Noni Madueke won another game for Arsenal but are their displays convincing? Carl Recine/Getty Images
The Athletic has live reactions and news following the weekend’s Premier League action.
Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.
This was the weekend when Manchester United put a week of chaos behind them to get a creditable point against Leeds, when Chelsea beat Everton despite Emi Martinez’s injury, and Johan Manzambi provided more evidence that he’s the real thing as he scored Aston Villa’s winner at Newcastle.
Here we will ask if another stodgy winning performance means Arsenal have ‘the mark of champions’, whether a weekend of good numbers bodes well for Florian Wirtz and what Diego Gomez scoring from the halfway line tells us about Brighton’s season.
Do Arsenal really have the ‘mark of champions’?
There are a couple of ways of looking at another game where Arsenal were thoroughly unconvincing but came away with three points, this time at Nottingham Forest.
The first is that they won, little else matters and they have achieved their aim. Succeeding while not playing at the top of their form, this is what winners do, they have the mark of champions… pick your favourite cliche.
Another is that they can’t go on waiting until the 80th minute to have their first shot on target, and even then relying on a deflection to beat a team in the bottom three who haven’t scored at home all season, as was the case at Forest.
Noni Madueke’s deflected shot was enough for Arsenal at Nottingham ForestCarl Recine/Getty Images
Noni Madueke’s strike, which flew in off Forest defender Jair Cunha, was just enough on this occasion, but you do wonder what will happen if they play like that against a better team. In fact, you don’t have to wonder: you just have to watch their defeat to Brighton in September.
It feels churlish to be too critical of the defending champions, who have won six of their first seven games, but this was another tough watch for the neutral.
It is at least a rebuttal to anyone who thought that, having won the title with this football last season, the handbrake would be off this season and they would start playing an expressive, free-flowing game. Arsenal’s summer transfer window — in which they essentially signed better versions of players they already had, rather than ones who would progress or change their style of play — should probably have been evidence enough for that.
The thing is, it almost certainly doesn’t really matter. Arsenal probably will win the title this season: their only real, serious challengers have a Steinway piano hanging by a cotton thread over their heads, and are just waiting to see how much damage it causes when someone cuts it.
Manchester City’s fine form will, barring some legal rabbit from the hat, probably be moot, assuming the Premier League’s independent commission punishes them in the way that most are expecting them to. Arsenal have the best defence in the league and enough forward options to get over the line in most games.
None of this sniffiness about their style of football will matter to them — and nor should it. But it would be nice for the rest of us if the best team in the country was just a little better to watch.
Are the numbers telling the full story about Wirtz?
It feels like there are two Florian Wirtzs (Florians Wirtz?) at the moment.
There’s the Wirtz that most observers agree has been a huge disappointment since his £116million ($154m) move from Bayer Leverkusen last summer, who has looked an extremely awkward fit in a Liverpool team that can’t quite figure out how to piece together their very expensive, and theoretically highly talented, parts.
Then there’s Wirtz, the numbers man — the player who tops the list of most chances created in the Premier League this season, nine of them coming in Liverpool’s win over Brentford on Saturday, which is the first time someone has created that many in a single game in the competition since Sadio Mane in 2021.
Granted, the fact that nearly half of his tally came in one game, half of which he played against 10 men, is a significant caveat. But there is a slight disconnect between the player we watch on the pitch and the player we read about in the statistics.
One explanation is that none of the chances he created against Brentford really sticks in the mind. Indeed, seven of those nine were from either sideways or backwards passes, and the player taking the shot did most of the heavy lifting. Even his assist, which was with one of the forward balls, didn’t exactly lay it on a plate for the scorer: he passed nicely to Victor Munoz, who then carried the ball for about 25 yards before chopping inside and finishing neatly.
It doesn’t really feel like Wirtz is one of those culture-war players, with people on both sides loudly declaring either his genius or his uselessness. Of course, the internet will provide many different views, but broadly speaking it feels like opinion is split between people who think he’s been disappointing and people who hope he’ll come good.
There have been a few performances over the last 15 months since he arrived, which have suggested that a change is just around the corner. This is the latest, and the numbers are certainly encouraging. Maybe this will actually be the one.
Was Gomez’s goal from halfway a symbol of how good Brighton are?
It tells you something about the way footballers are wired differently to the rest of us that they even try things like scoring from the halfway line.
The sort of semi-delusional level of self-confidence required to be a top-level footballer was on full display when Brighton’s Diego Gomez collected the ball in the centre circle, looked up and saw Crystal Palace goalkeeper Walter Benitez (sort of) off his line, and decided he had a chance of scoring.
UK readers watch here:
U.S. readers watch here:
This was a slightly unusual goal from way downtown, in that Gomez didn’t really lob Benitez; rather, he skimmed his shot at just high enough over head height, and with enough of a surprise factor, the keeper never stood a chance.
There was also the added element of a late swerve on the shot that seemed to flummox the back-pedalling Benitez, which you can’t really blame him for. And while Gomez trying this sort of thing is not exactly uncommon, honestly, who would have expected that?
The goal was incredibly pleasing from a neutral, aesthetic perspective, but it also serves as a symbol of how far apart these great rivals are at the moment.
Palace are confused, limp and incredibly vulnerable at the back, whereas Brighton are… well, they’re a team with the confidence to try scoring from the halfway line, and with the ability to actually do it.
Fabian Hurzeler’s side currently sit in third place, which is by no means a false position. They almost certainly aren’t good enough to actually challenge for the title, but while there are other caveats — having to deal with Europe, possibly a slightly shallow squad — there’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t qualify for the Champions League.
Coming up
- Monday is here but the weekend is not over: not in Premier League football terms, at least, because we have one more game to come in this round. It features the only team left in the division yet to win, and that’s not Coventry: Tottenham will be searching for their first three points as Frank Lampard brings his boys to town, on the back of two victories of their own.
- Tuesday sees the Champions League enter our view, and the juiciest morsel by far is PSG vs Barcelona, teams who have scored 95 goals between them in all competitions this season. Elsewhere, Liverpool face Villarreal and Manchester City host AEK Athens.
- Wednesday also has a standout blockbuster, with Bayern Munich hosting Arsenal, while Manchester United are off to face Como and Aston Villa welcome Viking FK.
- Thursday is Europa League time, and it features one of those games that, based purely on the current status of the teams involved, is perfectly logical, but for anyone over the age of about 30 sounds simply mad: Bournemouth vs Milan. Other English involvement sees Sunderland off to play Lech Poznan, while Crystal Palace are in Istanbul to face Besiktas.
- There’s also some Conference League stuff, and the most interesting-looking tie is Ajax vs Atalanta, while Brighton are off to Czechia where FK Jablonec await.
Source: www.nytimes.com
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