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 Premier League football.
This was the weekend when Arsenal hammered Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest consolidated fourth place by beating Brentford, Bournemouth moved to fifth, Chelsea dropped points and Manchester City lost again.
Here, we will ask what Liverpool’s 6-3 win over Tottenham Hotspur tells us about their title prospects, whether Ruben Amorim is rethinking his life choices and whether Bukayo Saka needs to be protected a little more by his own manager.
Did Liverpool show why they should win the league… but also why they might not?
If it’s any consolation to any disappointed Tottenham fans or mildly stressed Liverpool supporters, the rest of us thoroughly enjoyed the 6-3 that your teams served up on Sunday.
It does make quite a nice change for the title race not to feature the hyper-control of Manchester City, whose football has always been impressive but can be a little… bloodless. You absolutely cannot say the same about Liverpool, even in the slightly more measured Arne Slot era.
This was a fabulously entertaining game that, combined with Chelsea only managing a 0-0 draw against Everton, ensured Liverpool will be top of the table, with a four-point lead and a game in hand, at Christmas.
But did it both display why they should now win the Premier League and also why they might not?
In the plus column for them, you have… well, most things, really. But particularly the genius of Mohamed Salah, now the top goalscorer in the division and top assister, too, showing that if he does leave in the summer, Liverpool will probably have to sign two players to replace him.
Salah is hoping to inspire Liverpool to a second Premier League title (Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
When a player of his astonishing quality and longevity is complemented by the speed and aggression of Luis Diaz, the perfectly timed runs of Dominik Szoboszlai and the extraordinary Trent Alexander-Arnold, you get a relentless attacking machine that is difficult to stop. Granted, Spurs didn’t do much to stop it and Liverpool would not have scored six against a more disciplined team, but some of their forward play on Sunday was a joy to behold. It is, by any estimation, a Premier League-winning attack.
And yet, there might be some concerns growing about their defence. Liverpool have now conceded eight goals in their past three Premier League games: three in that madcap draw with Newcastle United, two when they drew with Fulham (the second goal coming when they only had 10 men), and now another three against Tottenham.
Perhaps this is just a blip, a slightly odd leaky run after they conceded only eight times in their first 13 matches, but there is still enough to be concerned about. They were cruising at 5-1, but a couple of goals later, it became a little more stressful than it needed to be.
“For 60 minutes, we did everything we had to do,” Slot told the BBC after the game. “We were comfortable and good with the ball, but the main thing is we worked very, very hard. And then the same players with the same quality thought that 10-15 minutes of not working hard was good enough.”
Slot is clearly aware of the problem — if you want to call it that — so this is no time to declare a Liverpool defensive crisis. But if you’re looking for a reason Liverpool might not win the Premier League, this is it.
Did Amorim underestimate the task at Manchester United?
It was probably always going to be like this.
From the late glory of beating Manchester City to the stress dream of playing Tottenham and going out of the Carabao Cup, to being beaten 3-0 by Bournemouth. Nobody said managing Manchester United was going to be easy.
But did Ruben Amorim underestimate how difficult it was going to be? Is he thinking, even just a little bit… what have I done?
United are 13th, meaning they will be in the bottom half of the table at Christmas for the first time since 1989. Clearly, this is not Amorim’s fault, more the people at the top of the club who decided to stick with Erik ten Hag and hope something different to last season would happen.
He would have known this was a big job, but did he know how big? Did he realise the extent of what needs to be fixed in this United team? There are some talented players, but there is also a huge amount of expensive mediocrity.
These are early days and Amorim is finding out every week what works and what doesn’t. But there are a few troubling patterns emerging, a few negative repetitions. Bournemouth was the sixth game in all competitions in which they have conceded the first goal. Dean Huijsen’s opener was the ninth they have let in from a set piece this season.
Huijsen set Bournemouth on their way to another 3-0 win at Old Trafford (Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)
Another is the head loss that seems to happen after conceding. “We have to maintain the calm when you suffer a goal,” Amorim told the media after the game. “It was similar in the last match. The players need to understand the game has different moments.”
Amorim’s post-match press conference was interrupted when water began to drip down from a leaking ceiling. If this was a TV show, you’d dismiss something like that for being too obvious, too ‘on the nose’, go away and come up with a more subtle analogy for the state of things at Old Trafford.
But alas, for United, this is reality, and this is what Amorim has to deal with.
Do Arsenal need to protect Saka more?
Perhaps it’s churlish to focus on a negative after a weekend when Arsenal won handsomely at Crystal Palace, Gabriel Jesus scored five goals in two games and Mikel Arteta rightly told the media that they are in the title race.
But among all that was the hamstring injury to Bukayo Saka. At the time of writing, we don’t know the severity of it, but Arteta declared himself “worried” and Saka left Selhurst Park on crutches.
We also don’t know the cause of it. Hamstrings are tricky because they can go at any minute, but they can also go as a result of stress and overwork.
With that in mind, it’s worth pointing out that only two Arsenal outfielders have played more Premier League minutes than Saka this season (Kai Havertz and William Saliba) and neither of them relies on the sort of rapid bursts of pace that characterise Saka’s game.
He has started every Premier League game but one, as well as every Champions League game but one, both of those missed matches the result of an injury he suffered while playing for England against Greece in October. He started all of England’s games at Euro 2024, which included two full periods of extra time.
He also, inexplicably, played in both of Arsenal’s Carabao Cup games, coming off the bench for half an hour against Preston and 20 minutes against Crystal Palace. Arteta explained the former by saying: “He travelled with us, so he always says that once I’m here I prefer to play a few minutes.”
Arteta has just passed five years in charge of Arsenal (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
To which the instinctive response is: who’s the manager here? It doesn’t really matter if Saka wants to play, part of the manager’s job is to ensure his players have a reasonable workload and get adequate rest. With someone like Saka, who is also routinely kicked up in the air by opponents, it becomes even more important.
And without wishing to state the obvious, it’s also important because Saka is Arsenal’s best player. Or at least their most important attacker. He’s scored five goals, which is one behind Havertz, but he also has 10 assists so far this season. Havertz, Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard, Martin Odegaard, Mikel Merino, Jorginho, Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling combined have 11.
It’s impossible to prove whether or not this injury was down to overwork, but the amount of football Saka plays means something like this was likely to happen sooner or later. Arteta, and Arsenal, need to protect him much more.
Coming up this week
- Welcome to the most frantic time of the footballing year. Bad for the players? Probably. But good for those of us who like to sit on the couch for so long that we eventually become at one with the fabric and watch football.
- Boxing Day begins the fun: Manchester City’s latest attempt to halt their existential crisis comes at home to Everton, there’s a west London derby with Chelsea hosting Fulham, Vitor Pereira’s first home game as Wolves manager is against Manchester United, and Liverpool host Leicester City.
- Friday sees a couple of interesting enough fixtures: Brighton & Hove Albion face Brentford in the ‘well-run club clasico’, while Arsenal are at home to Ipswich.
- Scandalously, there are no games on Saturday, but Sunday comes in hot with Leicester vs Manchester City, Tottenham at home to Wolves and Liverpool travelling to West Ham United.
- Then on Monday, we have Aston Villa vs Brighton, Ipswich Town vs Chelsea and Manchester United vs Newcastle United.
Again, these workshy layabouts take a day off, but the jamboree ends on New Year’s Day, with Brentford at home to Arsenal.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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