Welcome to briefing where every Monday during this season Athletic He will discuss the three biggest questions that will arise from the Premier League weekend football.
It was a weekend when Aston Villa closed at the Champions League, Brighton & Hove Albion and Crystal Palace shared as many red cards as the targets, Arsenal slipped again and Chelsea played a dull draw 0-0 with Brentford.
Here we ask about the odd last weeks of the season for the chosen champions, whether the premier League as a whole suits the terrible Manchester Derby, and if the displacement of Southampton has shown the promoted part of the next season exactly how to do things.
Does the end of this season become Liverpool … A little weird?
Arne Slot and Virgil van Dijk were angry with Michael Owen this week when the former striker suggested that the Liverpool season could end up only as brilliant, rather than historical, looking for a cabinet full of trophies in one stage.
The slot said the right point that there was nothing like “only” the title Premier League, especially for a club that has won only one of the things over the last 35 years. This season can not be considered anything but a triumph if and when they are confirmed as champions. They were the best team in the country of fair distances and the fact that it is a slot in the first season is even more impressive.
They still win the title quite cleverly. It is 11 points ahead, the remaining seven games remain, and if their form collapsed, would you believe Arsenal to take advantage of the benefits?
This means that the season ends quite strange, right?
The last four games of Liverpool in all competitions saw them to leave the Champions League, after Paris Saint-Germain folded twice, was convincingly defeated by the Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup finals, won closely against Everton and lost in a relatively limp way with Fulham.
Liverpool at the weekend suffered a rare league (Ryan Piers/Getty Images)
Maybe this is because we all let our brains re -involved from Pepa Guardiola Manchester City, who redefined what the champions look like: relentless juggernauts, who rarely fall in the middle of the age of 80. Maybe it is better for all of us that champions look mistakes, even fragile.
But for Liverpool and their supporters it must be a bit strange. If nothing else, because when they follow the show as Sunday, they can think: How many of this team will be there next season?
Trent Alexander-Arnold (missing in this game) has one leg and four fingers, futures van dijk and Mohammad Salah are still uncertain, Andrew Robertson’s smaller three-time mistakes for Fulham’s second goal is Emblem on his decline, Diogo Jota Finess is unbearable. Midfield looks widely good, but there is probably a significant surgery elsewhere, to the extent that half of the team next season could vary.
Which is not something you usually say about refugeed champions.
When the time comes, they will be enthusiastic and deserved to celebrate a fantastic success. At the same time, there may be a strange annoying feeling on the back of their collective mind.
What did Manchester Derby say about both clubs – and Premier League?
It was appropriate that Manchester Derby ended up by Manchester United passing the ball along the edge of the crime, no one willing or able to either shoot or provide a decent last ball until the referee finally seemed and threw the last whistle.
Describe this game as rough, probably gives it too much credit. The best you could say about it is that it happened. It took place a football match. What could anyone take out of it? What will you remember if you got to the end?
In the final stages that Andre Onana did, virtually no moments of real quality, perhaps except the missile shot of Omar Marmoush, and the general performance of Bruno Fernandes have not become behind.
You have to regret Captain United, the only player of any real class in his team, who looks like he is trying to do everything alone – not because of the misleading ego, but because he clearly knows he is the only one to do.
Bruno Fernandes after United’s Dreary Draw With City (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
The rest was not just boring or unusual, but quite sad.
The touchline is Ruben Amorim, desperately hoping to see some signs of progress, but they had to hop quite hard.
Then there is his team, a collection of young players who currently look quite helpless, but can be much better in another environment.
Take Patrick Dorguho, who was quite terrible, but you have a sense that could be a decent player: United was signed in January, because they were desperately desperate for a very specific player who is very little in the world, so he had to go straight and be immediately good. If Brighton signed him and relaxed it reasonably, he would be fine.
