Premier League winners and losers: Newcastle and Arsenal fly, but problems for Liverpool and Everton
Newcastle and Arsenal are taking different pages out of the Manchester City playbook. Jurgen Klopp wishes he could afford to and Everton can only dream.
Winners
Newcastle
Since the start of last season, Newcastle have scored four or more goals in nine Premier League games. Only Manchester City (10) have managed it more often – and that is fine company to keep.
Drill down a little further into the standard of teams Newcastle have put to the sword and their development is laid bare: Fulham, Brentford, Aston Villa (twice), Southampton, West Ham, Spurs, Everton and Brighton.
A couple of relegation contenders, sure, but the rest are a mix of solid mid-table sides at worst, then European hopefuls and champions or supposed contemporaries at best.
Many assumed Aston Villa would lead a chasing pack promising to provide a stern challenge to Newcastle this season as Eddie Howe dealt with heightened expectations and new problems. They still might; this was a one-off game in which the teams were separated by one shot but also four goals, and Villa’s 3-0 win over the Magpies in April defined neither team’s season.
But this was quite the statement to issue and in perfect time before the obstacles start to get a little more daunting. Manchester City (a), Liverpool (h), Brighton (a) and Brentford (h) before the first Champions League group game is the sort of run that will give an even greater indication of where Newcastle are.
READ MORE: Unfancied Newcastle highlight how much further Villa must travel to catch up
Sandro Tonali
Imagine how phenomenal he’d be if he actually wanted to be there. We haven’t fallen as hard as some though.
Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali celebrate
Rodri
Here’s an aggressively lukewarm take: if every player in world football was given an accurate valuation of what their club would sell them for and what buying clubs would pay in the current transfer climate, Rodri would be the most expensive player in the sport’s history.
Perhaps that is as much a reflection of how Chelsea have distorted the central midfield market in particular, or how few elite 6s there are knocking around. But if Moises Caicedo, brilliant as he is, can have clubs tripping over themselves to throw record-breaking figures at Brighton, and £100m has become the going rate for anyone capable of making an interception or long-range pass, then no player anywhere is as valuable as Rodri. Not even Erling Haaland.
And if the Spaniard is adding goals and assists to his game – one of each against Burnley after his Champions League final winner – it’s pretty much over for everyone else.
Arsenal
They remain infuriatingly capable of turning resounding wins into needlessly hard-fought, nervous victories, but Arsenal are at least on the right track.
The Community Shield, as much as triumphing in a penalty shoot-out against a half-cooked Manchester City can, showed that Arsenal are just about able to beat Manchester City. But the opening weekend proved that they will join them regardless when it comes to naming starting line-ups that require an Enigma machine to decode.
Thomas Partey on the right of a back four or Benjamin White, William Saliba and Jurrien Timber in a back three? Declan Rice as a supplemental centre-half holder or box-to-box midfield controller? Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martineli at wing-back or in a traditional front three? And that is long before unwrapping the riddle in a puzzle that is the mystery of Kai Havertz’s nominal position.
It will take time for players, supporters and onlookers to adjust to a reality in which there is no defined first-choice Arsenal XI, just a selection and formation the manager deems most suitable for the specific opponent and task at hand. But after a lack of fluidity and flexibility in response to a couple of injuries undid their title challenge last season, this is a welcome and necessary step towards improvement.
Without even taking different game states and systems in and out of possession into account, Mikel Arteta has made Arsenal purposefully difficult to predict, in the same vein as the team Arsenal are hoping to dethrone. As the Spaniard said after the win: “We have to pick the right players to win the game every week.” And it will soon become clear that that doesn’t necessarily mean the same players.
READ MORE: New Arsenal thrill and frustrate like the old one during needlessly edgy opening win
Thomas Frank
It is testament to the brilliance of Brentford and Frank that their decision to find internal solutions for Ivan Toney’s absence was hardly questioned.
“We’re not panicking,” the manager said this summer. “We’re not running out to get a striker in, to try to replace Ivan, because we think we’ve done our work well and we have the replacement inside as well.”
Frank named Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa as players he felt could step up, with Kevin Schade and Keane Lewis-Potter also mentioned.
Mbeumo and Wissa scored, while Schade playing 18 minutes and Lewis-Potter was left on the bench. Since the start of last season, Brentford have now played six games without Toney; they have won four and drawn two, with Mbeumo and Wissa both scoring in all but one.
⭐️ Yoane Wissa | POTM – @BrentfordFC 2-2 Tottenham
🏹 Shots – 3
⚽️ Goals – 1
🔐 Key passes – 2
🤤 Dribbles – 1
💪 Tackles – 1
🧠 Interceptions – 1
🌡️ WS Rating – 8.00#BRETOT pic.twitter.com/Oha3aabXnC— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) August 13, 2023
Fulham
In the four games Joao Palhinha missed last season, Fulham lost 4-1, 3-2, 3-0 and 2-0 to Newcastle, Brentford, Arsenal and Crawley respectively. All they needed was one match of this campaign – and a meeting with Everton – to snap that streak.
After perhaps the most difficult summer endured by any Premier League side, the Cottagers must be relieved to getting back to what they do best: breaking xG.
Taiwo Awoniyi and Anthony Elanga
The world’s most delayed one-two it may have been, but Awoniyi and Elanga almost immediately salvaged some meaningful positives from what long seemed like a throwaway defeat for Nottingham Forest upon their introduction.
Steve Cooper’s side scored 38 league goals last season. Considering 22 were netted or assisted by Morgan Gibbs-White or Brennan Johnson, Awoniyi’s finish from Elanga’s cross was a welcome shift in terms of correcting that imbalance and spreading the attacking burden more healthily.
