Premier League Matchweek 3 Preview: What we learned, what everyone bought and what happens next
Two games played, about £3.5bn spent and the transfer window finally locked for everyone's own financial safety. With the squads now fixed, Matchweek 3 should tell us whether anybody actually knew what they were doing.
The transfer window is shut.
Thank Christ for that.
After two rounds of Premier League football, England's top 20 football clubs collectively decided that several months of careful recruitment had been a complete waste of time and spent the final days of August behaving like a bloke in a 24 hour petrol station at 3am on Christmas morning who's just remembered he has a wife and three kids.
There isn't much left.
A Toblerone. A vape. Two cans of Monster. A disgusting air freshener. Some screenwash. Possibly Bradley Barcola.
Doesn't matter.
Buy the lot.
By the time somebody finally locked the doors, Premier League clubs had spent about £3.5bn.
Three and a half billion pounds.
Deadline day alone accounted for more than half a billion.
At that level of spending, you're no longer strengthening the squad. You're wandering around the forecourt in your slippers shouting "HOW MUCH FOR ENZO FERNÁNDEZ?" while trying to find out if you can do £125m on Apple Pay.
Enough money that even Chelsea's accountant briefly looked up from his calculator and went, "kin' hell. That's a bit spenny!"
Still, we have learned a few things.
Liverpool have invented the 2-2. Newcastle's new manager appears to have constructed a recognisable football team remarkably quickly. Chelsea are extremely good and completely insane. Manchester United are back, pending the traditional confirmation that they aren't. Hull City have six points. Aston Villa have none.
And Sunderland appear to have won a transfer because their private jet was more persuasive than Crystal Palace's.
So rather than conduct the traditional transfer window autopsy before immediately pretending none of it happened in a Matchweek 3 preview, let's do the sensible thing.
All of it at once.
Ipswich Town v Liverpool
Andoni Iraola's Liverpool career currently has an impressive symmetry to it.
Newcastle 2 Liverpool 2.
Liverpool 2 Nottingham Forest 2.
Played two. Scored four. Conceded four. Points two.
It's less a start to a managerial reign and more the combination to somebody's luggage.
Forest led twice at Anfield last weekend and Liverpool needed another late intervention to rescue themselves, meaning Iraola is still waiting for his first Premier League victory.
Liverpool studied the evidence carefully.
Two games.
Four goals conceded.
Then spent an enormous amount of money on Bradley Barcola.
Another forward.
You have to admire the commitment.
Barcola is, admittedly, a sensational footballer and adds yet more frightening pace and invention to a forward line already containing enough expensive talent to destabilise a medium sized economy.
But if Ipswich score twice tonight, somebody at Anfield may finally be forced to type "centre back" into Google.
Ipswich themselves were beaten 5-2 at Old Trafford last weekend, although there was enough about them before United pulled away to suggest they haven't come up simply to hold everybody's coats.
Liverpool should win.
They probably will.
2-2, then.
Newcastle United v Bournemouth
I promised after Matchweek 1 that I wouldn't use the phrase "Newcastle 2.0".
I remain committed to this important public service.
Something is happening at Newcastle, though.
The 2-0 win at Tottenham was arguably more revealing than the opening draw with Liverpool. Matthias Jaissle's side had less of the ball, didn't appear remotely bothered by that fact and looked increasingly dangerous whenever they won it back.
Anthony Elanga suddenly resembled the Forest version again. Yoane Wissa scored. The defence looked composed. Newcastle attacked space rather than possession statistics.
There are, whisper it quietly, the beginnings of an identity.
Which is remarkable considering Jaissle has barely had time to learn where Greggs is.
Then came deadline day.
Matias Fernandez-Pardo arrived from Lille, giving Newcastle another extraordinarily quick, direct forward who can operate centrally or wide.
This completed a summer which, approximately four weeks ago, was apparently evidence of the collapse of the entire Newcastle project.
Bruno Guimarães had gone.
Anthony Gordon had gone.
Sandro Tonali had gone.
Kieran Trippier had gone.
PIF had apparently lost interest.
Newcastle were finished.
Presumably somebody was preparing to put St James' Park on Facebook Marketplace.
Collection only.
No timewasters.
Since then Newcastle have continued rebuilding the infrastructure and spent heavily remaking the first team.
An unusual manifestation of boredom.
Whether the new squad is actually better than the old one remains to be seen. But it is younger, quicker and increasingly looks as though it has been assembled for the bloke managing it rather than from whatever happened to be left in the cupboard.
Bournemouth at home is a useful next examination.
If Newcastle can control this one without necessarily controlling the ball, Jaissle's early work starts looking very interesting indeed.
Brentford v Sunderland
Sunderland won last weekend.
That was the boring bit.
Wilson Isidor's late goal against Fulham gave them their first victory of the season and, after surviving their first campaign back in the Premier League, Sunderland increasingly look like a club with rather greater ambitions than simply doing it again.
Then deadline day happened.
