 24 or under and they brought on two more as substitutes. That De Zerbi also used five players aged 32 or over sums up the very weird age profile of this Brighton squad: newbies and veterans only. Last month, Brighton picked the eighth youngest XI in the Premier League and it still had two 32 year olds in it.
That can add to this sense of naivety and defensive disorganisation. An ambitious, emphatically attack-minded manager has a squad packed with young players. He’s basically asking them to expend a lot of energy while the senior heads control the game and that can easily go wrong. It’s also often utterly wonderful to watch, but Brighton may be better with a touch less mania.
Chelsea
Play Newcastle on Monday evening.
Fulham
I wanted to give some love to Antonee Robinson, a full-back who flies under the radar more than most but who has been one of the best attacking outlets in the Premier League this season and surely the most surprising.
Robinson came through Everton’s academy (joining them at the age of 11) but was allowed to join Wigan Athletic without making a first-team appearance for the club. After flourishing at Wigan in the Championship, Fulham signed Robinson for a fee of only £2m. Ever since, he’s made that look like a ridiculous bargain. How Everton could do with him now.
This season, Robinson has stepped up another level. Amongst all Premier League defenders, only four players have created more chances from open play this season: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Kyle Walker, Kieran Trippier, Oleksandr Zinchenko. It’s pretty spectacular company to keep, given those others all have clear licence to move up into midfield.
Unsurprisingly, form like that provokes links to richer, bigger club. In December there was talk of Liverpool making an approach in the January transfer window just gone and Newcastle were reported to have shown an interest before signing Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall. Attacking left-backs in their mid-20s and with heaps of experience in English football are hard to find.
Bournemouth
Supporters will be pleased at the comeback and disappointed at the result. This run of three league games (Burnley, Sheffield United, Luton) provided a clear potential route to nine points and the warming safety of midtable, 37 points and safety secured. There are still clear flaws within this Bournemouth system when it comes to breaking down a low block without over-committing and getting caught out.
I wonder if one of the issues might be with Andoni Iraola’s apparent refusal to rest or rotate his wingers to get more out of them. Marcus Tavernier has started each of the last five league games but has only three league assists this season as a starter.
When you look at the talent on the bench – Luis Sinisterra and Dango Ouattara – you wonder whether Iraola is putting slightly too much onus on counter-attacking traits rather than the ability to beat a man one-on-one. On the right, Antonio Semenyo has enjoyed a wonderful season. Combining him with Sinisterra or Ouattara may make Bournemouth more unpredictable and harder to defend again.
Ouattara scoring one and assisting the other in the comeback certainly helps to make his case for a start against Luton on Wednesday. They are likely to play in the same way as Sheffield United.
Crystal Palace
“We have started to work on it. I don’t believe in coincidences and if you concede so many goals in the last 15 minutes – we have to work on it, we have to analyse it and we have to improve it,” said Oliver Glasner after Crystal Palace conceded three goals in the last 13 minutes against Tottenham in the Austrian’s first game in charge.
“The players are willing to improve and we have started already. We have one more game against Luton then three weeks with no game and we will work on it. Everybody did what he was able to do today but if you concede 19 goals (in the last 15 minutes of games) we have to improve that.”
Fast forward another week, and more classic Crystal Palace-ing. They conceded in the 96th minute to drop two more points late on and, in doing so, cannot pull themselves clear of the relegation scrap. Nor do they deserve to if they keep this up.
“It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Glasner said. “When you drive your car, you’re always afraid of having an accident, or if you go down the stairs and you’re afraid you will fall down, it will happen. We will analyse why we were passive in this situation.”
Obviously this is not just about defending. Palace missed a host of excellent chances to kill off the game, and their failure to do so only gave Luton more impetus and belief that the game was becoming fated in their favour. But it’s still very funny to hear Glasner talking in a manner like Palace are breaking his entire psyche and he’s only been in the job a fortnight. Now, as he says, he has three weeks to work on this.
Brentford
They are not the only Premier League team that do it (in fact, every team does it to a greater or lesser extent), but if Arsenal wanted a dress rehearsal for how FC Porto will try to slow down the game and waste time during their Champions League last-16 second leg, Brentford offered it.
It’s a theme of Brentford’s style: breaking up play, taking their time over set-piece situations when in a favourable position, street-smart behaviour. It also fits the model of the club, to look for marginal, clever strategies others may have ignored or underestimated to punch above their weight.
In April, Opta calculated that Brentford take an average of 31.4 seconds to restart play after a delay, comfortably the longest in the Premier League. Partly that’s because they have particularly detailed set-piece routines. Partly it’s not that at all – it’s deliberate. They take the longest over their throw-ins too, to add evidence to that suspicion.
On Saturday evening, the game situation was perfect for them to showcase their entire range: away, at a higher-class opponent, level at half-time and so desperate to hang on for a point. As calculated by Sam Dean of the Daily Telegraph, the total time in the match was 105 minutes and one second. The ball was in play for a pitiful 49 minutes and 26 seconds, less than 50 per cent of the time. It’s probably only so long until the stopped clock is introduced.
Everton
“I have never been here and had that many chances or created that many opportunities,” said Sean Dyche after Everton’s defeat against Manchester United. “It’s very frustrating. You have to be prepared to get hurt to score a goal and I don’t see enough of that.”
“Unfortunately it’s same old, same old. It’s very rare, in my football experience, that you [create so much] here [at Old Trafford]. But the devil is in the detail. Everyone thinks scoring goals is easy – it’s not. But there is a responsibility as a player, and as a coach as well of course, to take that on.”
