Premier League Matchweek 4 Preview: Three Games In and Apparently We Know Everything
Three games into the Premier League season and the conclusions are already in. Arsenal are champions, Spurs may never score again, Hull are invincible and Manchester United are back. Apart from when they aren't. Welcome to Matchweek 4.
Three games. That's all we've had.
And already everyone knows everything.
Arsenal are champions. Manchester City are champions. Chelsea are title contenders. Liverpool have fixed it. Tottenham are broken. Aston Villa have forgotten what a goal is and Hull City are apparently AC Milan circa 1989.
Manchester United are back.
Manchester United are not back.
Manchester United are back again.
Manchester United drew with Everton.
We'll come back to them.
This is the wonderful thing about September. Nobody has enough information to know anything, but everybody has just enough information to become absolutely certain.
So, armed with a statistically irresponsible sample size and the confidence of a bloke who's watched half a YouTube tactics video, here's what Matchweek 4 might tell us.
Or completely disprove by teatime.
Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest
Aston Villa have played three Premier League matches and scored no goals.
Not not many goals. None.
One point, one shot on target against Hull last weekend and the sort of attacking urgency normally associated with somebody browsing curtains in Dunelm.
This is particularly awkward because Villa spent the summer being congratulated for becoming competitive before financial regulations invited them to sell quite a lot of the people responsible.
Morgan Rogers went to Chelsea. Ezri Konsa went to Arsenal. Emi Martínez went to Chelsea for £7.5m, which in modern Premier League accounting is approximately the price of having your gutters done.
Villa have gone from Champions League qualification to trying to remember what happens after the ball reaches the opposition penalty area.
Unai Emery is far too good a manager for this to continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, football has a wonderful habit of hearing sentences like that and replying, "Go on then."
Forest arrive after holding Spurs 0-0 and having a goal chalked off by VAR. Oliver Glasner has made them difficult to play against and Villa desperately need something to go in.
At this stage I wouldn't be fussy.
Own goal. Deflection. Beach ball. Pigeon.
Just something to remind everybody which bit of the net they're aiming for.
Bournemouth v Brentford
Bournemouth have been considerably better than their points total suggests.
Unfortunately, football continues its ridiculous insistence on awarding points for results rather than vibes.
They were superb for half the game at Newcastle last weekend. Alex Scott ran midfield, Bournemouth went two up and St James' Park was beginning to make the sort of noises normally heard when somebody discovers a parking ticket under their windscreen.
Then Newcastle came back.
Another lead gone.
Bournemouth have now surrendered seven points from winning positions, which gives Marco Rose a fairly straightforward tactical problem: keep doing all the excellent football, but when winning, don't suddenly become a spaniel who's heard a firework.
Brentford, meanwhile, remain Brentford.
Organised. Physical. Difficult. Almost aggressively sensible.
This may be the most Brentford fixture ever devised.
Chelsea v Hull City
Hull City have seven points from nine and haven't conceded a Premier League goal.
Not one.
Manchester United couldn't score against them. Coventry couldn't score against them. Aston Villa couldn't score against them.
Hull celebrated this astonishing defensive record in the traditional manner by signing approximately another football team.
Six players arrived on deadline day, taking their summer recruitment to 18.
There are people currently playing for Hull who presumably haven't met everyone who plays for Hull.
And yet it's working.
Which makes Chelsea rather fun.
Xabi Alonso's side lost at Arsenal last weekend but remain one of the most exciting attacking teams in the league. João Pedro looks terrific, Morgan Rogers has settled immediately and Cole Palmer remains Cole Palmer.
Then there's Emi Martínez, who might prove one of the bargains of the entire window at £7.5m.
Chelsea spend more than that accidentally. Someone probably pressed the wrong button on the coffee machine at Cobham last year and £11m went to Strasbourg.
Hull arrive at Stamford Bridge as the only side in the league yet to concede. Chelsea have hundreds of millions of pounds of attacking talent.
Hull have three clean sheets.
This is why we watch football.
Crystal Palace v Ipswich Town
Crystal Palace finally won last weekend and naturally the winner involved Ben Chilwell.
Because after spending deadline day sitting beside a private jet in Lyon waiting for Malick Fofana to choose them, Palace eventually watched him get into Sunderland's aeroplane instead.
There are easier ways to get dumped.
Fofana presumably looked out of the window somewhere over France and saw a Palace representative still standing on the tarmac holding flowers and a WHSmith meal deal.
Palace scrambled around for alternatives. Chilwell arrived and promptly scored on his debut.
Football occasionally rewards administrative panic.
