Man City are SO BACK, Chelsea are SO OVER

Also Forest lose, Bournemouth win. The top 5 race is getting spicy.

Author

Ted Knutson
February 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

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There is an injury epidemic in the Premier League right now, to an extent I can rarely recall in the men’s game. The women’s game is particularly prone to ACLs for reasons still widely unknown, while this season the men’s game has a bit of everything, but especially hamstring tears. (Believed to be caused by Too Many Matches syndrome. Mo money = mo matches = mo hamstrings torn. Or something.)

The result of this epidemic is a war of attrition amongst clubs all throughout the table. City and Spurs plunged down the table throughout the winter, but are recovering. Arsenal have been injured in various ways all season long, as have Brighton. Chelsea are struggling with injuries and other issues. And now Manchester United can barely field a team.

It’s a weird season. It’s a weird league table. It’s going to possibly make for weird set of Champions League teams (it’s Forest and Bournemouth in the top 5 as of right now!).

And it will also probably make for a gloriously weird summer. Embrace the chaos!

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It’s nice when you like a transfer, describe how they are likely to fit in and be good, and then they immediately do just that. As prescient as we like to seem around here, it doesn’t always work out that way, but Marmoush is making us (and City’s recruitment) look very smart right out of the gates.

The first goal was as simple as it was sublime. City can now play route 1 with both of their primary forwards, and either one playing central. With Ederson, Pep can now create adjustments that penalise teams for overplaying Haaland on the long balls, and pushing the press too far up but giving the GK too much time on the ball. Teams will fix this, but that will then open the passing lanes for build-up play like the olden days.

The second goal came out of a bit of nothing, really, but the third was a classic pull-back from a City wide player, with one adjustment. Haaland creates so much gravity he drags the defense with him to the far post, allowing Marmoush to sneak central in perfect cutback finishing position, and that’s just what he does.

Haaland even had a flicked-on assist off a corner in this one, so everything was clearly going City’s way.

It’s worth noting Newcastle only had three shots. It feels like the first time in ages City have managed to keep a pretty good team locked down and out of their penalty box.

We’re going to discuss Chelsea a bunch on the pod today, so if you’re interested in Patrick and I breaking down what’s gone wrong, check there.

And if you are interested in one of the most spectacular touches leading to a goal you will ever see, check out Mitoma’s goal in the highlights. Chalobah didn’t even really get cooked — it was just picture perfect control every step of the way.

The other two goals (both by Minteh) were created from Welbeck assists. It feels like Brighton’s best matches have only come when Welbeck is around, which is a pretty big problem given both his age and availability issues.

Man United matches have been intentionally dreary under Amorim as he tries to get the squad of misfit toys to play the out of possession style he coaches. Spurs matches are usually drunken shotfests, and Spurs tendencies seem to win out against most opponents. They simply refuse to allow their fans to be bored — a characteristic I think we should champion more, tbqfhwy.

There were a lot of wicked shots in this match. United nearly took the lead off a three-shot sequence in minute 10, and the lone goal was actually a rebound that nestled nicely in front of Maddison for the finish. Any other day, the score line could have been very different, but this has to be a small ray of light for Spurs fans that have been weathering the injury storm and are finally seeing some of their better players come back to fitness.

For United fans, the football remains as grey as the Manchester sky.

Liverpool didn’t register a shot in the second half, but since they were 2-0 up at the time, I am choosing to believe that they were training for holding a lead in the Champions League knockouts and not that there’s any particular crisis to worry about.

What body part do you think the Luis Diaz goal was actually scored with? I ask because this is something data companies track, not whatever other reason went through your head.

Pervert.

2-0 is the most dangerous lead, as we all know, but here it was only a tiny bit of danger, like the little bit of peril Sir Galahad was so desperate to experience in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Cunha goal for Wolves didn’t even get a replay from LFC’s highlights package, which feels a BIT harsh.