Dyche is right and wrong here. He’s evidently frustrated at his attackers’ inability to finish chances and he quoted the number of shots (23) and final-third entries (45) as evidence of a job being well done until the penalty area.
And, yeah, fair enough. Everton have scored three goals in their last five games. They have had 47 shots against Manchester United this season, 30 of which have come from inside the penalty area, and not scored at all. They are underperforming their xG badly, almost eight goals worse than any other team in the division and that’s made less painful by their record from attacking set pieces.
But there’s also a question of style here. As we mentioned a fortnight ago in this column, Everton create a high volume of chances (at the end of Saturday they ranked seventh for shots in the Premier League), but a very high percentage of these are low-to-mid value. We’ve had plenty enough proof over the last two years that Everton’s attackers are not capable of feasting upon this type of chance.
So rather than lament incompetence and bad luck on repeat, perhaps Dyche is going to have to try and change how Everton attack to try and force the issue himself. Rather than create a high volume of shots that pad out the statistics but rarely end with goals being scored, what if Everton had fewer shots but a higher percentage of them were high-value chances. Which, very roughly, is the West Ham and Newcastle model under David Moyes and Eddie Howe.
Nottingham Forest
If Nuno Espirito Santo got a bump after his appointment as Nottingham Forest manager, winning two of his first three league matches in charge, bump has now become slump. Forest have taken four points from their last eight matches, a 2-0 win over West Ham and a 1-1 draw at Bournemouth.
Next weekend’s trip to Luton is monumental and travelling supporters would be right to be fearful. Forest have won twice in their last 24 away league games and I’m not sure they’re really improving. The general feeling is that performances have improved of late (and they aren’t getting thumped), but the first-half performance against Brighton was also entirely uninspiring.
Nuno effectively has encountered the same dilemma that Steve Cooper did. Either you choose to play with an extra forward but leave a defence and goalkeeper shorn of confidence a little too exposed (and so Forest tend to lose 3-2 or something similar), or you add beef to the midfield, Forest do allow fewer chances from open play but also get stuck because they can’t knit moves through midfield and so get penned in with the attackers isolated (which is what happened at Brighton).
Maybe these problems resolve over the next four weeks or so. After all, the last five league defeats were against Arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Brighton, all of whom are in the top half and against whom Forest lost by a single goal in all but one. Against Luton, Palace, Fulham, Wolves, Everton et al, things may well balance out. But with a looming points deduction and Luton frankly looking no worse than Forest over the last six weeks, these are nervous times indeed.
Luton Town
If you followed Luton’s game at Crystal Palace as it headed into stoppage time and didn’t expect an equalising goal, then you are a fool. Not only are Palace awful at stopping their opponents from scoring late on, Luton have also made it their party piece under Rob Edwards.
Cauley Woodrow’s goal, only his second ever in the Premier League (both against Crystal Palace, almost 10 years apart), was the 15th that Luton have scored in the final 15 minutes of matches this season. Only Liverpool have scored more in that period, an astonishing record for a team in the bottom three.
The difference this week is that it actually earned Luton a point. For all their late salvos this season, and for all of their “we will not lie down” personality, Luton have actually been really poor at taking points from behind. Before Saturday, they had earned just four points from losing positions. They stay in games and often cause headaches to the biggest teams, but that usually ends in little more than slightly moral victory and zero points.
It’s a problem because Luton concede first too often too: 19 out of 27 games, more than everyone bar Sheffield United. If they’re going to stay up, even given the points deduction mess, they need to build on Saturday.
Burnley
If Burnley supporters are going to watch their team fall from the Premier League with a slight whimper, the most salient question being whether they finish 19th or 20th, they might as well be allowed to have a little fun. And watching David Fofana is more than a little fun.
I can’t remember seeing a shot from that distance in the Premier League going so fast into the net. Fofana hit it with a frustration that says “no it isn’t easy playing up front for Burnley”. Watch the replay for how far the ball rolls back out for an indication of the power.
Fofana is enduring an odd career, nomadic despite only turning 21 in December. Having moved from Abidjan back home to Molde and quickly earned the eyes of international scouts, he joined Chelsea in January last year for around £10m but barely played in any competition. A season-long loan move to Union Berlin, ostensibly an excellent option, ended early because he was still barely featuring, yet he scored in the Champions League against Napoli.
Sent to Burnley for the rest of this season, Fofana is suddenly having a lovely time (albeit surrounded by misery) and offering some evidence that he wouldn’t have been any less reliable as a striker for Chelsea than Nicolas Jackson, who cost them £40m to buy permanently. One can only imagine that another season-long loan is likely next year, and thus a career can stall and splutter because you never get a permanent home.
Sheffield United
We have been plenty despondent about Sheffield United’s season under Paul Heckingbottom and Chris Wilder, and Wilder again described his players as “broken” after they let a two-goal lead slip against Bournemouth.
But I wanted to give some credit to one of the players who doesn’t look entirely defeated by this miserable campaign. When Gustavo Hamer joined from Coventry City last summer, it probably wasn’t with the intention to potentially swap places with his old club a year later. But while everything else has gone wrong, Hamer has at least justified his transfer fee and will surely play a crucial role in the club’s attempts at immediate re-promotion.
This season in the league alone, Hamer has 75 shot-creating actions (29 more than any teammate) and ranks first for assists and second for goals. He retains the physical streak that saw him pick up cards regularly at Coventry, but having Vinicius Souza and Oliver Norwood around him have allowed Hamer to concentrate more on getting higher up the pitch to support the forwards. No Sheffield United player has had more touches in the final third of the pitch than him this season.
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