Football writer Alex Keble highlights the hot topics and tactical lessons from Matchweek 23 including:
- Bournemouth being this season’s surprise package
- Spurs crisis deepens as Postecoglou’s midfield falls apart
- Marmoush performance hints at more direct future for Man City
- Villa’s inability to kill off matches is costing them in top-four race
- Moyes-style win gives Everton huge boost in relegation battle
- Man Utd strike lucky at Craven Cottage but form is building
- Brentford’s away form is improving at just the right moment
- Isak’s double could be season-defining for Newcastle
- Wolves’ fight against relegation likely to go the distance
- Simple win is just what Liverpool needed after tough January
Bournemouth are this season’s biggest surprise package
One of the most sensational results of the 2024/25 Premier League season has put AFC Bournemouth in the conversation for UEFA Champions League football – and for being this year’s biggest surprise package.
Moving on so quickly from Nottingham Forest – the media darlings until Saturday afternoon – might feel a little harsh, but Bournemouth’s emphatic win highlighted the difference in quality between the two sides, both tactically and technically.
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Andoni Iraola’s football is futuristic in tone, Nuno Espirito Santo’s a pleasing throwback, and with Bournemouth now only four points behind Forest in the table, it might not be long before they trade places.
Forest’s next five Premier League matches are all against sides in the top 10, whereas Bournemouth – now on an 11-match unbeaten run in the competition – play relegation candidates Southampton and Wolverhampton Wanderers in their next three fixtures.
Before that, they host league leaders Liverpool in a major test that will show how far Bournemouth have climbed this season.
But even if they fall to defeat you would back Bournemouth, now only a point off fourth, to stay the course thanks to a front line on fire.
Justin Kluivert has been directly involved in 12 goals across his last 12 Premier League matches, more than in his previous 42 games, while Dango Ouattara has 10 Premier League goal involvements this season, more than in his first two seasons in the competition combined.
Spurs crisis deepens as Postecoglou’s midfield falls apart
In Tottenham Hotspur's seven-match winless Premier League run, this defeat must hurt the most.
Leicester City had lost seven in a row going into this one and, with Spurs 1-0 up at half-time, Ange Postecoglou won’t quite believe his team conspired to again make headlines for the wrong reason.
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Defensive injuries and waning confidence have combined to make Spurs wide open when out of possession, with the locus of the problem in central midfield.
On Sunday, Rodrigo Bentancur had far too much ground to cover alone at the base of midfield, and as he was pulled from side to side, Leicester’s No 10 Bilal El Khannouss began to take control of the match.
The winning goal was by no means an isolated incident. El Khannouss found a huge pocket of space in midfield because Bentancur had been pulled out wide in an attempt to close down the huge gaps in Postecoglou’s formation.
El Khannouss' goal v Spurs
Bilal wins it! 😍 pic.twitter.com/KKIyXzsTGp
— Leicester City (@LCFC) January 26, 2025
It was nevertheless a superb performance from Leicester and potentially a turning point in their season, with Ruud van Nistelrooy’s side leaving the relegation zone for the first time since mid-December.
It is vital Leicester build on this result ahead of a relegation six-pointer against Everton at Goodison Park this Saturday.
Marmoush performance hints at more direct future for Man City
The story of this match should have been 20-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov’s slow start to the match, but Chelsea’s decision to stick to a conservative tactical game-plan, rather than pounce upon Manchester City’s frailty and seize the occasion, allowed the hosts back into the encounter.
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And so instead we must talk about an exciting new prospect in the City attack.
Omar Marmoush was nominally the left-winger but he played alongside Erling Haaland up front and made constant runs on the shoulder of the last defender, creating a more direct and long-ball Man City than we have ever seen in the Pep Guardiola era.
The consistency with which both full-backs, Matheus Nunes and Josko Gvardiol, also made arcing runs into the centre of the pitch suggests it was a deliberate tactical switch from Guardiola, who had spoken in the week about the new direction football was taking.
“Today, modern football is not positional, you have to ride the rhythm,” he said, perhaps conceding that City’s patient possession isn’t in step with the Premier League in 2025.
By encouraging his team to hit longer passes forward – leading directly to all three Man City goals – Guardiola hinted at a dramatic tactical regeneration.
Man City’s use of long balls v Chelsea
We knew something big had to change at Man City, and while we can’t get carried away by a single performance, it’s quite possible we are about to witness the biggest tactical left turn in Guardiola’s career.
Villa’s inability to kill off matches is costing them in top-four race
An injury to Tyrone Mings dramatically slowed Aston Villa down and allowed West Ham United back into the match, but the hosts' inability to turn a 1-0 lead into victory wasn’t really a case of defensive issues.
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Villa have failed to win four of the 11 Premier League matches they’ve scored first in this season, more than across the 19 fixtures in which they opened the scoring last season.
It is the single biggest reason they are falling behind in the race for Champions League football.
Perhaps a continental hangover is to blame, although for the second time in a week Unai Emery’s substitutions didn’t make a difference.
