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 Manchester City extended their awful run to one win in 11, Nottingham Forest implausibly reached the Champions League places after coming from behind against Aston Villa, and 10-man Liverpool equalised twice to draw with Fulham.
Here, we will ask about the impact of Manchester United’s derby win, whether Arsenal actually need a proper centre-forward, and whether Wolves and Southampton delayed changing their managers for too long.
How important was winning the derby for Amorim?
We shouldn’t get too carried away with a Manchester United manager beating Manchester City. After all, that particular result, in the FA Cup final last season, was the reason Erik ten Hag kept his job for longer than he should have.
Caution should be emphasised, especially in these early days of Ruben Amorim’s tenure. Despite the result in Sunday’s Manchester derby, it wasn’t a massively convincing overall performance from United: they were probably better than City, but then again, City were awful, so that isn’t the highest praise.
But that’s to be expected. We probably won’t know whether Amorim’s United are any good until next season. Until then, he is experimenting from game to game. Only two outfielders have started every game under him so far — Bruno Fernandes and Matthijs de Ligt. The rest has been a rotating cast as he tries to figure out how to best fit these players into his favoured formation.
It remains to be seen what the impact of him dropping both Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford will be. On the face of it, you wonder whether he is trying to fight on too many fronts: he’s got enough to think about without calling out two of his better players and these managerial power plays, when a new boss tries to assert their authority, can backfire.
Amad’s winning goal was a big moment for Amorim (Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images)
If this serves as a motivational tool and both players return with renewed vigour, then it will have been a worthwhile exercise. We will have to wait a little longer to see about that one.
But slowly, Amorim is getting a few answers. He now knows that Amad is someone he can count on, having excelled in both wing-back and attacking roles. He now knows that Harry Maguire isn’t the write-off that some might have thought, having done well in a few games since Amorim arrived. He now knows that Noussair Mazraoui is another dependable player able to fulfil multiple roles.
All of this is why a victory like the one on Sunday, as relatively unattractive as it was and not how he will eventually want his team to look, is so valuable. When a new manager arrives, particularly one so young and inexperienced in a ‘big’ league, their biggest job is convincing the players that they should be listened to. They probably can’t do that just by talking, but rather with results. Lead your team to victories — particularly big ones like this — and they will start listening to you in a hurry.
The remainder of the season will continue to feature multiple experiments, but Amorim is reaching more and more conclusions as every week goes by.
Do Arsenal actually need a ‘real’ centre-forward?
Drawing 0-0 at home to Everton is not a great result at the best of times, but doing so on a weekend when both Liverpool and Manchester City dropped points does not say good things about the credibility of Arsenal’s title challenge.
By the end of the game, any semblance of Arsenal’s attacking structure had disappeared, Gabriel Magalhaes was playing up front, and everything had got a little frazzled. It’s the third time Arsenal have failed to score in the league this season, but there have been many more occasions when they haven’t converted their dominance into goals.
Four teams have scored more than them in this Premier League season, which isn’t a disaster, but equally isn’t ideal. If you go by expected goals, Arsenal are outperforming their total slightly: they have scored 29 from an xG of 27.
And maybe any talk of them not being clinical enough is a bit off given they scored five in back-to-back games — against Sporting CP in the Champions League and then West Ham in the Premier League — a few weeks ago.
But after a game in which they struggled to break down stubborn opposition and missed a chance to make up ground on those around them, the inevitable question is: do Arsenal just need a proper striker?
The very basic answer is: yes, sure, why not? Kai Havertz, who has started 15 of their 16 games in the centre-forward role, has five goals to his name. That’s one fewer than Liam Delap and Jorgen Strand Larsen, both players currently in the relegation zone.
Arsenal were frustrated in their draw with Everton (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
It’s not using crystal-clear hindsight to think that Arsenal made a mistake in prioritising central midfield and full-back last summer rather than up front. That was the sentiment of many at the time.
So while it’s possibly a little reductive to just say “they should have signed Ivan Toney/Viktor Gyokeres/insert striker of choice”, it’s also not inaccurate.
Equally, you could argue that the problem is the supporting attacking players aren’t really pulling their weight goals-wise. Bukayo Saka is exempt from too much criticism given he’s being double-marked/kicked up in the air most games and is still their biggest threat, with five goals and 10 assists.
But Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard both have three goals from 10 starts. They’ve got as many goals from defenders — Gabriel, William Saliba and Riccardo Calafiori — as those two. Those set pieces are deadly, but they should be added bonuses to a broader attacking style that creates goals.
Elsewhere, Martin Odegaard has one (a penalty) from nine. Gabriel Jesus, admittedly from only two starts and 11 substitute appearances, has yet to score in the league, while Raheem Sterling has barely been used. The only other goal from an attacker has come from Ethan Nwaneri.
You could spin this as a positive, that goals are being shared around, but the point is there haven’t been enough of them and at times when they’re really needed. Playing someone like Havertz, an excellent player but nobody’s idea of a deadly sharpshooter, as your central forward is fine, but it relies on other elements of the team picking up the goalscoring slack.
So yes, Arsenal would most certainly benefit from having a more ruthless No 9, but we also wouldn’t be having this conversation if the others were scoring goals, too.
Did Wolves and Southampton show too much patience?
Once you loosen the bottle, all the ketchup comes out at once: in a season when the Premier League trigger men have been relatively restrained, with only Erik ten Hag and Steve Cooper dismissed before this weekend, the number of sacked managers doubled on Sunday.
Wolves’ defeat by Ipswich was the last straw for Gary O’Neil, sent on his way to potentially be replaced by Vitor Pereira, while an embarrassing 5-0 defeat to Tottenham saw the end for Russell Martin at Southampton.
Neither of these decisions was a surprise. Wolves have won twice all season and Southampton are rock bottom with fewer points than Derby had at this stage of their historically awful, 11-point 2007-08 campaign.
Perhaps the only surprise was that they both took this long. Wolves had arguably more cause to delay: they had a four-game unbeaten run a few weeks ago which might have looked like a revival and there didn’t seem to be a huge number of qualified, desirable candidates keen to take the job.
Southampton clearly wanted Martin to succeed, but with every week of him insisting that they were actually playing well and it was just fine margins and small details that had them on five points from 16 games, it became increasingly clear that things weren’t working.
In fact, in both cases, it’s been clear for some time that things weren’t working and it has taken them too long to realise. There are broader structural issues at Wolves and Southampton, issues that have probably contributed to the delay in these decisions. But in delaying them, they have made the rest of the season much more difficult.
Southampton are probably a lost cause already. Nine points from safety and with a squad that is clearly just not Premier League standard, it doesn’t matter who their manager is, but if they had someone in charge who could have got more out of those players, they might still have a chance.
Wolves still have hope, five points away from fourth bottom, but in leaving things for as long as they have, they have made their job much less attractive for a new manager. A few months ago, someone like Sergio Conceicao, Graham Potter or David Moyes might have been keen, but as it is they are left with Pereira, a relative journeyman with a mixed reputation.
It feels counter to the prevailing opinion which bemoans clubs that don’t have patience with managers and allow them the time to do their work, but in this case, Wolves and Southampton showed too much patience.
Coming up this week
- This round of Premier League games is boxed off neatly by a trip to the coast, with Bournemouth hosting West Ham, who are in the unusual position of not actually being among the most hopeless clubs in the division this weekend. Apologies for tempting fate, Hammers fans.
- Midweek sees us return to cup competitions — specifically, the Carabao, because it’s quarter-final time. Wednesday sees Arsenal vs Crystal Palace, Newcastle vs Brentford and Southampton have the chance to raise their spirits by playing… oh… Liverpool. Then, on Thursday, it’s Tottenham vs Manchester United, where absolutely anything could happen.
- There’s some European action, too, if you’re into that. The Women’s Champions League has some really juicy ties, which include Real Madrid vs Chelsea and Lyon vs Wolfsburg on Tuesday, while Wednesday brings us Barcelona vs Manchester City and Arsenal vs Bayern Munich. Yes, please.
- And then, slightly randomly, the men’s Conference League has a full slate on Thursday: Chelsea host Shamrock Rovers, but the big one sees second-placed Vitoria play third-place Fiorentina.
What else to read
(Top photo: Getty Images)
