Ruben Amorim could be dealt a harsh dose of reality against Arsenal as we wonder what’s worse than a crisis as Man City welcome Nottingham Forest.
Game to watch: Arsenal v Manchester United
Ruben Amorim was wise to urge caution after what on paper looked to be a shellacking of Everton on Sunday to hand him his first Premier League victory as Manchester United manager.
“Today was 4-0 – but I think Everton deserved [more]. So let’s focus on the performance,” Amorim said in a bid to downplay the expectations of United fans ahead of a trip to Arsenal that threatens to provide quite the bump back down to earth.
Amorim’s side had an xG of 0.79 to Everton’s 0.76, suggesting that their work in both boxes put gloss on what was otherwise a “very average” display, at home, against a side that’s won just two of 13 league games this season and has failed to score in their last four.
Everton can’t hold a candle to a Martin Odegaard-less Arsenal, let alone one with the captain back fit and firing.
The Gunners’ improvement on his return wasn’t in doubt but the speed and extent of their increased performance is extraordinary. He’s made everyone immediately better and his relationship with Bukayo Saka on Arsenal’s right seems if anything to have improved. Maybe absence really does make the football grow in wonder…
Amorim has so far enjoyed a soft landing in English football, with games against Ipswich, Bodo/Glimt and Everton granting him time to bed in, allowing him to experiment with line-ups in what has felt like an in-season pre-season for the Portuguese boss.
Arsenal – now somewhere back towards the peak of their powers – will provide a proper gauge of where Amorim’s Manchester United are. The honeymoon might well be over.
Manager to watch: Eddie Howe
That sound you hear might just be Eddie Howe’s head bumping against his Newcastle ceiling.
He claimed after Crystal Palace scored a last-gasp equaliser on Saturday that his team “did what we needed to do as the away team”. In so far as they were winning before Marc Guehi set up Daniel Munoz in stoppage time he’s right, of course, but we wonder whether the travelling Magpies fans would have taken quite such a literal and positive stance at full-time having watched their side have one shot which failed to find the target in the 90+ minutes at Selhurst Park.
The glass-half-fullers will focus on them being just four points off the Champions League spots, but the majority will look at the teams vying for those places and consider Newcastle rank outsiders. They have neither the personnel nor the control of games as things stand to mount a serious challenge, and with Liverpool to come on Wednesday, as we wonder for the 427th time what has to happen for the Newcastle bosses to consider Howe’s future at the club, a proper spanking by Arne Slot’s table-toppers might be a Look What You Could Have Had moment to make the Toon Sheikhs consider a change.
PSR has stopped the state-backed project in its tracks. Newcastle couldn’t take advantage of their Champions League dalliance because of the restrictions and have no room to manoeuvre in the transfer market to take the next step, meaning the only real recourse is a change of style.
Newcastle don’t play like a Big Team. They run, they break, they swarm, but they don’t dominate, no matter who’s playing for them or which team they’re playing against. That’s a Howe limitation, not a Newcastle one, and not something that’s going to change even if he was handed £200m to spend in January.
Team to watch: Manchester City
Who would have thought when Erik ten Hag was still in the job at Manchester United that just over a month after his sacking the sadists who had derived such pleasure from watching the Red Devils crash and burn on a regular basis would instead be getting their kicks out of watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City? Incredible.
No neutral would ever previously have considered the visit of Nottingham Forest to the Etihad as a viewing option on Amazon Prime night, but there’s every chance it will at least be a second screen as there’s not much in football that garners as strong a feeling as the fall of the mighty.
We wonder, what’s worse than a crisis?
Player to watch: Ollie Watkins
We get that Unai Emery loves him. He was the Premier League’s best striker last season with 19 goals and 13 assists, and his contributions to the team aside are significant: willing runner, occupies defenders etc etc. After what he did for England, we love him too.
But with Jhon Duran burning a hole in the bench, surely Emery needs to drop Watkins soon, even if he does so in the name of rotation.
Watkins will be thoroughly f***ed off if Brentford at home is the game his manager decides to make the change.
He’s scored just once in his last eight games in all competitions, hasn’t provided an assist since September and no Premier League player has missed more than his 13 big chances this season, but taking him out of the side for the visit of Brentford, who are world-beaters at home but have just one point from a possible 18 away from the Gtech, would be like waving a tasty treat in one dog’s face before handing it to another.
There’s no guarantee Duran would swallow his chance given his goals from the bench have dried up. But he’s started three games this season, against Bologna, Wycombe and Palace, and scored in all of them. Emery needs to change something to turn their season around and Duran for Watkins is too easy a potential fix not to be tried.
No goals for Watkins at Villa Park against the Premier League’s worst travellers may well finally force that change.
EFL game to watch: Walsall v Notts County
Walsall haven’t lost in League Two since being spanked 6-2 by Fleetwood on October 1, an eight-game unbeaten run that sees them in second place, but victory for Notts County will see them draw level on points with their hosts in a bid to secure automatic qualification.