Ipswich's opening weeks haven't exactly been a wellness retreat either, but there have been enough moments to suggest they aren't here merely to provide Premier League clubs with somewhere pleasant to spend a Saturday afternoon in Suffolk.
They do need points soon, though.
"Encouraging performance" is one of those phrases that becomes progressively less encouraging when there's a zero next to your name in the table.
Liverpool v Fulham
Alexander Isak appears to have remembered he's Alexander Isak.
This could be important.
Two goals at Ipswich doesn't mean the Newcastle version has definitely returned. Ipswich aren't Real Madrid and we're still at the stage of the season where one good afternoon can move you nine places up the table.
But there were signs.
The movement was there. The finishing was there. Most importantly, the slightly unsettling calmness was there: the expression of a man who has just scored a Premier League goal but appears mostly concerned that he needs dishwasher tablets on the way home.
Newcastle supporters know exactly what happens if that Isak turns up every week.
Liverpool certainly do. That's why they spent all that money on him.
He's now the league's joint-leading scorer with three, while Florian Wirtz is beginning to look much more like the footballer Liverpool thought they'd bought. Bradley Barcola came off the bench at Ipswich and immediately demonstrated that he can run at approximately the speed required to travel through time. Cody Gakpo has looked excellent too, although he's a fitness doubt for this one.
Suddenly Liverpool's attack looks horrible to play against.
Andoni Iraola spent the first two league games discovering increasingly elaborate ways of drawing 2-2. If Isak starts firing consistently alongside that collection of attacking talent, perhaps Liverpool don't need to solve every defensive problem immediately.
They can just score more than you.
Fulham should probably be concerned by that.
They've played three and lost three, conceding seven. Álvaro Arbeloa wants expansive football.
Anfield may not be the ideal venue to demonstrate exactly how expansive.
Tottenham Hotspur v Everton
Tottenham have not scored a Premier League goal this season.
Three games. Zero goals.
They spent enormous amounts of money in the summer and appointed Roberto De Zerbi, a man whose entire footballing philosophy appears fundamentally opposed to nothing happening.
Nothing is currently happening.
It gets better.
Richarlison isn't in Tottenham's Premier League squad after wanting to leave and refusing a new contract. His deadline-day move to Everton then collapsed.
Everton are now visiting Tottenham.
And Tottenham haven't scored.
That's not a subplot. That's EastEnders.
De Zerbi says he doesn't regret the decision because it wasn't really his decision. He would apparently quite like Richarlison available if Richarlison wanted to be there.
Which presumably leaves Richarlison watching Tottenham fail to score while sitting somewhere in the training ground eating a yoghurt.
Spurs have never started a league season with four consecutive blanks.
Everton, meanwhile, remain unbeaten since the opening weekend. Jack Grealish is looking useful and David Moyes continues to give the whole operation the reassuring air of a man who remembered to bring spare batteries.
If Spurs don't score again, the long-term project officially enters its traditional next phase.
A bloke called Darren with a bulldog avatar putting DE ZERBI OUT in his bio.
Sunderland v Arsenal
Let's get something straight about Sunderland.
They're not this season's surprise package.
They did that last year.
They finished seventh and qualified for Europe, which rather spoiled any opportunity to sneak up on everybody unnoticed this time around.
What's impressive is that they've carried on looking entirely like they belong. Four points from three isn't extraordinary, but there has been no obvious second-season wobble. They've kept much of what made them good, strengthened intelligently and then spent deadline day winning an aviation-based transfer battle with Crystal Palace for Malick Fofana.
Modern football recruitment occasionally resembles an episode of Succession filmed at Lyon Airport.
Now the champions arrive.
Arsenal have won three from three in the league and followed that by winning in Naples on Wednesday. They look composed, deep and horribly difficult to beat.
They are very good.
We do, however, briefly need to discuss Mikel Arteta's relationship with the technical area, although this is less about Arteta than the increasingly peculiar way the rule is being enforced.
Matthias Jaissle was booked against Bournemouth for repeatedly straying outside his. Other managers have questioned the consistency since, while Arteta occasionally appears to regard the white rectangle as more of a serving suggestion.
The obvious solution is surely to pick a lane.
Police it brutally and book everybody who steps outside or relax the whole thing and intervene only when somebody is genuinely taking liberties. You could even let the opposition bench complain first, although that introduces an entirely different problem.
Nobody wants to be the Premier League manager who grasses another manager up for standing in the wrong place.
"Fourth official! Sir! Mikel's outside his box again!"
You'd have to resign at full-time.
Either way, the current arrangement where one manager gets booked for wandering and another can apparently pop out for a paper isn't particularly convincing.
