A weird and wild Premier League weekend!

For those following for the gambling content, it was a positive weekend, finishing the weekend +2 in wagers. It was nearly a monster, but City v Arsenal is a thing that happened, and it happened to me.

“On the best team in the world at home, -.5, 33 shots to 5, the underdog down a man the entire second half…”

*walks into the sea, still muttering to himself*

I’ll get a proper P&L out on Friday — we’re still down small on the year due to the beating in the initial week, but the reads feel pretty good. For those looking to support us, we’re at £10 a month until October, at which point the price will increase to £15. Before then, everyone signed up will get an offer to lock in the discount price for the rest of the season.

And for those here for the stats-based football analysis… —TK

West Ham 0-3 Chelsea

“I do not like this window, but I also think there are too many far worse teams for West Ham to be in trouble this season.” That’s what I said about West Ham in our transfer grades at the start of September.

I think I need to take it back.

I still believe West Ham have talent, but it might be time to start worrying. The problem is that this game was just so easy for Chelsea. A goal in the opening five minutes. A second one off a central throughball, from midfield right between the centrebacks? Then a lovely fast break just the other side of half finished by Cole Palmer, and the game was on ice, ice baby.

Lopetegui is a tricky figure to wrap your head around. He has a Europa League trophy, and stints as Real Madrid coach and Spain’s head coach… but the RM stint was a disaster, and then you get stints like this, where nothing seems to work even after a full pre-season and a lot of money spent.

Unlike at Bournemouth, Chelsea breezed through this one. A blip in the road, or portents of a more dominant future?

Aston Villa 3-1 Wolves

I joked in my preview that, because I whispered Villa now might have a real attack, I somehow jinxed my bet on Villa -1. 25 minutes in, Wolves pressed a mistake at the back for Villa and BAM 0-1 down.

Thankfully for me, Villa can seem to turn it on, eventually. They scored 3 from the 73rd minute on, including a nice attack for Watkins, a second-phase corner off in inverted cross to the far post for Konsa and… that kid again, Jhon Duran with the late late 94th minute goal to cover. Unlike most of his recent goals, the degree of difficulty here was basically nil - it was taken just outside the six yard box into an empty net.

Wolves had the lead at half time. And then didn’t take another shot the entire second half. Bad idea, bad result, bad table position.

Fulham 3-1 Newcastle

There were 38 shots in this match, but it feels like a lot of that was because Newcastle were forced to chase a two-goal deficit for 70-odd minutes. The Magpies had a difficult summer and are really neither good, nor bad right now… they just didn’t deserve to be small favourites at Craven Cottage. They look comfortably mid-table but nothing more, which can either be irritating or liberating, depending on your perspective. I recommend the latter.

From Fulham’s perspective, they have to love what the Hale End (Arsenal’s Academy) is producing in their stadium. Smith Rowe has been on fire to start the season, and Reiss Nelson has played a bit part well so far. As a team, they’ve done alright taking care of business against the softer teams to start the year. The defense feels a little too porous to handle the big guns, but we’ll definitely learn more over the next three matches.

Liverpool 3-0 Bournemouth

I felt like Bournemouth would at least cover this match, and it started very in my favour as they scored an early goal… that was ruled out for offside. Then their habit of shooting themselves in the foot came roaring back. Last week, it was a missed penalty. This week, the GK went on walkabout to give Luis Díaz the first of a quick brace. Darwin Núñez scored the third from a gorgeous move he created, finishing from a filthy angle and that was it.

Bournemouth did manage to generate a lot of shots, but none were very troublesome and Liverpool potentially could have had a couple of more. Under 3.5 hit, but none of it felt very comfortable from my end.

Leicester 1-1 Everton

There were 28 shots in this, but the quality of each was pretty terrible, with neither team tallying even .90 on expected goals. From what I have watched, Ndiaye has proven difficult for most fullbacks to deal with 1v1 so far this season, and DCL is still healthy, so there are bright spots for Everton fans even if they can never, ever seem to hang on to a lead.

Leicester’s equalizer came off a corner, which must be added to the increasingly long list of Things Driving Sean Dyche Nuts Right Now.

