Premier League weekend review: What we learned

After an exciting weekend featuring 29 goals and big results throughout the Premier League table, Alex Keble looks at the key talking points and tactical lessons.

Man Utd highlight Casemiro’s importance

It might be time to recalibrate our perceptions of Manchester United’s season, readjusting slightly how we view Erik ten Hag’s debut campaign after Sunday’s defeat moved Newcastle United ahead of his side.

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Continued success in the cups has perhaps veiled Man Utd’s choppy form, although it is starting to get attention.

They have won only three of their last nine Premier League matches, picking up a mere 12 points in that time and failing to score in each of their last three.

Just a month ago they were talked about as title challengers, yet now they are 22 points behind Arsenal and with a top-four place under real threat.

The top six

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
1	Man City MCI	38	+61	89
2	Arsenal ARS	38	+45	84
3	Man Utd MUN	38	+15	75
4	Newcastle NEW	38	+35	71
5	Liverpool LIV	38	+28	67
6	Brighton BHA	38	+19	62

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Looking back, we may have oversold their form earlier in the season. Nine of their league victories have been by a single goal, perhaps suggesting things were never quite as rosy as they seemed.

After all, Man Utd’s Expected Goals (xG) differential of +8.2 is below Liverpool’s (+10.1) and Brighton & Hove Albion’s (+16.5), and only marginally better than that of Tottenham Hotspur (+7.2), who are supposedly having a poor season.

The return of Casemiro looks key for their top-four hopes. Man Utd have lost four of their eight Premier League matches without Casemiro and just three of the 19 in which he has featured. His absence was deeply felt in the defeat at Newcastle.

It speaks volumes that Marcel Sabitzer completed just 28 passes, six fewer than his goalkeeper David De Gea, and telling that Ten Hag tried an experimental rejig, placing Scott McTominay at the tip of midfield in the first half before using Bruno Fernandes as a lone No 6 for the final 20 minutes.

McTominay and Wout Weghorst, for so long the two most advanced Man Utd players, exchanged passes just three times – hence why Newcastle outshot the visitors by 22 attempts to eight.

Passes between McTominay and Weghorst

Alvarez helps to expose Liverpool’s 4-2-4 system

Manchester City’s laser-precision dismantling of Liverpool in the early Saturday kick-off was the result of a simple tactical victory for Pep Guardiola over Jurgen Klopp.

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This one was all about Man City’s ability to pass through the thirds with relative ease as Guardiola’s 3-2-5 formation allowed his players to stand in spaces unoccupied by Liverpool in their surprisingly aggressive 4-2-4 formation.

The misalignment between the two styles is neatly captured in the still images taken from the build-up to Man City’s crucial equaliser below.

Klopp’s front four blocked the pass into Rodri and John Stones but, with only two Liverpool central midfielders behind them, Man City’s outside centre-backs were able to find straight passes into Kevin De Bruyne or Ilkay Gundogan who, once turned, had half the Liverpool team behind them.

From here, Guardiola’s very widely placed wingers Riyad Mahrez and Jack Grealish had space to drive at the Liverpool defence.

In short, Harvey Elliott and Diogo Jota were standing too high to stop the pass into De Bruyne and Gundogan or drop and help their full-backs against Grealish and Mahrez. It was a pattern that happened again and again.

Build-up to Man City's first goal

Man City were assisted considerably by the performance of the jinking and gliding Julian Alvarez, operating like a traditional Guardiola "false nine". The Argentinian’s tap-in was very reminiscent of the goals scored by Erling Haaland, but the rest of his performance was not.

From his whipped no-look pass out to Mahrez ahead of the second goal to his intelligent link play twice in the run-up to the third, Alvarez showed qualities that are often lacking when Haaland is on the pitch.

Alvarez averages 39.1 touches per 90 in the Premier League this season, considerably more than Haaland’s 24.3, and produces 3.44 shot-creating actions compared with Haaland’s 2.09.

Alvarez's passes against Liverpool

Jesus impact extends far beyond goals

Alvarez wasn’t the only one showing the value of a striker who gets involved in play outside the penalty box.

Over at Emirates Stadium, Gabriel Jesus made his first league start since 12 November and instantly reminded everyone of what Arsenal had been missing, winning and then scoring a penalty before adding a second goal during his 60 minutes on the pitch.

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Remarkably, by the time he was withdrawn, Jesus had already racked up 60 per cent more touches of the ball (55) than his stand-in Eddie Nketiah usually manages in an entire match (34.3 per 90).

Nketiah did an excellent job from a goalscoring perspective – averaging 0.36 per match, not far off Jesus’s 0.48 – but there is no matching Jesus’s ability to drop between the lines, demand the ball, and twist and turn with an urgency that lifts his team-mates.

Jesus's second goal

Suddenly Arsenal have serious depth. The form of Leandro Trossard, whose seven Premier League assists are the joint-highest number for the club despite him only joining in January, meant Mikel Arteta could afford to leave Bukayo Saka on the bench for the first time this season and still win comfortably. The Gunners are ramping up at exactly the right time.