West Ham
The only other team aside from Manchester City not to name a new signing in their starting line-up on the opening weekend. And as much as that is more down to transfer incompetence than anything else, the fact West Ham nevertheless earned a decent draw against a solid Bournemouth side despite their drastically contrasting summer moods is a good sign before a few fresh faces finally start filtering in.
Roy Hodgson
“It is a fact we have to try and deal with and if we want to get that monkey off our back, then we had better start winning games when Wilf is not there,” said Hodgson in February 2021. Crystal Palace had by that point lost 18 of the last 20 Premier League games in which Zaha had not played, failing to score in 16 of those defeats.
Hodgson’s side beat Brighton – of course – in their next Zaha-less game, before subsequent consecutive goalless draws without their talisman.
Patrick Vieira similarly struggled to solve equations from which the Ivorian had to be removed, but Hodgson has now won three, drawn three and lost just one of the seven games he has had to make do without Zaha since returning as manager. You can teach an old dog new tricks, even if it does take years.
Still Roy Hodgson
Hodgson was in his seventh managerial job, more than two decades deep into an odyssey of a coaching career, when Max Lowe was born. And he still thinks he could take him. And he probably would.
Bournemouth
In only six Premier League games last season did Bournemouth have more shots than the 14 they managed against West Ham. Only once did they have more possession. And while that was also against the Hammers in April, they did lose 4-0 in the process. So that’s something.
Simon Adingra
Todd Boehly could save an awful lot of time, money and effort by bidding £50m now rather than £427m with add-ons in January.
Evan Ferguson
Probably second to Rodri on our hypothetical player valuation list. Do you know how many great teenage centre-forwards there are playing and scoring regularly in an elite league? A handful at best. Do you know how many belong to the greatest sellers around? Brighton are not done making a fortune.
Spurs
They are going to be very fun under Ange Postecoglou. But Spurs are winners first and foremost because just imagine if Harry Kane had won a trophy, however tinpot, in his first few hours after leaving.
Losers
Tyrone Mings
An early reality check for those who expected Aston Villa to continue their inexorable rise under Unai Emery, who has earned more than enough faith to at least delay definitive calls about what such a heavy defeat means for his side.
If Ollie Watkins took that chance at 2-1 or Matty Cash converted the open net at 3-1, the outcome and subsequent biases could have been drastically different. But questions were raised about that high defensive line and proneness to individual error which need answering soon.
With that said, losing two important players to long-term injuries in the same week is a disruptive, preparatory nightmare for a new season. There are at least forwards in that squad who can stand in for Emi Buendia without replicating exactly what he does, but Tyrone Mings is invaluable to the Villa cause.
Beyond the footballing impact, the hope is that Mings can make a full physical and mental recovery from the second significant knee injury of his career. That is never something to be taken for granted.
READ MORE: Two Villans join England keeper in Premier League opening weekend’s worst XI
Everton
“He’s a young player and needs to get Premier League fit. He’s a young talent but we have to develop him and remind ourselves he’s a future player. If he surprises us and he’s ready straight away, then great. But he’s here to continue learning his game in the Premier League. We’re only in the testing phase to see where his body is.”
Sean Dyche there, dispelling any idea that £13m striker signing Youssef Chermiti might solve the issues still plaguing the Premier League’s lowest scorers bar Wolves since the start of last season. Erling Haaland is ahead of them both on his own.
Can the Toffees afford to have the only player they have signed for a fee so far this summer be for the “future”? Are they stable enough to be able to rely on the “surprise” of him being ready? How long will “the testing phase” last before it’s too late?
Throwing Chermiti into the mix just creates more confusion and doubt where Everton need certainty. Neal Maupay will not score the goals they need, nor Arnaut Danjuma or Jack Harrison. And Dominic Calvert-Lewin cannot be depended on for obvious reasons. The Toffees had 10 more shots than Fulham but paid for their profligacy.
None of this is news to Dyche; he will know Everton’s main problem is scoring and when six of their eight wins last season were by a single goal, the margins are fine enough to make them susceptible to a swing in the wrong direction. But a difficult summer bore rotten fruit against Fulham and it feels as though it will happen more often than not this season.
Jordan Pickford hides his emotions well after conceding
Paul Heckingbottom
Eight defeats in 11 games as a Premier League manager, and an early and obvious favourite for the sack race.
Liverpool
“That’s what Chelsea managers want and they usually get it” is quite the pithy line to offer about transfers after making such a public cock-up of a British record deal. Jurgen Klopp has pigeonholed himself so wonderfully as the world’s greatest smallest violin player that he cannot help bleating out a tune about how Liverpool have to do things differently, even while succumbing to peer pressure and indulging in the market madness.
The draw with Chelsea not only prevented the Reds from exacting a measure of revenge over just how thoroughly the Blues have helped mess with their plans, but it served to emphasise just how much Moises Caicedo was needed at Anfield.
That Liverpool are now having to pay extra for what seems to be their only other defensive-midfield target in Romeo Lavia, having proven to Southampton they clearly have the budget, sums up the mortal fallibility of a team which once felt invincible on the transfer front.
Lavia alone – and there is no guarantee that Chelsea won’t interfere again – will not be enough. A largely untested 19-year-old does not solve Liverpool’s problems. The sheer lack of control against a team with their own myriad issues was stark.
The Reds have only once had such little possession in a Premier League game over the last five full seasons – and that was against a Treble-winning Manchester City side rather than a Chelsea team in flux under Mauricio Pochettino. It does not bode well.
Anass Zaroury
Some incredibly solid first-name nominative determinism from someone who, at best, forgot that Kyle Walker is quite fast.
Eberechi Eze
Eight shots and seven key passes in one game without either a goal or an assist. Pathetic.
Luton
Already one point off the Derby 2007/08 pace. Although this Brighton is a little better than the Portsmouth that drew 2-2 with County 15 years ago.