Never a bad weekend when it’s got lots of 2-2 draws in it, we’ve just decided right now, even though it would appear sub-optimal for a feature entitled Winners and Losers. Man Utd and Alexander-Arnold feature predictably prominently.
Winners
The Barclays
A wonderful weekend in a wonderful season for the brand. It’s best summed up by the fact that really only at the two very extremes of the league have things been halfway predictable, with Liverpool generally very good and Southampton generally very bad. And even then, when they actually met each other it was a classic which Liverpool needed a late penalty to win having trailed 2-1.
The 18 teams in between have served up such various degrees of nonsense that we truly are in the realm of anyone being able to beat anyone. Now we have a world in which even plucky little Manchester United can go to a place like Liverpool and pugnaciously scrap their way to a point. Heroes, one and all.
We’ve got Nottingham Forest thundering towards the Champions League and three of the Premier League’s ever-presents getting themselves in the very real vicinity of what is shaping up to be a relegation fight for the ages, while the defending champions attempt to recover their own composure and dignity after an alarming collapse while your Bournemouths, your Brentfords and the Fulhams of this world play their part in a highly entertaining gang of mid-table mischief-makers.
Newcastle
Says much about the current direction of travel for both teams that a 2-1 win at Tottenham felt so distinctly underwhelming, but it was impressively delivered nonetheless via a swift response to a surprise early setback.
It could and should have been more comfortable in the end, but the ease with which Newcastle shut the game down in the final half-hour – against a team that for all their ridiculousness remains the second-highest scorers in the division – shows where the Magpies are right now.
It’s six straight wins in all competitions at a time when Chelsea – and even Arsenal to an extent – are faltering. With fifth place already looking a fairly safe bet to deliver Champions League football next season, Eddie Howe’s side have positioned themselves very nicely indeed as they enter the second half of the campaign.
Alexander Isak
Took his Premier League scoring streak to seven straight games and is the form striker in the league right now. The chicken-and-egg noodle-scratcher is which came first: Newcastle’s vastly improved form, or Isak’s?
Guimaraes, Tonali and Joelinton
Newcastle’s midfield is an awesome sight at full strength and in full flight. It has and will again overpower tougher oppositions than Pape Sarr and Lucas Bergvall, for whom the best that could be said was that it offered a level to aspire to emulate.
Manchester City
We’re going to need more than merely matching what Spurs did against West Ham at home before declaring Pep Guardiola’s side are so back, but two wins in two games after one win in 13 is definitely something.
The rot has been stopped and a corner tentatively turned and other such cliches. There is a genuine chance to build on this, too, with upcoming games against Salford, Brentford and Ipswich. A choppier run featuring PSG, Chelsea, Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool in the space of five weeks at the end of this month and into February at least now has the prospect of being reached with some kind of positive momentum. That was far less clear 10 days ago.
Erling Haaland
We can only assume Pep has switched the Goalbot 3000 off and on again. Maybe a patch or two, some system updates. Other computer stuff we don’t really understand. Things of that nature. Whatever it is, and with the same cause/effect thoughts as Isak, Haaland is back among the goals, having scored as many in his last two Premier League games as he’d managed in the previous 13.
He was livelier than we’ve seen him for some time in the win at Leicester even before his goal and in what was a generally rather unconvincing City effort. Against the Hammers he was in full swaggering beast mode. It’s bad news for everyone else in that Champions League race even if now of no consequence to those of a more title-challenge persuasion.
Aston Villa
A scratchy win in a scratchy season, but having been so unconvincing for so long this season Villa can be nevertheless pretty pleased with where they find themselves: just three points away from a probable Champions League spot and still very much on course for the knockout stage of this year’s competition.
They’ve clearly and unsurprisingly had troubles adapting to the twin demands of league and top-tier European football, struggles that will be familiar to Spurs and Newcastle, but are positioned now to hit the second half of the season with justified confidence they can deliver something pretty special once again.
Bournemouth
Had to work desperately hard for victory over Everton, but it’s worth remembering that is something Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City have all failed to achieve in recent weeks.
And that late David Brooks goal is one that really does shift the needle. As well as obviously keeping Bournemouth right there in the European picture and in fact closing the gap on the top four it keeps their current run feeling like one with forward momentum rather than slight frustration.
Manchester United
The best performance of the Ruben Amorim era and while a point doesn’t do much for United’s place in the grand scheme of the league table – they remain mortifyingly on the fringes of a relegation fight for which they appear ill-equipped should they get dragged in any deeper – it does bring other benefits.
But of course it also brings risks and dangers. Amorim was quick to note his understandable frustration at his players pulling that performance out of their arse when it’s Liverpool away, asking where that effort and application had been in other more winnable games. Absolutely nobody would now rule out the funniest possible outcome in their next league game against Southampton; Bruno Fernandes even hinted at it.