Southampton 1-1 Ipswich

Southampton’s goal came from one of those Real Dumb moments in the box by an Ipswich defender with the ball at his feet. Southampton pressed and then quickly recycled possession to Adam Lallana, who played an incredible pass to Tyler Dibling for a nice turn, and an easy finish. We mentioned Dibling last week as well. Expect it to be A Thing, maybe for over a decade.

Cameron Archer you are hearing about for the opposite reason. It’s not that he’s been bad… he’s just doing almost everything BUT finish right now, no matter the quality of the chance or whether it’s a penalty. These things tend to iron themselves out over a season.

Ramsdale was busy in this one, with Ipswich generating 16 shots, most of which were pretty poor. Then a deflection on a last-minute corner made this 1-1, and saved me from losing a bet to Adam Lallana and Ryan Fraser in the year 2024.

It’s a downgrade for Ipswich, who got a bit lucky to steal a point, and a cautious upgrade for the Saints.

Tottenham 3-1 Brentford

I was on Brentford +1 in the betting for this match, but would have dodged it had I known the length of the Bees’ injury list. This is one of the unfortunate flaws of producing content on Fridays for everyone’s convenience.

I’ve been positive on Brentford so far this season, but always with the caveat “if they can stay healthy.” They were not in this match, and Spurs were rampant, clocking 23 shots and 3.2 xG. Spurs definitely needed this shot in the arm.

Crystal Palace 0-0 Manchester United

When watching, I thought this was one of the more coherent matches of the season for Manchester United, who were basically awesome in the first half, couldn’t finish, and then flagged massively in the last 30 minutes, needing a good performance from Andre Onana to escape with a draw.

Here’s the note of caution: out of 15 shots for United, only one came after the 65th minute, and six of them came from corners. They had five shots from corners against Southampton last week.

So the good news is that the set piece design definitely seems to be working. The bad news is that the attack isn’t quite there right now, and needs those corners to score goals.

The most important news for United though is that the shots conceded are no longer in the stratosphere — they’ve got opponents under 10 per game so far in the Premier League. That was the most crucial improvement that needed to happen for them to get results this season, so there’s progress.

Brighton 2-2 Nottingham Forest

This was a weird match.

Forest had four shots and two goals, one from a very soft penalty and the other from easily cracking Brighton’s high line when they were up 2-1.

Brighton went down early, then had a goal from a long-range header, basically at the penalty spot. Then Welbz hammered a free kick around the wall for the second Brighton goal, before missing a 1v1 with the keeper after a dribbly run in the box? Full juvenation machine material from Welbeck so far this season at age 34.

Forest won the xG battle by almost half a goal, with nearly all of it coming from two very basic defensive blunders. Oh, and both head coaches were sent off for ref abuse during a sequence where VAR gave a second yellow to Gibbs-White that initially seemed to be deemed fair by the ref.

Manchester City 2-2 Arsenal

We’ll let other outlets focus on the spectacle and complain about the refs, blah blah… we’re more concerned with what we can learn about this top of the table clash.

My take-aways were this:

• Arsenal were already on their way to playing lockdown defense due to midfield frailties, and probably benefitted from that prep work in the bunker to withstand City’s second half.

• StatsBomb have been collecting Premier League data for a decade now, and last season’s Arsenal were fourth in xG conceded for the decade. They were only narrowly clipped by City’s performances in 20-21*, 18-19, and 17-18. That defense is a rock and the personnel are probably a step up this season compared to last.

• City had 411 passes in the final third in this game. That’s literally the most from any team ever, in the entire database. (Thanks, @StatsBomb.)

• It’s going to take ages for Arsenal’s seasonal xG numbers to recover.

• City’s set piece defending was dumb. Arsenal ran basically the same routine as the one they scored against Spurs. Twice! Walker got skinned worse than Doku on the goal. This should never happen, even if Rodri was the Gabriel man marker and had to be replaced.
  
  People want to bitch about Arsenal impeding the GK, but it was decently done and there are always options to do it unless they literally change the rules or put the GK in one of those protective bubbles like Zorb football. It’s also been a regular practice for at least 20 years now, and was far worse in the Pulis/Allardyce/Dyche/etc heydays.

• And City really struggled for ideas to break Arsenal down in the second half. Pep was slow to make adjustments with his subs. The equalizer came in the 9th minute when Arsenal legs were too tired to pressure a short corner and City finally had some penalty box chaos go their way.

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