If you were to have an argument or debate with a pal about every Premier League club – short of the most obvious things like ‘are Liverpool going to win the title?’ – what would it be about?
We have (at length) come up with a main bone of contention for each of them.
Arsenal: A Proper Striker
Like meeting up with an old school mate or visiting your parents for a home-cooked meal, there’s something very comforting about discussing whether Arsenal need A Proper Striker or not. It’s the familiarity, the predictability and – our absolute favourite – the further entrenchment of views since the last time it was debated three months or so ago.
Is Kai Havertz a reliable enough source of goals? Would Viktor Gyokeres alter the style of football too much? We don’t know, you don’t know, Mikel Arteta won’t know until he tries it. If he tries it. Should he try it? Let’s reconvene the next time Havertz fails to score for four games.
Aston Villa: Jhon Duran
Ollie Watkins was the best striker in the Premier League last season; that’s why 40 clubs came in for Duran in the summer. He’s also an excellent striker and what were Aston Villa going to do with two of them?
Unai Emery doesn’t want to play them together and after the Champions League defeat to Club Brugge we can see why. Duran – not a man short of confidence – isn’t going to hang around and watch Watkins from the bench, as he’s done in every Premier League game so far this season.
The new contract the Colombian signed last month was surely just safeguarding his value ahead of further bids in January and the summer, but with Watkins eight years Duran’s senior, perhaps Villa should instead be listening to bids for their main man.
Bournemouth: The goalkeeper
Andoni Iraola has clearly made up his mind that Kepa Arrizabalaga is his No.1 with the Chelsea loanee returning to start the 3-2 defeat to Brentford last time out having missed the draw with Aston Villa and the win over Manchester City, in which his replacement Mark Travers was outstanding.
Kepa’s not been terrible but he’s also just not been as good as Travers, and while Iraola is getting pretty much everything else right, we wonder whether this is a case of him being blinkered by a six-year old price tag which was at least £50m too expensive for what Chelsea were getting in any case.
Brentford: Thomas Frank
Not so much an argument among Brentford fans, who we assume all think Frank is brilliant but are reticent to shout it too loudly for fear of one of the Big Boys at some point realising that’s the case and taking a punt on the 51-year-old.
And that’s sort of the point – Frank has turned little old Brentford into a bona fide Premier League force and yet it would still feel like a real gamble for any of the Big Six to hire him. He’s typically on the bookies’ radar for the big jobs but never that close to being favourite.
It’s like we all agree that he’s a good manager, but also all share grave doubts over his ability to be a good manager anywhere other than Brentford, which seems very unfair as we’ve managed to convince ourselves that Ruben Amorim is going to be brilliant for Manchester United after a week of training and a couple of press conferences, and have entirely accepted that Graham Potter will at some point be the manager of Tottenham because it’s just too on the nose not to become reality.
Brighton: Where’s the ceiling?
A question frequently asked over the last three seasons is why, instead of buying Brighton players, managers and members of staff for multiple times more money than Brighton signed them for, don’t the teams that bought them cut out the middle club?
There’s a small element of risk to what they’re doing, which goes some way to explaining it, but Brighton have reaped the rewards of those small gambles to such a degree that they’re forgotten in a swirl of acclaim for their recruitment genius, which has put them in such a strong position that they’re able to spend over £200m on players in one window without state-backing under a manager that again appears to be an improvement on the last, who has them quite reasonably dreaming of Champions League football next season.
When Fabian Hurzeler said he wanted to “challenge the establishment” when he arrived at Brighton we thought it was a cute and whimsical thought, but we should probably stop being surprised by the Seagulls’ improvement, and accept that their ceiling may not yet be in sight.
Chelsea: The Project
We’ve all had great fun laughing at Chelsea under the new owners and their radical policy of signing as many talented children as possible in the hope that enough of them will come good to win titles while the rest retain their value and can be sold, if not for a profit then at least not for a big loss.
And while the ‘you won’t win anything with kids’ line may well ring true at Chelsea – they still look some way off a title challenge – for the first time since Clearlake took charge, we can see them winning something significant with this group, maybe in a couple of seasons’ time, when they’re still young but have experience beyond their years by virtue of Enzo Maresca having no option but to play young players, because that’s all he has available.
We now accept that this could turn out to be a genius move, a model for others to follow, because if this is a title-winning group, it will likely also be a multiple title-winning group.