The actual football should be fascinating. Sunderland drew 2-2 with Arsenal at the Stadium of Light last season and their defensive organisation makes this a proper test rather than some plucky-underdog expedition against the champions.
Granit Xhaka gets his former club, while Bruno Guimarães gets the Stadium of Light wearing an Arsenal shirt.
I'm sure everybody will behave impeccably.
Coventry City v Brighton
Coventry have no points and haven't scored.
And I'm still not particularly concerned.
Look at the fixtures.
Arsenal away.
Then Manchester City away.
Who produced this list?
Satan?
They lost only 1-0 at City last weekend and made one of the title favourites work considerably harder than expected.
Now they finally get something resembling a normal Premier League examination.
Brighton have been Brighton.
Interesting, inventive, capable of looking excellent for long stretches and then doing something that makes their supporters stare silently into the middle distance.
Coventry need their first goal and their first point.
This is where their season actually starts.
Unless the fixture computer has Bayern Munich waiting next Tuesday.
Manchester United v Manchester City
Ah.
Here we go.
Manchester United are back.
Possibly.
They lost at Hull, beat Ipswich 5-2 and then drew 2-2 with Everton.
So the latest medical assessment is that Manchester United are both back and not back simultaneously.
Schrödinger's football club.
You cannot know whether Manchester United are good until you open the box.
Unfortunately, the box contains Manchester City.
Michael Carrick did an excellent job last season. That matters. This isn't some bloke who won two matches, said "the lads have been brilliant" in a press conference and was handed a five-year contract because Gary Neville liked his body language.
But expectations have changed, and this is the first really useful examination of whether Carrick's United are genuinely progressing or merely experiencing another of the club's periodic bursts of competence.
City have won all three.
Enzo Maresca has therefore dealt with replacing Pep Guardiola in the irritating manner of someone who hasn't immediately fallen over.
Elliot Anderson has also decided City are the "kings of Manchester".
Excellent.
There is nothing football enjoys more than somebody announcing themselves king immediately before visiting the people they're king of.
Carrick sensibly declined to join in.
City should be favourites, but this is Old Trafford, it's a derby and it's precisely the sort of fixture in which Manchester United occasionally remember they are Manchester United for 94 minutes before forgetting again the following weekend.
We will therefore conduct our latest assessment of whether United are back at approximately 6.30pm on Sunday.
Please retain your receipt.
Leeds United v Newcastle United
Monday night. Elland Road. Two unbeaten teams and another useful examination of what exactly Newcastle are becoming under Matthias Jaissle.
There has been plenty to like.
They drew with Liverpool, beat Tottenham and came back from two goals down against Bournemouth.
There has also been enough not to like that nobody needs to start commissioning the statue.
Bournemouth were excellent in the first half at St James' Park. Alex Scott caused enormous problems and Newcastle looked uncomfortable until the game changed.
But coming back from two down matters. So does the gradual emergence of a more direct attacking style, and Matias Fernandez-Pardo is now getting closer to his first league start.
Then there's the goalkeeper.
James Trafford is at Leeds after Newcastle spent an exhausting portion of the summer trying to sign him. Newcastle eventually bought Lukas Hornicek instead, and Hornicek has impressed.
So Monday night features the slightly uncomfortable experience of Newcastle taking their new girlfriend to meet the girl who wouldn't text them back.
Nothing weird about that.
Leeds themselves are unbeaten with five points from three and have started the season with enough competence to make everybody who lazily pencilled them into a relegation fight reconsider.
Elland Road on a Monday night will not be pleasant.
Which is exactly why this is interesting.
Jaissle's Newcastle have looked at their most dangerous when opponents give them something to attack.
Leeds probably will.
Someone may just want to remind Jaissle where the white line is.
Apparently they're measuring these things now.
Sometimes.
So what do we actually know?
Very little.
That's the point.
Three weeks ago Hull were relegation favourites. They haven't conceded.
Tottenham spent heavily and appointed one of Europe's most interesting coaches. They haven't scored.
Villa were a Champions League club. They haven't scored either.
Liverpool looked chaotic. Alexander Isak has started looking like Alexander Isak again.
Manchester United are back.
Probably.
Arsenal look like champions because they actually are champions. City look like title challengers because changing manager apparently hasn't inconvenienced them very much. Chelsea look dangerous. Sunderland look exactly like the good football team they already were last season. Newcastle look promising, unfinished and extremely quick.
And somewhere at PGMOL headquarters, a man with a ruler is carefully measuring a technical area while Mikel Arteta walks past the window.
This is Matchweek 4.
By Saturday teatime, most of what we think we know will be nonsense.
Perfect.