And then there is Kevin de Bruyne, approximation of once a great player who is still trying things that once made him so brilliant, but they simply don’t come. In the summer he will leave the feelings and Premier League legend, but when you follow him now, you feel like it would be a better end if he left last year.
It was suitable for the weekend as a whole: the first five of them dropped points, the great winners were Newcastle, who do not play until Monday and find two points from the probable places of the Champions League with two games in hand on all around them.
The longest current winning lane in the division is three games that are held together by Aston Villa and… Wolves.
Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, United and City were all up to one or the other, very poor.
So yes, Manchester Derby was terrible. But at the same time it did not seem in place.
Did Southampton Anti-Bluprint provide for promoted teams?
It is official: Southampton is down, their defeat in Tottenham on Sunday, which means that their return to the championship is confirmed, with seven accessories left, which makes it first in terms of games that the team has ever been displaced. Even derby in 2007-08 kept it for 32 games.
Being down with almost a fifth of the remaining season is embarrassing because it is possible to stand out equally terrible among this historically poor lower three.
Are they the worst team ever seen by Premier League? Maybe. The only thing they have left is to collect two points that mean that they do not complete the lowest points of a total of any slight reclamation of dignity, which nobody except participating people, and perhaps the derby party 17 years ago.
What they could do are wider importance is to provide a plan to not approach the Premier League season as a promoted page.
Their transformation activity is one place to start, virtually all their recruits disappointed, with a possible exception to Matheus Fernandes. Of course, the collection of the team that will be in the Premier League is extremely difficult, but there was a lack of imagination in their recruitment, and some of theoretically key arrivals came at the last minute (for example, Aaron Ramsdale).
Aaron Ramsdale couldn’t keep Southampton up (Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images)
Then it is how they played. There was no real sense to propose Russell Martin that he should play in a different way, because he was always a stubborn fundamentalist, and therefore Southampton hired him. So, the guilt is not with Martin, rather with the people who named him.
They should also be accused of how long they had been waiting for the negotiations: From very soon it was clear that it did not work under Martin, but kept it until the 16th. The game at which the moment was basically everywhere.
What this shows the season is that as a promoted party, as you play, no matter: the first season is about what you can survive, any necessary means, no matter how ugly it is. This is what Nottingham Forest and to some extent Bournemouth and Fulham did a few seasons and Brentford before that.
After you are founded and you have the basis of a decent team, you start thinking about the football you really want to play.
All this is easier to say than it does, and even with the approach they have chosen, Southampton does not have many excuses for how bad they were. But it’s something for teams at the top of the championship.
Comes
- One more game of a nice premier League, which should go, and it’s Newcastle, which after a harsh weekend for most of them suddenly looks pretty good for the Champions League – even more because they will play Leicester City on Monday evening.
- Tuesday sees that some women’s peoples league: England is gone to Belgium, while Spain vs Portugal could be living and Germany facing Scotland.
- Narbly with more and more Insipid Premier League season? Good news! The Champions League returns on Tuesday and there are several big game games that will start us: it is Bayern Munich VS Inter in Germany, while in London it is Arsenal vs Real Madrid. There is no bad answer when choosing it.
- And then on Wednesday it is Barcelona vs Borussia Dortmund and probably popular for the whole thing, PSG, against Aston Villa, which will bring a familiar face: Marco Asensio, who is of course technically a PSG player.
- Several seasons will depend on Thursday evening in the European League-Spurs, Eintracht Frankfurt hosted in the first stage of their quarterfinals, while Manchester United is at the Lyon and Rangers host club, while Bodo/Glimt vs Lazio completed the lineup.
- In the end, your euro lineup is completed by some action of the Pipe Conference League: Chelsea is in the Legion of Warsaw for the first stage of its quarterfinals, while elsewhere it is Djurgarden vs Rapid Vienna, Real Betis vs Jagiellonia Bialystok and NK Celje vs Firentina.
- Manchester City. 115 (at least) fees. The statement? Who knows.
(Best Photos: Getty Images)
