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 Nottingham Forest followed up a 5-0 defeat by hammering Brighton & Hove Albion 7-0, Liverpool jumped a tricky hurdle by beating Bournemouth away, Everton won their third game in a row under the returning David Moyes and Southampton edged towards the magic record-low Premier League points total of 11 as they beat Ipswich Town to get to nine with left.
Here we will ask if spite has made Arsenal vs Manchester City the sort of rivalry with an edge that neutrals look forward to watching, what latest calamity has befallen Manchester United and whether this weekend’s games will change how clubs approach transfer deadline day.
Has Arsenal-Man City finally got the edge of a genuine rivalry?
At full time of Arsenal’s 5-1 win over Manchester City on Sunday, the Emirates Stadium’s PA system played a few songs.
The Angel (North London Forever) was one, as usual. Waka Waka was another, so the many thousands of home fans could launch into their chant to that tune in celebration of Kai Havertz. And then there was Humble by Kendrick Lamar, and there was only one person that one was aimed at.
Historically, this fixture hasn’t been especially interesting: until last season, it was incredibly one-sided, City having not lost to Arsenal in the league since Pep Guardiola arrived in Manchester in summer 2016. As such, you’d struggle to really call it a rivalry, particularly when there was also so little ‘needle’ between the teams.
That seems to have changed this season, and with some gusto. In the first league game between them in September, there was antipathy aplenty, culminating in Erling Haaland bopping Gabriel on the head with the ball after John Stones scored a late equaliser, then Haaland asking teenager Myles Lewis-Skelly (making his senior debut that day) “Who the f*** are you?” and urging Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta to “stay humble” at full time.
So Arsenal pumping that Lamar song out over the speakers yesterday was petty, liable to blow up in their face at some point and probably not the sort of banter that a slick and shiny modern football corporation should be indulging in: or, to put it another way, it was absolutely excellent and exactly the sort of thing we neutrals like to see.
Haaland seems to be at the centre of it all, his running battle with old foe Gabriel (which also featured him pointing to the gold Premier League badge on his shirtsleeve, denoting City’s status as champions) being a significant feature of the game.
Gabriel celebrated Arsenal’s first goal in front of Haaland, part of a lively battle between the two (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
You could argue it’s a bad thing for Arsenal to be rattled to this extent by some relatively gentle chiding from Haaland, but if that was the fuel they used to motivate them to this victory, then it’s difficult to fault how they’ve used it. The fact they have Lewis-Skelly, a kid who is not just a brilliantly-promising footballer but also seemingly not intimidated by anything around him, is even more encouraging for those of us who would like this to become a rivalry with genuine spite to it.
We might not be in ‘Arsenal vs Manchester United in the 1990s/early 2000s’ territory here, and it would have been nice if this level of spite had been around when the teams were fighting for the title, but this sort of edge makes you look forward to their next meeting even more.
What was Amorim doing playing Mainoo up front?
With Manchester United at the moment, it feels like they’re constantly taking one step forward, then one step back, with that step back somehow meaning they fall into a giant vat of sewage.
Their problems have been around way longer than Ruben Amorim has, but with every home defeat you’re less and less convinced the man named their head coach in November is actually helping to change them.
United have lost to Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and, yesterday, Crystal Palace at Old Trafford since he arrived; that awkward silence at the end of defeats as their fans try to process what they’ve just seen becoming more and more frequent. The only club to have lost more Premier League home matches than United (13) since the start of last season are Wolverhampton Wanderers, with 16. Which is not brilliant company.
It’s especially odd considering the number of strong performances they have put in on the road. Beating Manchester City, drawing with Liverpool, getting past Arsenal on penalties in the FA Cup, digging out a fairly ugly 1-0 win at Fulham: all of these should be signs of encouragement, indications that things are heading in the right direction.
But then they go back home and it all seems to collapse. And with every defeat, the impression that Amorim is regretting his decision to move to Manchester from Lisbon’s Sporting CP in the middle of the season gets stronger.