Crystal Palace: Was it all Michael Olise?
Talk about a deflating change of fortunes. Crystal Palace were everyone’s favourite second team at the end of last season as Glasner arrived and after a slow start had them in Champions League qualification form, playing football that wouldn’t have been out of place in Europe’s showcase competition, with watching the combination play between Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise and Jean-Philippe Mateta about as good a time as it was possible to have of a Saturday.
But now, no neutral is enthused by the prospect of watching Palace, whose games have yielded fewer goals (23) than any other Premier League team, with initial frustration at them being unable to connect as they did last season making way for unadulterated boredom and grim acceptance that one of the best things is now one of the worst.
Olise meanwhile has continued on his merry dance elsewhere, shining to such an extent at Bayern that we can’t help but wonder whether all of the good stuff at Palace was inexorably tied to what he brought to the table.
Everton: Safety over style
Rumour has it prospective owner Dan Friedkin isn’t a fan of Sean Dyche’s football, which we would suggest is a safe story to go with even if the various outlets to cover his feelings have no actual idea whether Friedkin likes or even has any opinion on the style of Everton right now. It’s not exactly a big leap, is it?
We would be rather more surprised if Friedkin had a penchant for ageing defenders and getting it in the mixer. Most Everton fans would surely welcome a change, but with their current squad there’s also a strong Be Careful What You Wish For warning at play.
Fulham: Andreas Pereira
Ask someone who’s not a Fulham fan about Andreas Pereira and they’ve probably seen some sort of creativity stat that places him somewhere near the top of a Premier League ranking and may well talk about how Manchester United shouldn’t have let him go and how lucky Fulham are to have a Brazil international pulling the strings for them.
Ask a Fulham fan about Andreas Pereira and they will likely talk about his set piece stat-padding, how slow he is to spot a pass, how bad he is at delivering them and how they would love to see him dropped for someone who doesn’t give the ball away with every third pass.
Ipswich: Liam Delap
Is he Harry Kane’s England heir? Yes he is. Next.
Leicester: Better off with Steve Cooper
They won the Championship title under Enzo Maresca but there were more than a few Leicester fans not too sad to see him leave for Chelsea having at times endured some pretty hollow and unexciting football. They definitely didn’t want him to be replaced by a Nottingham Forest hero however, with Cooper walking a tightrope from day one at the King Power Stadium.
Maresca is doing a fine job at Chelsea but you wonder whether the stye that worked for Leicester as one of the top sides in the Championship that’s also working at one of the top sides in the Premier League would have seen Leicester consistently humbled in the top flight. While Cooper may not be the best man for the job, he’s making a perfectly decent fist of it thus far.
Liverpool: Is winning enough?
We don’t know whether it’s a classic case of the extreme fans shouting the loudest, and in fact the vast majority are thoroughly enjoying everything about their team being five points and two points clear at the top of the Premier League and Champions League respectively, but we keep hearing murmurs of discontent from Liverpool fans upset at their team winning incorrectly.
Arne Slot’s football isn’t as watchable as Jurgen Klopp’s. There’s more game management and an acceptance that a one-goal victory is just fine thank you very much. But with each passing clean sheet and example of pragmatism under Slot, the football Liverpool played under Klopp becomes more outrageously open and entertaining.
The will of Liverpool fans to deify their former manager knows no bounds, and we suspect even winning the Premier League title this season will fail to scratch the itch for a select group of Reds fans for whom the same feat under Klopp would be worth at least twice as much.
Manchester City: The rebuild
Pep Guardiola’s staying thanks to the b*stards at Bournemouth, Tottenham, Sporting and Brighton, and he continues to be warned from all angles about the MASSIVE REBUILD he faces at Manchester City. Is it though?
It looks like Florian Wirtz has been lined up to replace Kevin De Bruyne. They’ve already got Rico Lewis to replace Kyle Walker. A 31-year-old goalkeeper is fine. Bernardo Silva’s 30 but that’s also fine. John Stones barely plays anyway. They need another central midfielder as Ilkay Gundogan (34) isn’t quite up to it anymore and Mateo Kovacic (30) is getting on as well, but they’re going to sign a Rodri replacement in January anyway.
They’ll need to make signings to refresh but who doesn’t? It’s not like they need to rip it up and start again. Five of their six forwards are 24 or younger, FFS.