Hodgson unleashes Eze and goes for broke

Roy Hodgson’s return was supposed to signal the regression towards a more conservative Crystal Palace team and the shrunken, compact 4-4-2 formation that defined most of his previous tenure at Selhurst Park. Absolutely nobody saw what happened on Saturday coming.

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Palace’s first victory in 13 matches featured 31 shots on goal, a joint club-record in the Premier League and four more than they mustered in their final four matches combined under Patrick Vieira.

Their 20 first-half shots were the most by any Premier League team in the opening 45 minutes since December 2015, when Liverpool hit the same total against the same opponents Leicester City.

What on earth happened? As the table below shows, it was preposterously out of character for Hodgson, whether compared with the last time he faced Leicester at home or compared with his final-season average at Palace in 2020/21.

Palace attacking stats compared

Put simply, Hodgson went for broke. Not only did he choose a 4-3-3 formation rather than 4-4-2, he gave Eberechi Eze a first start in central midfield since the 3-0 defeat to Everton back in October.

The new manager was rewarded with an outstanding performance as Eze set the tone by picking up the ball in deep areas and driving at the heart of the Leicester defence. The 24-year-old made the joint-most progressive carries, with five, and attempted the joint second-most take-ons, with four.

Alongside Wilfried Zaha, Michael Olise, Jeffrey Schlupp and Odsonne Edouard – not to mention the two substitutes who combined for the winner, Jordan Ayew and Jean-Philippe Mateta – Hodgson crammed as many fast dribblers onto the pitch as he could, throwing the kitchen sink at a timidly retreating Leicester.  

The relegation fight

Position Pos	Club	Played Pl	GD	Points Pts
12	Chelsea CHE	38	-9	44
13	Wolves WOL	38	-27	41
14	West Ham WHU	38	-13	40
15	Bournemouth BOU	38	-34	39
16	Nott'm Forest NFO	38	-30	38
17	Everton EVE	38	-23	36
18	Leicester LEI	38	-17	34
19	Leeds LEE	38	-30	31
20	Southampton SOU	38	-37	25

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Chelsea defeat epitomises Potter era

It was a fitting finale to the Graham Potter experiment: a 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa defined by possession without penetration, strange tactical decisions, squad rotation and a huge dollop of bad luck.

Chelsea’s 3-4-3 formation always looked restrictive under Potter, resulting in sideways passing that lacked the verticality required to pull apart deep defences, so Villa’s stubbornness under Unai Emery was always going to present a difficult challenge.

Chelsea's drop in attacking stats

But Chelsea's chances of success were weakened by Potter fielding just one natural centre-back in his back three, as shown by the mix-up between Marc Cucurella and Kalidou Koulibaly that allowed Ollie Watkins to score the opener.

What’s more, Chelsea’s front three of Kai Havertz, Joao Felix and Mykhailo Mudryk was remarkably narrow. This allowed Villa to stay in their resolutely compact shape for long periods of the match, as these average position graphs show.

Chelsea's average positions v Villa

Villa's average positions v Chelsea

Then again, there’s the "Potter Curse" to consider. His Brighton team underperformed against xG, and the same thing happened at Chelsea.

The Blues had the worst xG differential (-7.4) of any Premier League side during his reign, which ended with 21 goals being scored from an xG of 28.4. Against Villa, they failed to score from a 2.0 xG – their highest tally in the league this season in a match in which they failed to register a goal.

Potter ends his Chelsea career with the joint-lowest points-per-match average of any Chelsea manager who was in charge for 20 or more Premier League matches, with 1.27, and yet with better finishing it could all have been so different.

Set-piece goal highlights small margins

West Ham United have 18 fewer points than at the same stage last season and the drop-off in performances has been plain to see. Yet the margins between success and failure are always slimmer than they appear.

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Goals set the narrative agenda and sometimes just the slightest change in luck, or finishing, can recast perceptions of a performance, which then snowball into greater confidence and better results.

It might be surprising to learn that West Ham’s average xG (1.29) and xG against (1.11) this season are very similar to their averages last campaign (1.35 and 1.23 respectively).

It is possible that only a small shift in perception would be needed for views of David Moyes’ football, seen by many supporters as overly cautious these days, to switch back to being lauded as pragmatic but effective.

In fact, it might only take an uptick in set-piece success.

Nayef Aguerd’s winner in West Ham’s crucial six-pointer against Southampton was only their third headed goal of the season and their fifth from a set-piece (the fourth-lowest total).

This is a significant downturn from last year when the Hammers ended on eight headed goals and 14 from set-pieces (the fifth-most).

Their crossing numbers are consistent, with 17.0 attempted and 4.1 successful last season, compared with 16.8 attempted and 4.4 successful this campaign. Meanwhile, their headed shots have dropped only slightly from 2.5 per match to 2.1, so it is not a question of making the chances.

Just a bit more luck, or quality, from dead-balls and West Ham might look a lot healthier.