Liverpool are averaging three Big Chances in every Premier League game this season – putting them way ahead of Manchester City, who have created eight fewer Big Chances across the first 10 games of the season.

Liverpool topped this table at the end of last season and have made an equally strong start to 2024/25, though they have been helped by a particularly kind fixture list.

Tottenham are the Premier League’s highest scorers this season but they are actually creating Big Chances less often than even Brentford, who ranked highly on this metric last season too.

The biggest surprise is that City have actually created fewer Opta-defined Big Chances than Manchester United, despite City scoring 19 goals to United’s 12.

United have improved quite considerably in the creative department since last season, though they still have a problem finishing those chances; three United players are among the 10 worst finishers this season.

It suggests that Ruben Amorim has fewer issues than he might have suspected when he looked at the actual Premier League table.

The real success story of this season are the Cottagers, who were 17th in this table last season but are currently eighth after bringing in Emile Smith Rowe in the summer to supplement a creative department that also includes Andreas Pereira, Alex Iwobi and Adama Traore.

Aston Villa were eighth on this metric last season and have pulled themselves up to second so far in 2024/25, though Opta stats also show that Ollie Watkins has missed more Big Chances than any other Premier League player in this campaign.

Arsenal have been told to beat Man Utd to the signing of Viktor Gyokeres after the Sporting Lisbon striker is called a “better version of Erling Haaland”.

Gyokeres scored a hat-trick as Sporting beat Man City 4-1 in a humbling defeat for the Premier League champions in Portugal on Tuesday night.

New Man Utd boss Ruben Amorim masterminded the victory over Man City with the Portuguese coach not joining the Red Devils until November 11.

And there have already been links that Amorim could take a number of his Sporting players with him to Old Trafford, including Gyokeres.

The Sweden international has attracted a lot of interest from various Premier League clubs after scoring 43 goals in 50 matches in all competitions last term.

And Gyokeres’ hat-trick against Man City on Tuesday night took his tally for the season to 23 in just 17 matches in all competitions.

Former Tottenham star Rafael van der Vaart heaped praise on Gyokeres after the match and described him as a “better version of Erling Haaland”.

And former Arsenal striker Alan Smith reckons the Gunners should compete against Man Utd and any other club who attempts to buy Gyokereres in January or the summer.

Smith told Instant Casino: “I think having a more orthodox centre-forward than Kai Havertz would add to the Arsenal squad. I’m sure Arsenal looked at trying to sign one in the summer, but there aren’t many about, and if they are about then they’re going to cost a lot of money. A centre-forward of quality in January would be brilliant for the club if they want to challenge for the title.

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“Viktor Gyökeres from Sporting is hot property, isn’t he? Ruben Amorim might have eyes on him for Manchester United, but he’s young, he’s of that profile that Arsenal need and he’s been knocking in goals for fun so far this season. At the moment, you’d say he’s the one making all the waves, so I’d like to see Arsenal make a move for him.

“Havertz has had a really good season so far – he’s picked up goals and led the line well – but having that more forthright presence through the middle would certainly be a great option for Mikel Arteta to have. It clearly wasn’t to be for Arsenal in the summer regards signing a striker so let’s see what they can do in January.”

It was announced earlier this week that Edu will be leaving his director of football position at Arsenal but Smith doesn’t think it will derail the club.

Smith added: “I don’t think Edu leaving as sporting director will interfere with the results on the pitch for Arsenal. The dressing room won’t be overly concerned, I’m sure the wheels are already in motion preparing for both the January transfer window and the one in the summer.

“They’ve got to get the right person in who’s of a certain quality, though. Arteta is so single-minded so I think he’ll only be focusing on the team and how they can improve throughout the season. It won’t affect them on the pitch.”

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Man Utd face a “risky situation” around the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) if they don’t qualify for the Champions League, according to former Everton chairman Keith Wyness.

The Red Devils have made a terrible start to the new Premier League season with Man Utd currently 13th in the Premier League table and looking miles off the pace of their rivals.

Man Utd have won just three of their first ten Premier League matches with only Crystal Palace and Southampton scoring fewer goals than the Red Devils this term.

They are already 13 points adrift of Premier League leaders and arch-rivals Liverpool, while they are six points behind fourth-placed Chelsea, who occupy the final Champions League qualification place.

And, with their big spending in the summer transfer window, former Everton chairman Wyness reckons Man Utd will be close to breaching PSR rules if they fail to qualify for the Champions League two seasons in a row.

It cost Man Utd a lot of money to sack Erik ten Hag and appoint Ruben Amorim over the last week and Wyness insists the Portuguese coach needs to hit the ground running at Old Trafford.