Malick Fofana was in Lyon.
Sunderland wanted him.
Crystal Palace wanted him.
Both clubs reportedly had private jets waiting.
There are transfer sagas, and then there are two Premier League clubs apparently recreating the Berlin Airlift over a 21 year old Belgian winger.
Palace thought they had him.
Sunderland thought they had him.
Fofana apparently changed his mind.
Then changed it again.
Sunderland owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus became personally involved.
Eventually Fofana chose Sunderland.
Somewhere in Lyon, presumably, a Palace pilot quietly turned the engines off, removed his little hat and went for a Toblerone.
It was a completely ludicrous end to what was actually a very serious window from Sunderland.
They haven't recruited like a club terrified of relegation. They've recruited like one that thinks establishing itself in the Premier League was merely phase one.
Which makes Brentford away rather interesting.
We may also get our first sight of some of the deadline day shopping.
After all that effort deciding which aeroplane to get on, Fofana may finally have to do something considerably more mundane.
Play football.
Brighton v Leeds United
Brighton lost 4-3 at Chelsea last weekend.
Seventy four per cent possession.
Three goals.
No points.
There are days when football analytics must feel enormously satisfying.
And then there are days when you've had three quarters of the ball, scored three times and still have to sit on a coach home staring out of the window like a Labrador coming back from the vet.
Chelsea deserve credit for winning it, but Brighton demonstrated enough to suggest they're going to make life extremely unpleasant for plenty of sides this season.
Leeds, meanwhile, have four points from their opening two matches after rescuing a late draw against Brentford.
Four from six is an excellent start, particularly for a side that spent enough of last season looking over its shoulder to develop a permanent crick in the neck.
The problem now is injuries.
Joe Rodon's absence is a significant one and suddenly makes a trip to a Brighton side that creates plenty rather less attractive.
Still, four points are already in the cupboard.
Leeds supporters may even be permitted to look briefly upwards before somebody reminds them where they finished last season.
Fulham v Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace's weekend was disappointing.
Their deadline day was considerably worse.
They lost Fofana to Sunderland despite apparently having an aircraft ready to collect him, which is a fairly elaborate way of being stood up.
Imagine getting dressed, booking the restaurant, ordering the taxi and then discovering she's gone home with Sunderland.
Palace then spent the remaining hours of the window trying to make alternative arrangements.
And they enter the weekend with attacking problems that make losing the Fofana argument slightly more irritating than it already was.
Fulham arrive having lost late at Sunderland and will regard this as precisely the sort of home fixture they need to win.
Palace will presumably just be pleased nobody can nick anyone from an airport until January.
Manchester City v Coventry City
Manchester City have played two.
Manchester City have won two.
Manchester City scored four at Crystal Palace last weekend.
Clearly something had to be done.
City's summer spending eventually wandered into the territory where individual numbers cease to mean anything.
Enzo Fernández arrived for £125m.
Elliot Anderson cost £116m.
More arrived.
Lots more.
At some point the word "rebuild" becomes inadequate.
This is Trigger's broom if Trigger replaced the handle, the brush, his van and eventually Trigger.
The worrying bit for everybody else is that City already looked good before completing the shopping.
Coventry, meanwhile, deserve a small word with whoever produced the fixture list.
Their first Premier League away game was Arsenal.
Their second is Manchester City.
Presumably Matchweek 4 involves Real Madrid at the Bernabéu, followed by a small asteroid.
Frank Lampard is far too experienced to judge Coventry's prospects on fixtures like these and so should everybody else.
Their season won't be defined by Arsenal and Manchester City away.
They're made of fairly stern stuff in Coventry anyway.
But whoever Richard Masters has operating the Premier League's supposedly random fixture computer might want to clear their browser history before Lampard gets hold of it.
Enjoy the Etihad, lads.
Nottingham Forest v Tottenham Hotspur
Forest have already demonstrated they're capable of making life awkward for supposedly superior opposition.
Twice ahead at Anfield, they eventually left with a point and possibly some irritation that it wasn't three.
Spurs had a rather less enjoyable weekend.
Newcastle went there, surrendered possession and then spent large parts of the afternoon demonstrating that having the football is only really useful if you eventually do something with it.
Roberto De Zerbi has been backed heavily.
Sandro Tonali was one of the headline arrivals in a summer of enormous spending.
The former Newcastle midfielder's departure produced considerably less mourning on Tyneside than outsiders might have expected.
One prominent Toon fan rather brutally summarised his three years as banned for the first, brilliant for six months of the second and largely stinking the place out in the third.
Football supporters can be terribly sentimental.
Forest away therefore feels like an interesting early test for De Zerbi, particularly against a side whose counter attacking game already caused Liverpool plenty of problems.
A long term project is a wonderful thing in August.
By September, somebody called Darren with a picture of a bulldog as his Twitter avatar is demanding to know why there isn't a Plan B.
Hull City v Aston Villa
Hull City have six points.