READ MORE: Pep Guardiola at Man City: A damning indictment of inferiority for each of the Big Six
Manchester United: The players are the problem
While it’s been very difficult to look past the mediocrity of Manchester United over the last season and a bit to find the quality within, we have little doubt that the sum of the parts is far greater than what we’ve seen from the whole. You need only look at what Marcus Rashford has done against what he has been doing to come to the conclusion that things had gone more than a bit stale under Erik ten Hag.
We would also be very surprised if there is enough hidden quality available for Ruben Amorim to unlock to enable United to challenge for a title without significant reinforcements over the next two, three, four transfer windows.
We’re about to definitively find out whether it is the players that are the problem because even before he’s taken charge of his first Manchester Untied game, Amorim has managed to convince us that he’s the real deal; if United are still sh*t it can’t be his fault.
READ MORE: It’s been a tough season so far for the Main Character Managers; can Amorim turn the tide?
Newcastle: Eddie Howe
We would put Eddie Howe in the same category as Harry Maguire and Jordan Pickford in that He’s Never Done Anything Wrong; the subtext being that everyone really wishes there was someone a little bit better.
Like Joe Biden was described with regards to the US economy when he took office, Howe is A Safe Pair Of Hands, and while America now finds itself with President Trump’s hand hovering over the nuclear button, we wouldn’t advise Newcastle replace Steady Eddie with the egomaniacal tyrant of football, Jose Mourinho.
But the longer the Magpies are treading water the more impatient and neurotic their fanbase will become, with common sense making way for extremism, perhaps not quite to the point where they’re storming St James’ Park stripped to the waist with dead animals on their heads, but with growing support for a view that maybe, just maybe, Mourinho wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Nottingham Forest: Will it all blow up?
We don’t mean the season – we know that will blow up. Not in a huge way, but they’re not going to finish fifth. Mid-table, probably. We mean will their oft demented owner do something too insane to come back from?
You’ll remember the old ‘the referee’s a Luton fan’ statement from the club. He’s chased officials and has spat on the floor in front of them. He’s been accused of financing hooligans, match-fixing, drug trafficking and being the leader of a criminal organisation known as ‘The System’.
He’s been acquitted in all of the cases that have gone to trial and while we’re terrified of making a No Smoke Without Fire argument for fear of a trip to the mattresses courtesy of The System, there’s got to be more than a slight concern among Forest fans that this could all go very wrong for them at any moment.
Southampton: Does Russell Martin care?
Definitely unfair to tar Martin with same brush as Vincent Kompany, and we don’t doubt that he desperately wants Southampton to win, but it is hard to distinguish between two managers who refuse to bend their philosophies in the face of strong evidence that points to their club’s demise if they refuse to do so.
Kompany earned himself a move to Bayern Munich by taking Burnley down In The Right Way, and while we’re in many ways impressed by Martin’s ambition, his desire to Look After No.1 shouldn’t be at the cost of the football club that pays his wages.
Using football clubs as a stepping stone is fine, as long as the stone can still be stepped on after you’ve gone.
Tottenham: Plan B
We rarely get more excited than by the prospect of a reporter asking Ange Postecoglou about his lack of a Plan B after a Tottenham defeat, usually a funny one in which they go a couple of goals up and collapse when an opposition manager makes a tactical change that the Spurs boss refuses to respond to because ‘it’s who we are, mate’.
We could bathe in his spiky demeanour if we could and find ourselves torn between having great respect for a manager with A Way that when it works is brilliant fun and thinking his refusal to do anything other than that is quite simply a very clear sign of sh*t management.
West Ham: The next manager
The hierarchy giving Julen Lopetegui two games to save his job is ridiculous for a number of reasons, not least because the West Ham fans have already made up their minds – he’s not for them. Debates as they return to action this weekend won’t surround whether the incumbent should be sacked or not but whom they should be getting in as his replacement. Erik ten Hag should steer well clear.
Wolves: Existential dread
Having been impressed by what Monday Night Football star Gary O’Neil achieved with them last season, we’re now wondering a) what Wolves are, and b) whether the Wolves fans know what Wolves are.
There’s a sense after they sold their two best players in the summer that they’re now just existing. Too good to go down but not good enough to do anything more than that, with the players driving them away from relegation danger transfer fodder for the sharks, leaving them to perennially bob along in the bottom half of the Premier League until a couple of bad moves in the transfer market brings it to an end. Life is pointless.
