Chelsea continue to baffle, Liverpool look ominous, Newcastle find a way to win and has the penny finally dropped for Jack Grealish?
Erling Haaland might just mean business, y’know.
Still, Ipswich did look excellent for parts of their draw against Fulham and all three sides at least scored this weekend…After a summer which began with a speeding fine, shortly before the forward was axed from England’s Euro 2024 squad, that penny may have finally dropped.
Grealish had his part to play too as City wrested back control. He has always relished his 1v1s against Aaron Wan-Bissaka, a right-back who will draw him on, and with Jeremy Doku on the right, he was able to overload West Ham on the alternate flank to allow De Bruyne greater space – offering greater technical work than Doku’s dribbles.this week under new interim boss Lee Carsley and both Jadon Sancho and Raheem Sterling – the Three Lions’ other wingers non grata whoWhat needs to follow is goals.
Undeterred, Slot would calmly insist he has inherited an incredible squad, one which he was relishing getting to grips with, and if the club get any signings over the line then great, but he is happy with his lot regardless.Ten Hag, however, has been at pains to insist United’s woes last season were not down to the same, easy-to-read formation he was putting out every week, one with a softer centre than anything Krispy Kreme could conjure.
Luis Diaz, even three games into Slot’s reign, is proof of the level of work going on behind the scenes. The Brazilian was in the right place at the right time to score his second goal of the season after David Raya parried Yankuba Minteh’s effort into his path, but his overall performance was superb. Pedro’s direct surges through the centre of the pitch dragged Brighton forward and put the hosts on the back foot; he matched Bukayo Saka and Kaoru Mitoma for attempted dribbles with four.
There surely can’t be many worse ways to be sent off than by getting volleyed into the air at the same time. When Joel Veltman scythed Rice down as the Dutchman “attempted” to take a free-kick, it sparked a collective head-loss as both sets of players steamed over to the corner to remonstrate theatrically with each other.
Rice needlessly nudged the ball away as Veltman prepared to launch it forward and ended up nursing a sore ankle. It was the first red card of his senior career in his 360th game and a costly one too. He will now miss the north London derby on 15 September, along with fellow midfielder Mikel Merino who lucklessly injured his shoulder in his first training session.Newcastle United may have lost the transfer window but they keep winning games.
At the same stage as this last season Newcastle played well but carelessly let a lead slip to 10-man Liverpool. Momentum in their chase for the top four was never really regained. Beating Tottenham Hotspur while playing so far below their best might well have the opposite effect this term.Their trademark aggression remains absent and there was little fluency about their work but they found a way even with their brightest attacking sparks continuing to flicker in and out of games.
Their combined record in those 25 matches is astounding for a mid-table team: 28 combined goals at a rate of more than one per game. We knew that Duran was a smart finisher, but both his winners so far this season demonstrate his exceptional movement and have strong similarities. Because he’s very fast, central defenders tend to follow Duran when he makes a run towards the six-yard box – they won’t catch him otherwise. Then Duran stops and holds his ground, gains a yard of space and then uses that to produce a brilliant first-time finish.
It’s a victory – their first of the season – that will boost morale down at the Vitality, and a potentially important three points when all is said and done. But Bournemouth will know that, the result aside, another largely lethargic performance against better opponents probably won’t be as salvageable as this one.There is no panic nor any cause for panic. Five points was the minimum expectation from three relatively gentle fixtures to start this season and Forest have hit that minimum target.
But their finishing was rushed and the final touch eluded them despite a succession of clear cut openings. Against opponents with Newcastle’s character that always left them open to a sucker punch, which duly arrived when Joelinton sprung their high line. Chelsea had tried and failed to sign Napoli’s Victor Osimhen in the transfer window just shut, as well as courting Ivan Toney, who instead swapped Brentford for Saudi Arabia.“Not because we are looking for another striker; not that we don’t trust Nicolas. We trust Nicolas.
The answer may lie in variety being the spice of life. If you haven’t got a striker likely to get more than 10 Premier League goals, the best you can do is look to surprise opposition teams with the range of your goal threat. You might argue that there’s no better in the division than them: Fulham’s last 16 non-penalty goals have been scored by 12 different players.
The sense of expectation is still a little tempered. Michail Antonio is keeping his place ahead of Niclas Fullkrug but Lopetegui is making his stamp little by little, with James Ward-Prowse, Kurt Zouma and Maxwel Cornet all heading elsewhere on deadline day. Paris Saint-Germain loanee Carlos Soler was unveiled to much fanfare ahead of kick-off and he is already drawing comparisons with Dimitri Payet. Crucially, Lopetegui showed he is not afraid to drop Tomas Soucek, who was named on the bench.
The Brazilian, of course, symbolises the past. Echoes of the old United resound in him, an overpriced, overpaid, physically-compromised has been. And that might be flattering him. United wanted him gone in the summer but there was no one daft enough to do what they did, shell out on the shell of a name.
The second option is to accept chaos football, picking more attacking players and reasoning that it may cause you to concede more goals but should see more clear chances created. Cooper has that choice available after this summer’s business: Facundo Buonanotte, Bobby Cordova-Reid, Bilal El Khannouss and Stephy Mavididi were all on the bench on Saturday.
“Chelsea reject!” was the cry from the stands, with the away end replying that “he left ‘cos you’re s**t.” There has been a huge amount of change at Portman Road this summer, a fairly astonishing investment in the squad by the American owners. As such, this is a work in progress. Ipswich’s front four against Fulham were all new arrivals, the spine of the team – goalkeeper, centre-back, central midfielder were all new arrivals. They brought on two new arrivals as substitutes.
By August 2023, he was back at Benfica but fell out of favour there and so Wolves loaned him to Villarreal instead. It goes without saying: at no point did any Wolves fan miss him. For all the money spent, I’m not sure that they have really done either. On Saturday at Brentford, Southampton started Jan Bednarek, Jack Stephens and Taylor Harwood-Bellis in central defence. Not only were all three at the club last season, two of them were prominent when Southampton finished bottom of this division two years ago.
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