Playing Kobbie Mainoo as a false nine against Palace felt like less a tactical choice and more a cry for help, but was also pretty symbolic of their problems: here is a talented and promising midfielder pressed into action in an unfamiliar position, while two strikers on whom they’ve spent about £100million ($123m) in the past 18 months, Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee, sit on the bench until the 70th minute. And the player who was supposed to be their future, the centrepiece of United for a generation and the latest great to emerge from their vaunted youth system, Marcus Rashford, is off on loan to Aston Villa, relationship with his boyhood club in tatters.
Maybe we shouldn’t have too much sympathy for Amorim: he knew what he was getting himself in for; and if he didn’t, that’s on him.
But maybe this is an impossible job now, a combination of expensive but sub-standard talent and structural problems that still haven’t been convincingly addressed, coalescing into the mess we see in front of us.
Whatever it is, Amorim looks lost at the moment.
Will the weekend’s results affect deadline day?
It’s tempting to be sniffy about transfer deadline day, to write it off as a media-driven sideshow that overpowers the actual football. But it can also be hugely entertaining, and most of us will be tuning in to see who moves where before 11pm (6pm ET) tonight.
The question, with this particular window’s deadline day falling on the Monday after a weekend of fixtures, is whether anything that happened during those 10 games will change how the Premier League’s 20 clubs will go about these potentially frantic last few hours?
It won’t be startling to Manchester City that there’s a big, Rodri-shaped hole in their midfield, but could the 5-1 defeat by Arsenal yesterday be definitive proof they can’t just muddle through until the Spaniard recovers from his long-term knee injury? Are they at the point where they can’t be especially picky about who their replacement No 6 might be? Will this loss force them to make a move for someone such as Douglas Luiz of Juventus, who is a former City player, or Porto’s Nico Gonzalez?
What about neighbours United? The need for a forward of some description is obvious, but then again after watching them fold limply at home against Palace, their need for players in most positions might look quite pressing.
Eddie Howe hasn’t sounded especially positive about Newcastle’s chances of bringing anyone in before the window shuts, but will that have to change after two home defeats in a row against Bournemouth and Fulham?
Will one of the strugglers, particularly Leicester City or Ipswich Town, look for a Hail Mary signing following damaging defeats against theoretical relegation-scrap rivals in Everton and Southampton respectively?
On the flip side, Nottingham Forest are usually good for a slightly random last-minute signing, but there’s nothing like a 7-0 home win to make you think that, actually, the players you already have are enough. Equally Everton: will Beto’s two goals on Saturday convince them they don’t need another striker, and to stand pat? Might Arsenal think the same after sticking five past champions City?
Deadline day will surely present its fair share of silliness, but you wonder how different that would have been had the window closed back on Friday.
Coming up
- One more game to come this Premier League weekend, and it could be pretty juicy. Tonight, two of the Premier League’s patchier sides meet at Stamford Bridge, as Chelsea and West Ham United contest the Carlton Cole Clasico.
- But all of that, as we’ve said, will be played out amid some significant transfer deadline day silliness: David Ornstein is currently carbing up for the marathon ahead, and you can follow the whole thing with The Athletic — our live blog will be running all day until the bitter, bitter end.
- Then, on Wednesday, it’s the first of two Carabao Cup semi-final second legs: Newcastle have one foot in the final having beaten Arsenal 2-0 away in the first game, so it will take quite an effort for Arteta’s men to overturn that at St James’ Park.
- The second is 24 hours later, and slightly more in the balance: Tottenham Hotspur take a 1-0 lead to Liverpool, but you’d still fancy the Premier League leaders to go through at Anfield.
- And on Friday, there’s more domestic cup action: this time of the FA variety, as Manchester United are at home (uh-oh) to Leicester in the first of next weekend’s 16 fourth-round ties.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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