2 weeks Ago
Niclas Fullkrug deserves better than to be given the captaincy of a West Ham ship sinking under Graham Potter. Aston Villa show ‘anger’ can be used right. Liverpool Imagine being able to choose whether you win the title by beating Spurs at Anfield, Chelsea at Stamford Bridge or Arsenal at home.
That is Trent Alexander-Arnold’s final gift and he can now be packed off to the Bernabeu with the well wishes of the entire community. READ MORE : When will Liverpool win the league? Earliest, funniest, Arsenal guard of honour, Anfield decider Vitor Pereira “New system? Wolves are playing a new system? They play the same system,” said Ruben Amorim in December when it was put to him that one Portuguese mid-season managerial appointment was getting a rather more melodious tune out of what he inherited than the other. The Manchester United coach is not the only one shamed by the brilliant work of Pereira , whose team’s current five-match winning run can only be beaten by Newcastle and Nottingham Forest (both six) in the Premier League so far this season.
It has been a ridiculous transformation and while Pereira has not had to waste months and matches trying to contort square pegs into round holes, the way he has integrated January signings, shored up the defence and sidestepped potentially ruinous situations with Matheus Cunha, Mario Lemina and Craig Dawson has been impressive. Pereira is actually the best-performing Portuguese manager in a league with one sitting in sixth, having occupied a Champions League place for months. The Wolves boss has more points per game (1.
71) than Nuno Espirito Santo (1.70) and is flying. READ MORE : Man Utd shamed by incredible post-Ferguson stat as Wolves join Liverpool and Manchester City Matheus Nunes The natural power imbalance between a manager and a player is such that Nunes could not really be seen to publicly or even privately react to basically being called a bit dense by his boss .
In the ridiculous realm of professional sport the only acceptable response would have to be offered on the training ground and the pitch. Pep Guardiola did at least tell Nunes he “can become a good right-back for his physicality”, and the performance against Everton was a substantial step forward. The Portuguese was diligent in defence, ambitious in attack and prudent in possession.
Only four players have more combined goals and assists for Manchester City this season. There was one foul throw which Guardiola presumably called him a massive nerd for in front of the entire dressing room, but if that accounts for Nunes’ usual mistake per game then something can still be salvaged from his Etihad career. Man City keep or sell: Grealish, Ederson, Gundogan all leave as Guardiola keeps Stones, Silva Aston Villa “We can be sad not playing, or we can be angry.
I prefer angry. I am speaking about every player,” said Unai Emery recently of his Aston Villa rotation policy. The Spaniard has often spoken of his desire to have two players competing for each position.
Villa have held up their end of the bargain at a potentially cataclysmic risk when you consider the wage to turnover ratio, and Emery is vindicating that belief. The rousing, spirited nature of their Champions League exit might make them favourites to qualify again. Evenings like those against Paris Saint-Germain at Villa Park are intoxicating and the players inevitably want their next fix of Gazprom.
A limp defeat in both legs would have provided no springboard for the end of the season. And those who missed out are doubly motivated to reach that sort of stage again so they have the opportunity to grace it properly. Ollie Watkins played 25 minutes of that quarter-final, Ian Maatsen 24 and Tyrone Mings none at all, yet all three were magnificent in the victory over Newcastle, desperate to prove the manager wrong while showing how right he is.
Emery is channelling that healthy anger masterfully as an elite coach . Pau Torres and Leon Bailey were omitted from the matchday squad against Newcastle; this is ludicrous strength in depth necessary to compete at the top level. Tyrique George Chelsea have now beaten two current top-half teams in the Premier League since the start of November, even if that 3-0 win over Aston Villa in December did have to wait a while.
Maresca personally engineering the victory was an essential step . He explained after the game that Christopher Nkunku had been left out on “technical” grounds and in awarding that place in the squad to 19-year-old George, the pathway from the academy to the first team has been cleared again. That is important because for all the jokes and digs, Chelsea do need their player development processes to be for more than simply generating pure profit to spend on the teenage brilliance owned by other clubs.
George maintaining a first-team presence instead of being farmed off at the first opportunity this summer when his value is high would be welcome. Brentford Not nearly enough is made of how Brentford sold their star striker, replaced him with a record signing who has barely played due to injury, and still improved exponentially in attack. Their Premier League goal output from last season has already been matched and their best return since promotion is within reach.
Thomas Frank hailed the “incredible” pairing of Yoane Wissa and Bryan Mbeumo, who have recreated Ivan Toney in the aggregate and more. Only seven pairs of teammates have ever scored in the same game more often in Premier League history and they represented Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Spurs and 1990s Newcastle; it is not a group to which a bus stop in Hounslow naturally belongs. Yet there Brentford are, outscoring Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brighton and Manchester United with a fraction of the investment and external attention.
“When you consistently over the last six seasons have produced top scorers, there must be something we’re doing right,” said Thomas Frank, and it is hard to disagree with the manager of the only team across Europe’s top five leagues other than Barcelona to have two players on 15 goals or more. Simon Rusk Despite having been in charge for 9% of Southampton’s Premier League season – and also never coaching at this level before beyond a few months in charge of set-pieces at Nottingham Forest – Rusk is responsible for 18% of their total points and 50% of their clean sheets. It should thoroughly shame both Russell Martin (0.
31 ppg) and Ivan Juric (0.29 points per game) that their risible combined efforts have been worse than that of Rusk, and that they might point to a comparatively small sample size as justification for their failures instead of accepting how abysmally they handled an already dreadful set of cards. The players struggled to understand and apply the ideas of either but Rusk has simplified the equation to get through to them.
