There’s been a lot going on in the world of football, what with the Women’s World Cup Final becoming the Women’s World Cup fiasco, plus the never-ending transfergasm that defines this time of year.
Yet, somehow, the Premier League continues to deliver, starting with a bang and continuing to explode. It’s hard to remember a season that has started as fast as this one has.
You had Manchester United 2-0 down inside five minutes but winning anyway, Arsenal behind even quicker, coming back then getting pegged back again, Manchester City throwing a lead to lowly Sheffield United but scoring a late winner…and that’s before the madness that rounded out the weekend in Newcastle, where ten man Liverpool performed the biggest Tyneside smash and grab since Get Carter.
At the end of it all, Citeh are on top. Plus ca change. David Moyes is in second. Ange Postecoglou is the second coming. Let’s get into it.
Inevitably, we have to start with Spurs. Ange has been a little streaky in his first two games, with a win and a draw that could, realistically, have been any result possible.
Nothing of the kind on Saturday on the south coast. Those who doubted Ange’s ability to implement a style were left, as they so often are, looking a bit silly.
This was liquid Angeball, the best iteration of what he’s trying to do and, crucially, it worked.
James Maddison looks like he was built in a lab to play the attacking midfield role in Postecoglou’s system, which asks him to be more than a dilettante number 10 and more of a box to box everything man. That suits his personality down to the ground.
For those who wondered how good Callum McGregor, the best player in Ange’s Celtic, would be if he was bigger, younger and faster, the answer is Yves Bissouma.
One looks at the midfield he had in the 2014 World Cup – yer Oliver Bozanics, yer Mark Milligans, yer Matt McKays – and is thankful that we get to see the much-vaunted system with the best talent possible.
Look, it’s still three games in. Fulham in the League Cup, Burnley and Sheffield United follow, so there’s plenty of banana skins, or opportunities for the bandwagon to continue to speed up yet.
There’s glaring holes in the roster that remain to be filled, too. If Richarlison was Kyogo Furuhashi, or 2010 Besart Berisha, he might have had a hat trick.
Obviously, he’s a better player than both of those, but there’s grooves in the system to be smoothed out, either in his performance or in the transfer market. For those who’ve noticed that Richarlison is still listed as a midfielder in FPL, let’s hope it’s the former.
What are Liverpool? What is Darwin Nunez for? Did we just see it in Newcastle?
Winning 2-1 against the Magpies is certainly not to be sniffed at, and winning there a man light for an hour is even more impressive.
Liverpool fairly rode their luck, but for all of Newcastle’s pressure, they didn’t create an enormous amount beyond the chance that Trent Alexander-Arnold gifted to them, while they themselves were ruthless in taking what came their way.
Ruthless and Nunez aren’t often seen in the same sentence, but this performance showed why the Uruguayan can be so lethal, and what prompted Jürgen Klopp to spend all that money on him. In transition, he’s unbelievable.
There’s not that many out there who have so much pace, control and size on the break – and really, where Liverpool have gone wrong is that they haven’t created the kind of opportunity that lets those talents shine.
Nunez is fundamentally different to Sadio Mane, who he replaced in the squad, and Mo Salah, who he is compared to, because where they want the ball to their feet, Darwin is best with it either in front of him or in a one-touch situation.
When they can present the sort of opportunity that he got twice against Newcastle, he thrives.
Go watch all of his goals for Benfica – or even the compilation of his strikes for Liverpool last year – and you see one and two touch finishes, often in transition, often going left to right.
That’s what he’s elite at: being big enough and fast enough to crash the box and get the ball ahead of the defence.
If Liverpool want one of the best in the world at that, it might take a tactical tweak to create those opportunities more.
There’s been an interesting tactical trend seen this year, with previously feted teams opting for a level of hoofing not seen since Luton were last in the top flight.
Prior to Rupert Murdoch’s invention of football in 1992, you often saw teams front to back very quickly, largely because it made sense to play as far from your own goal as possible.
In 2023, we are now the peak of the possess and press style of play, with more than half the league attempting something like that, so it makes sense to take the shortest route at times.
The high priest of possession, Pep Guardiola, is absolutely not against putting the ball into a channel for man machine Erling Haaland.
Roberto di Zerbi’s Brighton actively invite presses so that they can play over them. Ederson and Jason Steele both registered an assist in 2022/23, as did Alisson at Liverpool.
As we see more teams try to dominate the ball, others are more happy to let them have it.
Brighton have been the best of the rest at playing like a big club when they aren’t, but have also been the most susceptible to being done by unabashed cloggers, especially when they lean into the clog.
It’s ironic that West Ham should do it so effectively, as they did in gaining a 3-0 over the Seagulls this weekend.
They’re permanently trapped in a psychodrama where they think they are a big club – on off-field metrics, they are – and thus should try play like big clubs do, by imposing themselves with the ball, which crashes against the reality, which is that Davie Moyes only knows one way and that way, against teams that want the ball, can be incredibly effective.
Thus the back-to-the-future was in full effect: West Ham are top of the league based on direct counter-attacks and having James Ward-Prowse, who is really good at corners.
Wing Commander Charles Reep, who quite literally wrote the book on hoofball, said that the best way to score was in three passes or fewer. The Hammers’ second, scored by Jarrod Bowen, only had two. You reep what you sow.
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Here is the way the Roar expert panel sees all the action unfolding across the final weekend of play prior to the semi-finals.