I’m not sure which team in Europe has a stadium like Castle Anthrax, but I think we’d all like to find out and visit some day… for science. Or religion. Whichever floats your boat.

Now where were we…?

I lost both my Premier League bets this weekend. One was on Leicester +1.5 that looked amazing for about 80 minutes. Then the clock struck Merino and Arsenal walked out 2-0 winners.

Gunners fans have been perpetually grumpy this season, but it continues to be worth noting that they have the best expected goals against in the league, and that remains the building block for why they are second in the league and already in the next round of the Champions League.

David Raya has been pretty good as well.

Aston Villa are also already in the next round of the CL, but that’s pretty much where the happy comparisons end. They are a fairly deserved ninth in the league table, partly because of results like this, but partly because more of their underlying matches have rarely been like this.

To explain — Villa dominate almost no one. They dominated Ipswich here (2.4 to .4 xg), partly off the back of a second yellow for Tuanzebe, but the reverse fixture saw a 2-2 where Ipswich put up 15 shots to Villa’s 7. Stack enough of those together over the course of the season, and you miss out on the CL spots entirely because sometimes dominance (like Saturday) isn’t enough to get you the three points.

I described this match as the two Spider-Men meme in the Variance Betting analysis. Adama was an absolute menace in the first half, with an early assist for Smith-Rowe’s goal with his left foot, and another dangerous one for Jimenez with his right. Built like a truck, accelerates like a motorcycle, and two viable feet — how did he not have a more amazing career?!?

Chris Wood continued to just score goals, with perhaps the luckiest one I’ve seen in recent times. A long ball glanced off the back of him, fell to his feet, where he then cut back to his left and curled a deflected shot off Bassey into the far corner.

I find it interesting Fulham did the double over Forest this season, a feat no one else in the league can claim thus far.

In addition to two GK assists, it felt like there were a bunch of headed goals this weekend where the attacker just split the CBs and won an open header. A lot of the credit for that comes from good crosses, which basically only happen if the crosser has time and space on the ball. I’m noting it mostly to follow it up with real analysis some other time if it seems to be a regular thing.

Apparently this was the first time in history Bournemouth have done the double over Southampton. This would be slightly more impressive if the Saints weren’t so bad that everyone is getting a double this season. The Cherries are really good, but Southampton are really bad.

Bournemouth’s sponsors are “BJ 88,” which I am not going to look up. I am simply going to assume that it is some combination Asian lucky porn site and gambling entity, and move on with my day.

Note: I didn’t link it here either to save you answering questions from IT for clicking that link name on your work computer.

After eschewing them as “gaudy” and “beneath them” for the first half of the season, the Bees have apparently decided that away wins are their thing, notching their third since the beginning of the season and year, and third away win in a row.

Shots were basically equal, but the first three from Brentford were all in one sequence and better quality than all 13 of West Ham’s to follow.

The first half felt like it was all Brentford (two potential goals ruled out by VAR), but West Ham settled a bit in the second half to make it competitive. The Hammers are lucky there are four awful teams this year, because they have displayed almost nothing of a real footballing identity all season.

54% of the time, Palace walk out winners. Everton’s defending was ropey at best, but Palace were unable to capitalise and found themselves a goal down after their own throw-in lead to an Everton break and a goal for Beto. It is so hard to game plan around “dumb shit” as a coach, even if you are Pep Guardiola. Or Oliver Glasner.

Palace equalised off a Mateta goal during the second phase of a corner, but Everton were the ones to walk away victors after some decent late pressure lead first to a great Beto chance, and then later a pinballed goal that probably would have been called a penalty on VAR review if it hadn’t gone in the net.

Everton are not only completely safe now, they have as many points as Palace. I gave Everton a hard time when Dyche left because I thought he did a great job in crazy circumstances, but you only get 3 points regularly when the players have some freedom to attack, and they’ve had that under Moyes plus buckets of luck to boot.

—TK

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