If nothing else, getting back to basics, playing five at the back and not asking the squad to do things it is not capable of has helped them reach the depressing bar of the Derby record, which has felt like a distant objective at times. Arsenal A more professional preparation for PSG they could not wish to have . That might make the 4-3 defeat to Crystal Palace which gifts Liverpool the title and sees every Arsenal player and coach befall some sort of injury even less palatable, but them’s the breaks.
MORE PREMIER LEAGUE WEEKEND REACTION FROM F365 👉 Premier League prize money table revealed after latest TV announcement 👉 Liverpool have four (and Arsenal none) in Premier League XI of the season Graham Potter Considering Niclas Fullkrug was once hospitalised with the tooth of a teammate lodged in his forehead, West Ham players should perhaps proceed with caution over the next few weeks. A sizeable portion of the fanbase calling for Fullkrug to be punished with the Hammers captaincy is predictable. Hearing a player echo the thoughts swirling around the echo chamber of a fanbase can be powerful .
The German has not been there long enough to be tarred with the same brush as many others and injuries have restricted his playing time this season anyway, so if he calls out “a mindset problem”, accuses the team of not being able to “push up” any more and blankly just calls them “sh*t”, it is remarkably endearing. Of course, it would achieve nothing. The issues at West Ham stretch far beyond who wears what armband and Graham Potter becoming part of those problems is worrying.
He said West Ham “have to be the protagonists of the game” at home to Southampton, “to control things and be able to attack”, but taking off Fullkrug, Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen sends a certain uncomfortable message to the players and the fans. If he thinks this team is so fragile that he has no choice but to bring defenders on to line up in a 5-4-1 and hold onto a 1-0 lead for dear life at home to one of the worst sides in the competition’s history, this isn’t going to work. Although if Fullkrug is pulled in for any more post-match interviews he’ll be touted as the next manager soon enough anyway.
The evidence against Potter is damning . Leicester The post-mortem will follow and in truth should have been started months ago to ensure Leicester got through the sheer body of incompetence in time for another season. The Foxes do provide a compelling counterpoint to the eternal theory that some clubs simply need relegation to instigate a necessary reset in all departments .
Leicester have locked themselves in an infernal cycle which prevents them properly building anything meaningful. Their recruitment has been diabolical. Their managerial choices have been fundamentally poor.
Their supporters have been punished for hopelessness at the highest level of the club. But that headline statistic of having not scored in nine consecutive home games really is a remarkable testament to their ineptitude. Jamie Vardy struggling around the pitch at 38 on an expiring contract under a manager who doesn’t want to be there and equally isn’t wanted sums it all up.
Newcastle Only in hindsight can Newcastle really be criticised for naming the same starting line-up for a seventh straight game, having won the previous six – including an actual cup final – by an aggregate scoreline of 17-2. But also it might have been an idea not to keep asking the same players to do the same jobs to the same level for a third time in seven days, especially away at an excellent side. Kieran Trippier being targeted, that midfield struggling and Alexander Isak having no impact was predictable in retrospect yet hardly inexplicable with foresight.
Champions League qualification ultimately remains within their control, even if a chastening defeat underlined the desperate need to invest in strength in depth whether they reach the European promised land or not. Manchester United Finally mathematically confirmed as safe from relegation in mid-April after Ipswich were beaten by Arsenal. It is an absurd sentence to write of Manchester United but an entirely normalised sentiment, particularly as their celebration involved immediately losing at home to Wolves.
Amorim honouring the tradition of Manchester United blooding a load of kids in meaningless Premier League games to prepare for the latter stages of a European competition was welcome and there will be hope that Tyler Fredricson or Harry Amass might emulate Scott McTominay in taking a chance to establish themselves. But perhaps Chido Obi has the most obvious opening while Rasmus Hojlund continues to toil under the sheer weight of expectation, cost and pressure. There is a player in there somewhere, but sticking him under a bright microscope at Old Trafford every other week genuinely might soon break him.
Fulham Only against Arsenal (two in December 2024) and Manchester City (one in May 2024) have Fulham had fewer than the six shots they mustered against Chelsea at Craven Cottage. That really was a dreadfully uninspiring attacking display, and a generally poor performance throughout the entire second half. Carlos Vinicius getting his first Premier League minutes of the year was hilariously damning.
Armando Broja If Chelsea cannot find a permanent summer buyer for Broja – and a £30m valuation is certainly prohibitive in that respect – then the Albanian should refuse another loan move. Across spells with three other Premier League clubs he has not scored in his last 1404 minutes and the frequent career upheaval is doing more harm than good. The 23-year-old needs stability, as well as a time and patience borrowing clubs cannot afford to build his confidence after injury.
These moves are supposed to be a shop window but Broja might be lost in the back of the Chelsea warehouse soon. Everton will not gamble on a striker with four shots in 10 appearances. Joao Pedro It is a little bit weird that there are two Brazilian forwards in the Premier League who are frequently linked with expensive moves into the elite , while sharing a tendency to implode which underlines why they might not be worth the investment.
Cunha has carried that burden and struck that potent balance all season with 16 goals and two avoidable suspensions, but Pedro has picked up the slack admirably and ultimately helped ensure this will be a quite disappointing Brighton campaign. Bukayo Saka Really dangerous to stick his Achilles in the way of Leif Davis’ studs and quite rightly booed by the Ipswich supporters who sensed that the ice pack strapped to his ankle when he came off was all part of the despicable ruse. Chris Richards Absolutely amateurish stuff from a professional footballer who must know he cannot pull an opponent back on the halfway line while on a booking.
Save that sort of thing for fouls around the edge of the area while wearing a Bournemouth shirt, fella..