Wyness told Football Insider: “Yes, they are now right on that line for PSR.

“The interesting thing is that we know they are on the New York Stock Exchange. If there is a material risk of them breaching PSR, that will have to be declared to the market.

“I’m very intrigued by that situation. They’ve had a very poor start to the season.

“If they’re not going to make Champions League next year, unless Amorim can bring a big resurrection in the second half of this season, then that will also add PSR pressure.

“They’re in a risky situation, so Amorim needs to deliver the goods. There’s pressure on him from day one.”

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Ruud van Nistelrooy has been guiding Man Utd through their last couple of matches as interim boss and Gary Pallister reckons Amorim should keep the Dutchman on.

The former Man Utd defender told luckyblock.com: “My advice to Rúben Amorim would be to keep Ruud van Nistelrooy in the setup as it could be beneficial to him.

“He understands the club and knows the ins and outs of it really well, so he’ll have the knowledge that other coaches coming in from the outside won’t. The fans love him too – you can tell that by the way they reacted to him becoming interim manager.

“Ultimately, it’s down to Amorim though. If he feels that he needs a clean cut and that it should just be his staff, then that’s his decision. Having said that, I think it would be a good thing to have somebody who really understands Manchester United and Old Trafford.”

Pallister added on Ten Hag’s sacking: “The question about who should replace Erik ten Hag had been going around for months before he was sacked.

“I always thought Mauricio Pochettino was the right man for the Manchester United job. He’s obviously working in the US as their national team coach, but he was free earlier in the summer when the club was still weighing up their options.

“I didn’t really know much about Rúben Amorim before his name came up and he doesn’t appear to have that much experience of managing at the top level, but there seems to have been a good reaction to his style of management in Portugal. He’s won a couple of league titles over there and is a young manager. I like the cut of his cloth and the way he talks – it looks like he’s got some intelligence behind him.

“The fact he has a style if play that he favours will work well too, because nobody really knows what Man United’s style of play on the pitch is at the moment, so that will hopefully be a refreshing change.”

As exhilarating as it was to watch Sporting hammer Manchester City, knowing that certain elements of the UK media would get incredibly giddy (Maybe Ruben really IS the new Sir Alex’, says the back page of The Sun), we were at pains to note that this told us absolutely nothing about how Manchester United would look under Ruben Amorim.

This is not a scenario that will ever be repeated at United. There will be no over-emotional send-off that results in such a slow start that City are allowed 80% possession to create chance after chance for an oddly misfiring Erling Haaland. United would never play so deep at Old Trafford; there would be boos raining down from the stands if they lined up with anything akin to a back seven.

And perhaps, most tellingly, Manchester United do not have a striker who has scored 48 goals in 2024; Bruno Fernandes is Man Utd’s top scorer over the same period with 13. It’s not comparing like with like, or even fish with birds, or chalk with cheese puffs.

We know the formation and instinctively know which players are going to prove too square for round holes but we can only guess at its efficacy with this squad. We know there is something rotten in the state of Manchester United, but we don’t really know if it can be fixed.

But what we did learn on Tuesday night was that Amorim absolutely knows all this. He was at pains to point out that this was a “one-off” and that “at Manchester United you cannot play exactly like this. You cannot play so defensively and so there we will have to adapt”.

This is so rare for any manager to admit, never mind one who has just engineered a 4-1 win over probably the best team in Europe. He admitted they were “lucky” and warned against extrapolating any information from that game to the Premier League.

Yes, he has a system that has proved incredibly successful in the Portuguese league, but he is taking over a team in the doldrums of 13th in the Premier League. They have no momentum. They have no learned processes. They have very little except a famous name and a rich history which has been largely untouched by anybody currently at the club.

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And Amorim knows all this. He won’t be tricked into saying he can make Manchester United great again or that he is anything approaching special. We cannot imagine him imploring fans to ‘trust the process’. He pulled off a momentous win and immediately said ‘nope, that doesn’t tell us anything, we were lucky’. Can you imagine Erik ten Hag saying that? Mikel Arteta?

But the most important word he used on Tuesday night was ‘fun’. He is leaving a massive pair of loving arms in the midst of incredible, almost unprecedented success to move to a club in crisis with players that do not match his system and have been worn down by poor decisions made at every level, and he is talking about ‘fun’. And even ‘very fun’.

It’s been a long time since anybody saw Manchester United as potential ‘fun’. A project, yes. A challenge, yes. A Sisyphus-style utterly thankless task, yes. But fun? That gets us far more excited than a smash-and-grab victory on a night when City officially entered CRISIS mode.