Aston Villa have zero.
Read it again if necessary.
Hull followed their opening day victory over Manchester United by winning at Coventry.
At which point we probably have to stop treating the United result entirely as slapstick.
Two games is obviously nothing, but promoted sides survive by collecting points before everybody has worked them out.
Hull have six already.
Naturally, they responded to winning every league match they've played by signing another six players on deadline day.
Apparently there were areas of concern.
That took their summer intake to a frankly ridiculous 18 new arrivals.
If the bloke who prints the names on the shirts has developed a nervous twitch, you can understand why.
Villa have a rather different problem.
Played two.
Lost two.
Scored none.
And their summer has provided a particularly vivid demonstration of football's commitment to competitive balance.
Villa built an excellent side.
Villa qualified for Europe.
Villa threatened the established order.
The financial regulations then effectively congratulated them on their progress before directing them towards the dismantling department.
Morgan Rogers went to Chelsea.
Ezri Konsa went to Arsenal.
Emi Martínez went to Chelsea for £7.5m, which in 2026 Premier League money is approximately the price of a meal deal and a packet of paracetamol.
Congratulations on becoming competitive.
Please proceed to dismantling.
A trip to a promoted side with six points is therefore exactly what Villa need.
Or absolutely the last thing they need.
Funny how often those are the same fixture.
Everton v Manchester United
Manchester United are back.
Again.
After losing at Hull on opening weekend, United responded by beating Ipswich 5-2.
Five goals.
Old Trafford happy.
Crisis over.
Put the Norwich scarves back in the drawer.
Except United supporters emerged from deadline day looking distinctly unconvinced.
Carlos Baleba is an excellent signing and addresses an obvious midfield problem.
Eventually.
For the moment, United have spent a considerable amount of money on the solution and are still waiting to take it out of the box.
The wider concern is what wasn't addressed.
Defensive questions remain and, because this is Manchester United, every unanswered question will now be discussed by approximately 14 former players across six television channels until somebody gets sacked.
Everton, meanwhile, continue to look suspiciously normal.
This remains concerning.
They've recruited sensibly, appear competently run and have David Moyes providing the sort of adult supervision normally required when a school trip stops at a motorway service station.
After the last decade, Everton supporters should probably remain suspicious.
If this continues they may accidentally enjoy football.
And if they unexpectedly challenge Europe, presumably one of the cartel six will get caught doing something unspeakable in a Travelodge and Everton will receive a ten point deduction.
Arsenal v Chelsea
And finally, the main event.
Six points plays six points.
One side has gone about acquiring them with the quiet efficiency of defending champions.
The other appears to have done it after being given three cans of Red Bull and told defending is for cowards.
Arsenal went to Villa Park on Monday night and won 1-0.
No drama.
No seven goal thriller.
No aircraft waiting in Lyon.
Bukayo Saka scored.
Arsenal went home.
It's becoming irritating.
Chelsea beat Brighton 4-3.
They have also won both games.
They have conceded five goals.
Xabi Alonso appears to have created a football team capable of looking like the best side in Europe and eleven blokes who met in a pub car park twenty minutes before kick off within the same passage of play.
And yet they keep winning.
There is also the small matter of Emi Martínez.
Chelsea spent all summer conducting transfer business with numbers that looked like international dialling codes, then arguably made one of their smartest signings for £7.5m.
A World Cup winner. Twice a Yashin Trophy winner. Still Argentina's number one.
Seven and a half million quid.
Manchester City paid nearly seventeen times that for Enzo Fernández.
Football has stopped having prices. It just has numbers now.
And Martínez now returns to the Emirates, where his senior English career began, wearing Chelsea colours. That should be nice and quiet.
Sunday should actually tell us something.
Arsenal provide the first proper examination of whether Chelsea's chaos is merely early season noise or part of something genuinely frightening.
Chelsea, conversely, will test whether Arsenal's controlled start is quite as comfortable as it looks.
And with a few fitness questions hanging over both teams, the final team sheets may be nearly as interesting as the match.
It's September.
Nobody wins a title in September.
But somebody can certainly spend Monday morning being told they've blown it.
Welcome back.
So, what do we actually know?
Almost nothing.
That's the beauty of Matchweek 3.
Arsenal and City look ominous.
Chelsea look excellent and clinically insane.
Liverpool haven't won.
Newcastle appear to have discovered an identity remarkably quickly.
Hull City have six points and apparently responded to this alarming success by buying everybody else they could find.
Sunderland have ambition, three points and demonstrably better access to private aviation than Crystal Palace.
Manchester United may be fixed.
We'll check again at approximately 2.07pm on Sunday.
Villa desperately need something.
And after roughly £3.5bn of summer spending, every manager now has the squad he's been given until January.
No more deadline day miracles.
No more private jets sitting on French runways.
No more £100m emergency purchases.
For four whole months, they'll actually have to play football.
The transfer window is shut.
The excuses department remains very much open.