At risk of getting too This Is Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About, it cannot be allowed for this to become their cup final. It would not do at all for United to treat games like this the way so many others would treat games against United in their pomp.
Everyone is going to have good days and bad days, but there was nothing about this effort that shouldn’t be repeatable and scalable for United. The sheer amount of effort and commitment to the task should at the very least become floor rather than ceiling. That’s the very least anyone can ask for.
Bruno Fernandes
His best recent performance mirrored his team’s while he too was quick to make the point that it wasn’t Liverpool away where he worries about this team but Southampton at home. He is, obviously, not wrong to make that point. But the acknowledgement must be there that this applies every bit as much to him as anyone else given he was returning here after a brainless (third) red card of the season when his team-mates and manager needed and expected more.
Two entries in the winners section for Man United there, both of them riddled with negatives after a game they didn’t in fact win. Yes, that pretty much sums up where they are right now.
Ipswich
A gutting ending, but a solid point away from home nonetheless that further confirms the increasingly obvious fact that even if Ipswich do go down they are going to do so fighting and scrapping for every point to the very last. They are Luton with knobs on and making a lot of other teams – including three Premier League ever-presents – distinctly nervous right now.
Raul Jimenez
Two ice-cool penalties to salvage a point from another otherwise uncomfortably unthreatening Fulham attacking effort against the tight if ultimately if anything, Clive, almost too physical rearguard of Ipswich.
Brentford
Just absolute scamps. Spent the first half of the season winning all their home games and losing all their away games (pretty much). Have now lost their last two home games but taken four points from their last two away games after whacking five past poor old Southampton.
Perhaps more importantly than the whimsy, a result that keeps them the right side of the line currently dividing ‘comfortably mid-table’ from ‘uncomfortably mid-table’.
Bryan Mbeumo
Two more goals against Southampton for the Brentford striker who has now been outscored by only Mo Salah and Erling Haaland in the Premier League this season. Which is handy.
Crystal Palace
Hit back from a half-time deficit to draw against Chelsea for the second time this season, and appear now along with Wolves the most upwardly mobile of the early relegation battlers who are now if not quite easing clear of trouble at least dragging other daft teams into the equation.
Nottingham Forest
Always a boon when you’re a big winner without playing. It’s already a pretty wild situation that the only teams above them in the table are Liverpool and Arsenal, so a weekend where neither of those – or Chelsea directly below – manage to win can only be a bonus. Now just need a 14-0 win at Wolves tonight to go second.
Derby County
There really is every chance now for their infamous 2007/08 effort to be struck from the record books.
Losers
Tottenham
A profoundly unserious football club that appears thoroughly and perhaps terminally unprepared for the relegation fight into which they are now plummeting at an alarming rate after a third defeat in a four-game winless run.
There was ample mitigation for this particular defeat given Spurs started the game with their third-choice keeper and ended it with a back-four containing two right-backs, a left-back and an 18-year-old midfielder, but this is one game in a lengthening list of catastrophe that is plunging Spurs into a crisis the likes of which they haven’t faced since the legendary two-points-from-eight-games start to the 2008/09 season.
Spurs remain capable of blowing almost any team away on their day. Liverpool are still the only team to have scored more goals this season. But Spurs’ problem is that blowing teams away has become their only route to victory. This is a team that has won only four of their last 14 Premier League games, but won those games 4-1, 4-1, 4-0 and 5-0. They have led in five of the other 10, including against Newcastle, but managed only two points from those matches.
This is a team that desperately needs to find ways to grind out points from the games where they don’t hit the dizzying heights, but which appears as far away from finding a way to do so as ever.
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Ange Postecoglou
The mitigation of the injury crisis would carry more weight if Spurs hadn’t been exactly the same kind of team even when Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven and Guglielmo Vicario were around.
He’s immensely fortunate not to be facing more of the Spurs fans’ anger; Daniel Levy’s gravest error may have been to appoint a likable manager in the wake of the bastards he’s generally preferred post-Pochettino.
There remains a groundswell of “Give him the season at least” opinion, which appears to really quite dangerously underestimate the very real peril in to which this club is currently hurtling. After a bit of cup distraction it’s Arsenal away next in the league before a run of uncomfortably important games against Leicester, Brentford, Manchester United and Ipswich.
Indeed, it’s a fixture list that spells maximum danger for Postecoglou, because there’s a pretty clear strategy available to Levy now. Give Postecoglou the Liverpool and Arsenal (and Tamworth…) games as almost a free-hit, for the club at least. Postecoglou’s methods are as likely as any to somehow pull off a nonsense victory in either of those games as any, and if he loses them he’s more easily dismissed to give a new manager the chance of the much-needed bounce in that vital run that follows.
