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 Newcastle United held Manchester City and Liverpool took advantage with a tight win at Wolverhampton Wanderers that took them to the top of the table, Arsenal beat Leicester City with some late goals and Everton got their first victory of the season.
Here, we will ask whether Manchester United should be surprised about their latest humiliation, whether Riccardo Calafiori is already the Premier League’s best-ever Italian defender and whether Cole Palmer is too good for Chelsea.
What did INEOS expect when it kept Ten Hag?
The last decade at Manchester United has been littered with new lows, with people puffing out their cheeks and saying, “I’ve seen some bad ones, but today…”
Their performance against Tottenham Hotspur didn’t fall into that category because this wasn’t a new low under Erik ten Hag: it was pretty much what you have come to expect from United.
The final score was 3-0 and if they were playing a team with more ruthless finishers it could have been at least double that. Brennan Johnson missed a decent chance, so did Dominic Solanke. Timo Werner missed at least two.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Ten Hag commented that the sending off of Bruno Fernandes “changed the game”, and while that is usually a perfectly reasonable thing to say about a team that had taken a red card in the first half, it wasn’t on this occasion.
United were desperate in the first half and, barring a couple of short spells, just as bad in the second. There was no indication in their performance that things might have been significantly better if only they had kept 11 players on the pitch.
But what did United expect? We saw this sort of performance many times last season. Quite what United’s new INEOS-infused leadership team thought was going to happen by sticking with Ten Hag over the summer — rather than recognising that, the FA Cup final aside, they had been largely terrible for the whole season — is anyone’s guess.
Manchester United executives watch the team defeated, including Sir Dave Brailsford (far left, in glasses) and, next to him, Omar Berrada (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
By not moving decisively, United’s minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his sporting director at INEOS, Sir Dave Brailsford, have done a couple of things.
First, they allowed potential head coaches — Mauricio Pochettino, Roberto De Zerbi, Antonio Conte and maybe even slightly more left-field choices, such as Thiago Motta — to slip away and get other jobs.
If they belatedly realise their mistake and decide to sack Ten Hag, they have narrowed their options for a replacement and risk getting into ‘anyone but Ten Hag’ territory, where they’re scrabbling around for anyone vaguely plausible who would take the job. If things continue along this path, they have basically written off this season, their great rebuild set back another year.
Still, at least they focused on the important things, such as making 250 administrative staff redundant and ensuring those who are left come into the office rather than work from home.
United have won twice this season: once, quite fortunately, on the opening day against Fulham and once against Southampton, who have probably been the worst team in the division (and even they missed a penalty to go 1-0 up against Ten Hag’s side). They’ve played two genuinely good teams, Liverpool and Tottenham, and been humiliated at home by both.
United had the chance to change this in the summer. They didn’t take it, and now they’re left with another season of mopping up and making do.
Has Palmer outgrown Chelsea?
It was a good weekend for Manchester City youth products.
Morgan Rogers got his first league goal of the season after some terrific performances for Aston Villa, Liam Delap scored a couple of very good goals to earn an excellent point for Ipswich Town, and Jadon Sancho looked extremely sparky for Chelsea.
And then there’s Cole Palmer. Extraordinarily, saying that Palmer ‘scored four goals before half-time’ (which nobody has ever done before in the Premier League) undersells what he did against Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday. He scored four goals in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes! And he could have had more.
It would be needlessly obtuse to argue that those goals weren’t the best part of his performance, but he also came up with a couple of utterly outrageous sweeping passes — one to set up Noni Madueke, another for Nicolas Jackson — that would have been the highlight of any other day, and the sort of balls you don’t play unless you’re at the absolute peak of confidence.
Cole Palmer’s genius is obvious (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
He doesn’t seem to feel pressure. He doesn’t seem to be fazed by something like a shift in position: he was brilliant from the right last season, he’s arguably been even better in the middle this term. He doesn’t seem to be affected by the rolling chaos of Chelsea. He doesn’t seem to be affected by anything, really.
Chelsea are much better than most expected but they’re not in the Champions League and they’re probably not going to challenge for the Premier League title.
So the question that will be pertinent soon, if it isn’t already, is this: Is he too good for Chelsea?
Palmer has an absurdly long contract, so it would take quite an offer for someone to buy him, but if Chelsea don’t make the top four this season, there will be a few clubs queueing up to ask them, ‘How much?’
Breaking down Cole Palmer’s astonishing performances at Chelsea
Is Calafiori already the Premier League’s best Italian defender?
Over the years, some brilliant Italian players have appeared in the Premier League.
Gianfranco Zola. Paolo Di Canio. Gianluca Vialli. Jorginho. Roberto Di Matteo. Mario Balotelli (for a bit).
But they’re all attackers or midfielders. There have been a few goalkeepers, including Carlo Cudicini and Guglielmo Vicario, but with respect to Gianluca Festa, Alessandro Pistone and Marco Materazzi, who had not made his Italy debut, few top-class defenders.
With that in mind, just two months into his time in England, is Riccardo Calafiori already the best Italian defender to play in the Premier League?
Perhaps that’s a little harsh on Angelo Ogbonna and Destiny Udogie, especially since Calafiori has his moments of chaos. He could easily have been sent off after an unwise challenge on Facundo Buonanotte during Arsenal’s 4-2 win over Leicester City on Saturday.
Riccardo Calafiori (left) has made a big impression at Arsenal (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
But he is one of the most watchable defenders you’re likely to see this season and it’s remarkable how quickly Calafiori has not just settled but almost immediately excelled in England. He was all over the place against Leicester, which, in this context, is intended as a compliment. Nominally a left-back, at various points you could find him in midfield, on the left wing, at centre-back and even up front, briefly.
He is perfect for this Arsenal team that expects its full-backs to do more than just stay on the left or right. He also provides a point of difference to his team-mates, who, for the most part, are technical players. Calafiori is accomplished on the ball, too, but he brings an added physicality that his predecessors in the left-back slot have lacked.
These are early days but it will be worth keeping an eye on how his presence helps Gabriel Martinelli. The Brazilian scored one and set up another against Leicester, and if Calafiori’s excellence can provide a positive impact for Martinelli too, he will turn out to be one of the signings of the season.
Coming up
- This round of Premier League fixtures is rounded off by some white-hot Monday night action as Bournemouth welcome winless Southampton, who will almost certainly give the ball away in absurdly dangerous positions at least four times.
- Champions League! The great big Euro melange of fixtures is back, whether you can make sense of it or not. The pick of Tuesday’s games sees Arsenal host Paris Saint-Germain. Manchester City should theoretically rack up a few at Slovan Bratislava, the atmosphere at Borussia Dortmund, who host Celtic, will be lively and Bayer Leverkusen travel to play AC Milan.
- Then on Wednesday, Aston Villa will really feel like they’re in the big time when Bayern Munich roll into town. Liverpool hosting Bologna and RB Leipzig vs Juventus are probably the picks of the other games.
- If that wasn’t enough Euro fun for you, the Conference League also starts on… Wednesday? Admittedly only a couple of relatively minor games, but whatever you say about UEFA, you can’t accuse them of not providing us with football to watch. The standout games take place on Thursday, with Chelsea vs Gent, Fiorentina against Welsh giants The New Saints, and Copenhagen against the magnificently named Jagiellonia Bialystok.
- And the Europa League? Tottenham are off to Budapest to play Ferencvaros, while the travelling Manchester United circus rolls into Porto.
- A minor point of order: the Carabao Cup tie between Newcastle and AFC Wimbledon that was scuppered by a slightly dystopian sinkhole last week will take place in Newcastle on Tuesday.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
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