All five of his substitutes struggled to have an impact and the decision to field Lucas Digne at centre-back backfired, but the bigger issue was bringing on Jhon Duran and Donyell Malen when Villa were 1-0 up.
Those two erratic, on-the-shoulder attackers meant Villa lost control of the match just at a time when they needed to slow things down and regain a foothold.
From the 65th minute onwards, West Ham grabbed momentum and deservedly scored the equaliser.
Moyes-style win gives Everton huge boost in relegation battle
This match went just as predicted: Brighton & Hove Albion struggled to score when hogging possession against a low block, and Everton snatched victory in typical David Moyes style.
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Brighton had many more shots (16 to three) and saw a lot more of the ball (69 per cent to 31 per cent), but they only ever seemed to threaten from range as a sturdy Everton defence packed the penalty area and held the hosts at arms length.
Their victory confirmed that Moyes was the right appointment. Two wins from his first three matches in charge has lifted Everton seven points clear of the relegation zone with a game in hand.
All of a sudden they look well clear of trouble, especially considering they still have all three promoted clubs to play at Goodison Park.
Win all three and Everton would have 32 points, possibly enough to secure their Premier League status even if they lost their other 13 matches.
Man Utd strike lucky at Craven Cottage but form is building
“To win helps us to improve,” Ruben Amorim told BBC Match of the Day after victory at Craven Cottage. “Today was not the best match but we managed to win.”
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He is right on both counts. First of all, Fulham were the better team here but failed to take their chances, while Manchester United – who didn’t manage a single shot until the 42nd minute – scored a deflected winner from a grand total of four shots on goal.
But a win is a win, and with confidence faltering badly United have desperately needed points to restore the self-belief necessary to enact Amorim’s tactics.
It might come as a surprise to learn that Man Utd have won four of their last five matches in all competitions, a sequence that has rarely – if ever – involved a strong performance.
Form is slowly building for Amorim and United, and if nothing else, it will end talk of Man Utd as relegation candidates or indeed as the worst team in the club’s history.
That’s a good start. Now they just need performances to start matching results.
Brentford’s away form is improving at just the right moment
It might look innocuous to the neutral, but this was a victory of huge significance for Brentford.
Brentford’s excellent 2024/25 season had been built entirely on their home form.
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On 20 December, Brentford had won 22 points from a possible 24 at home (the best in the league) and one point from 24 away (the second-worst in the division).
So with Brentford losing three and drawing one of their last four Premier League matches at the Gtech Community Stadium, Thomas Frank’s side were in danger of seeing their entire campaign fall apart.
Instead, it has coincided with a dramatic upturn in form on their travels; the 2-1 win at Selhurst Park made it successive away wins, as many as in their previous 17 matches combined.
Winning at Southampton a fortnight ago didn’t necessarily signify much, given how poor the Premier League’s bottom club have been this season.
But beating Crystal Palace is a watershed moment in their season.
Isak’s double could be a season-defining moment for Newcastle
This was not a standard victory against Southampton.
At 1-0 down midway through the first half, Newcastle United supporters may well have been feeling unusually anxious.
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The 4-1 defeat at home to Bournemouth a week earlier looked jaded, and if Eddie Howe’s side were to follow it up with a shock defeat at Southampton there was a risk of their 2024/25 falling apart.
That’s why Alexander Isak’s quickfire double might just be a season-defining moment for Newcastle. All of a sudden nerves were calmed, order was restored, and Newcastle could look back on the Bournemouth defeat as a simple and understandable blip.
That’s how easily the narrative can flip in football. Isak’s brilliantly taken second goal could turn out to be one of his most important in a Newcastle shirt.
As for Southampton, to lose that early lead will have done further damage to their confidence.
Ivan Juric’s side have now lost six consecutive home league matches for the first time in their history, and with every defeat, the risk grows that they will break Derby County’s infamous record of managing only 11 points.
Wolves’ fight against relegation likely to go the distance
Once again Arsenal made hard work of getting over the line, but after Myles Lewis-Skelly’s harsh red card it was no less than the visitors deserved.
It leaves Wolves in trouble. They have lost their last four league matches, failing to pick up a solitary point so far in 2025, and are back in the relegation zone after Leicester’s win at Spurs.
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The new-manager bounce has certainly worn off, and worse, Matheus Cunha again looked off the pace following Vitor Pereira’s criticism of his body language against Chelsea.
Without Cunha firing, Wolves look bereft in attack. They only managed four shots on target in this match and three of them were from outside the box.
There is little doubt that Wolves’ fight against the drop will go the distance.
Simple win is just what Liverpool needed after tough January
The scary thing for Liverpool’s rivals is that Arne Slot’s team might already have passed through their wobble; might have just emerged from their worst spell of the season without losing any ground in the title race.
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It hasn’t been the most comfortable of months for the league leaders. Draws with Man Utd and Forest, defeat in the EFL Cup semi-final first leg against Spurs, and a very late winner at Brentford have shown that Liverpool can be vulnerable.
Easing to a 4-1 win over Ipswich Town is just what they needed to wipe the slate clean and put an difficult month behind them.