Outwardly, Spurs remains as committed to Postecoglou as ever – and buying him another keeper who appears to very much enjoy the ball at his feet is a show of faith – but the exit path is uncomfortably clear now if the next 10 days go as all logic suggests they should.
West Ham
Losing 4-1 to Manchester City is the sort of thing that has just been an occupational hazard for any Premier League team in the last seven or eight years, and in isolation needn’t be a huge problem for West Ham.
But nothing happens in isolation. This humbling defeat came against a Manchester City taking its first ginger steps on the road to recovery after a record-breakingly bad run and for the Hammers came on the back of a 5-0 home defeat to a Liverpool side enjoying a post-Christmas stroll. West Ham are still unable to extricate themselves entirely from the relegation picture, especially with their most creative player Jarrod Bowen out for the foreseeable through injury.
Julen Lopetegui joins Postecoglou, Sean Dyche and Ivan Juric on a list of managers who appear unlikely to survive the season or even quite possibly the month/week/day.
Liverpool
A six-point lead and a game in hand is a handsome cushion over a disorganised and unconvincing chasing pack, but you still can’t be going around so casually dropping points at home to relegation battlers. Come on, concentrate.
Trent Alexander-Arnold
His head has fallen off and is entirely in Madrid. The most eye-catching catastrophes of this desperately poor performance may have been the defensive ones, but really they are not the most revealing. Even at his best, Alexander-Arnold’s defensive game rarely rises above the adequate. The point has always been that’s been absolutely fine because for Liverpool defending has never really been his primary job no matter what his nominal starting position on the pitch might be and the positives in the rest of his game more than make up for any occasional defensive snafu.
And that’s why the most worrying aspect of this performance was the complete malfunction of TAA as the key creator and instigator of so much of Liverpool’s best attacking play. His usual unerring and uncanny ability to place the ball directly into the path of Mo Salah’s runs from any distance up to and including 80 yards was wildly off kilter and the resulting reduction in the threat Liverpool carried was pronounced.
It must be noted that Alexander-Arnold wouldn’t be human if his head were not a slight mess at this stage, but it’s nevertheless a vexing point for Liverpool. They must hope this is no more than an unfortunately timed one-off, because this was an individual performance that suggested Liverpool should sell now wrapped in a team performance that highlighted precisely why they can’t.
Arne Slot
A first major misstep from the Dutchman, whose calming influence has so beautifully rounded the edges of Jurgen Klopp’s more madcap Liverpool teams of recent years. Here he went against type and leant into the chaos with Kloppian abandon. His usually immaculate in-game management deserted him as the front four was left untouched at 2-1 when the midfield battle cried out for the level-headed, soothing presence of a Wataru Endo. Leaving Trent on the field for 86 minutes also just cannot be excused, the above point about his importance to this team’s entire process notwithstanding.
Arsenal
A point at Brighton isn’t a disaster, especially as these two dropped points join every other dropped points by Arsenal ever in being 100 per cent entirely down to The Conspiracy rather than any fallibility on their part.
But still. Watching Arsenal spend two years in shoulder-shrugging ‘impossible to compete with Man City’ self-deluding denial before struggling even to retain a foothold in the title race during a season in which City have imploded completely is quite something.
Chelsea
Okay, fine, maybe it was never particularly fair to expect a rookie top-flight manager to keep Chelsea in a title fight amid the club’s inherent daftness, but it was surely reasonable enough to ask that a place in that title race not be so thoroughly and rapidly squandered that after four winless games against Everton, Fulham, Ipswich and Crystal Palace, Chelsea instead find themselves in a battle just to remain in the European places.
Everton
Working your bollocks off for hard-earned draws against Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City is all well and good, but less so if you don’t do anything to build on it. Successive defeats to the surprise packages of Forest and Bournemouth have plunged Everton back into deep relegation trouble and sent Sean Dyche soaring again in the Sack Race market.
It’s Villa and Tottenham next in the league, so expect more stoic point-grabbing there before frustrating and costly defeats to Brighton and Leicester straight after.
Leicester
The Foxes could certainly do with such a thing after a narrow defeat at Villa that had admirable elements but leaves them in markedly worse shape than before the weekend. The new-manager bounce has been and gone in the blink of an eye for Ruud van Nistelrooy, and the upward mobility of Ipswich, Wolves and Palace spells huge danger. With the new manager card already played, it’s hard to know what comes next here.
The next few weeks feel crucial either way, with those Palace, Tottenham and Everton six-pointers on the schedule before February 1.
Southampton
Five goals conceded at home for the third time in a month by a side who appear well on their way to manager number three of a season in which avoiding relegation has been replaced as a priority by bettering Derby County’s 11-point misery of 2007/08.
They are now on track to do so by a mere 0.4 points, and the thing is you can’t actually get 0.4 points.
