Man City bag six despite Haaland blank, Blades win at last, Burnley in strife – it’s the F365 3pm Blackout
Erling Haaland managed 16 touches, no goals and no assists in his 45 minutes against Bournemouth. Manchester City still scored six goals. Elsewhere, Sheffield United win at last while Burnley’s home struggles continue…
City send reminder of their absurd range of attacking threats
It can sometimes be easy to forget the sheer range of attacking threat Manchester City possess due to the sheer overwhelming nonsense of Erling Haaland’s outsized contribution and the loss over the last couple of years of some pretty key secondary contributors, as well as Kevin De Bruyne to long-term injury.
This unsurprisingly straightforward victory over a Bournemouth side that really did need that victory last week served as a reminder that they still possess an array of menace the rest of the league can only dream about. Haaland was pretty awful, as is often the case on the days when no goals or assists arrive. He will rarely offer much more, and he touched the ball just 16 times in his 45 minutes on the pitch. Three of those were shots, none were on target.
For most teams, this might be a problem. For City, it just meant the game ended 4-1 rather than the six or seven it might have been had he been on one. Jeremy Doku, the increasingly influential summer arrival, certainly was with a goal and four assists to hammer home to almost 150,000 Fantasy Football players that they’d triple-captained the wrong City attacker. Two of these assists set up Bernardo Silva, while City’s fourth came from Haaland’s replacement Phil Foden, itself a stark reminder of just how formidable a task it remains for any team to stop City.
On a day when neither of their out and out forwards scored, they still managed 21 attempts, eight on target and six goals. This was still City on an off day, and they won 6-1.
Some credit for that must go to Bournemouth who, despite the scoreline and the statistics, did enough for long enough to have kept most normal teams in check. They just weren’t up against a normal team.
Report: Manchester City 6-1 Bournemouth: Doku shines as Pep’s men compound Iraola’s misery at the Etihad
Hammers remain maddeningly inconsistent but Bowen is justifying the Big Six hype
Liverpool’s midfield is finally fixed but they may well soon have to turn their attention to replacing Mohamed Salah.
Jurgen Klopp kept hold of his star attacker in the summer after Liverpool rejected a £150m bid from Al-Ittihad, but his move to the Saudi Pro League outfit has reportedly already been ‘agreed in principle’ ahead of next summer.
The task of replacing Salah will be far from simple, but Jarrod Bowen has been the subject of admiring glances from Liverpool in the past and he might be the man for the job.
The Englishman is by no means on Salah’s level, but few are and he has proven himself to be a top-tier operator in the Premier League.
For his lofty standards, Bowen’s form in 2022/23 was underwhelming but he has stepped up following Declan Rice’s exit to become West Ham’s new main man.
Talk of David Moyes being sacked is (somewhat unfairly) not going away as a result of their inconsistent form – highlighted rather neatly here in a game they trailed and led before eventually going down 3-2 – but Bowen has been consistently brilliant for the Hammers even on their more maddening afternoons, and he scored his eighth Premier League goal of the season here.
The 26-year-old is out of the age bracket of usual Liverpool targets, but he very much feels like a Jurgen Klopp-type player and has room to grow at an elite club. It would also please their stingy owners that Bowen would be much cheaper than Jamal Musiala or that lad from PSG.
Report: Brentford 3-2 West Ham: Collins nets winner as the Bees edge out London rivals in five-goal thriller
Kompany and Burnley in deep trouble
We pretty much all got Burnley wrong, didn’t we? So impressive was their promotion campaign, so apparently effortless Vincent Kompany’s transition from statesmanlike player to statesmanlike manager – a feat rendered even more impressive by largely being accomplished while wearing a baseball cap – that we all just sort of assumed they’d be fine this season.
They’re not fine. And on this evidence, they’re not going to be. This was a stinking home performance against a capable but hardly terrifying Crystal Palace side. Early mitigation about the toughness of Burnley’s fixture list have long since vanished. Eleven games into the campaign they have beaten only Luton and are now level on points with a Sheffield United side who were starting to evoke serious Derby comparisons.
The hindsight view is that it is often the way for a team that plays rather than scraps its way out of the Championship. Certainly Burnley’s style of play was the one more in need of tweaking for the realities of Premier League combat where they wouldn’t be able to dominate ball and opposition quite so readily. But they could and should have been far more ready for that challenge than they have proved to be so far, especially under a manager whose Knowing Our League credentials – albeit as a player rather than a manager – were so strong. The toughness of the league is no surprise, but Burnley’s thus far miserable effort to cope with that certainly is. Kompany must now be under serious pressure. He is doing less with more than other clubs in the basement, and those Knowing Our League credentials are looking less and less solid given it was never really this part of the table Kompany knew about. Arsenal away next week. Hmm.
Report: Burnley 0-2 Palace: Clarets break embarrassing Prem record as Hodgson’s side claim all three points
Brighton retain BTTS record but almost suffer a full Dyching
Five games is a lot to write about at once, and as time ticked away at Goodison we were never quite sure which we’d be talking about. For so long it looked like it might be witnessing Dycheball achieve its ultimate form. They led at half-time with 15 per cent possession, and while this did increase slightly after the break it was never an afternoon where you’d hear the oles ringing out at Goodison. Maybe they did get too cocky. Maybe Dyche will in fact be furious that his charges allowed that possession count to tick all the way up to a positive tiki-taka 20 per cent. Can’t score own goals if you don’t touch the ball, after all.
For Brighton, the late equaliser meant the preservation of their record of scoring and conceding in every Premier League game so far this season. It’s a record that sums them up for better or worse pretty well. It’s a fun if slightly worrying stat, but the more vexing one will be the fact it’s now five games without a league win for a team struggling as many feared they might with the new challenge of competing on multiple fronts. After a blistering start, they’re now level on points with Manchester United, which is frankly mortifying for anyone right now.
Report: Everton 1-1 Brighton: Young own goal denies Dyche’s side a win against struggling Seagulls
Blades finally land on the right side of late drama
Sheffield United’s historically bad start to a Premier League season has had more than its fair share of late drama and, pretty much by definition for a team with one point from 10 games, they have not been on the right side of that late drama.
Until now. When Wolves mustered an 89th-minute equaliser it looked like being another day of despair for Paul Heckingbottom, who was booked for his troubles as well. Even holding on for a point at that stage was no gimme given what we’ve seen already from the Blades this season.
But today the stars aligned and a penalty that certainly wasn’t of the cast-iron variety was dispatched by Oli Norwood as the clock ticked round to 100 minutes. Such is the current nature of this season’s apparent four-way relegation fight that the significance of any win is wildly magnified. Sheffield United have with one late kick of the ball gone from worst Premier League start ever to two points off safety. The nature of Burnley’s limp defeat to Palace and Bournemouth’s predictable shellacking at the Etihad is that even goal difference is no longer widly against them, with -21 very much in the same ballpark as -19 or -17. What is true as things stand is that one historically bad side is going to stay up. We could be looking at a record low total for 17th given the way things are going, and the Blades have at last put themselves at least in that particular conversation.