Welcome to The Briefing. Every Monday, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s Premier League football.
This was the week when Manchester City were in trouble for upwards of three minutes, Manchester United suffered a slightly strange defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion and Liverpool made relatively short work of Brentford.
We will ask if Arsenal’s win over Aston Villa will be more significant than just three early points, whether Noni Madueke has shown Chelsea that making the best of what they have is preferable to yet more signings, and whether Jordan Pickford’s error is Everton’s new biggest concern…
- Want to stay up to date with the best news and features as the Premier League season kicks off? Sign up (for free) to The Athletic FC newsletter
It’s always tricky to ascribe extra meaning to a win in August. The narrative of the season hasn’t fully formed, the league table means very little, not enough has happened to other teams to judge yourself against.
But there is the sense that Arsenal’s victory over Aston Villa will ultimately be worth more than just the three points.
Dropping six points to Aston Villa last season — that crushing defeat at the Emirates in April and the loss at Villa Park in December that precipitated their worst run of the campaign — was a big factor in why they couldn’t close the gap to Manchester City.
Beating Villa is significant enough, given how good they were last term and how good they promise to be this year. Arsenal weren’t the only side to come away winless from a trip to Villa in 2023-24: Arteta’s team, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea took two points between them.
Arsenal celebrate Leandro Trossard’s opening goal (Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
But given the psychological wounds that could remain from the consequences of Arsenal’s losses to Villa, beating them on Saturday feels like a bigger deal than it usually would.
The margins of victory were slim: Villa were really good for long spells and matched Arsenal before Leandro Trossard’s 67th-minute opener. Ollie Watkins missing the chance he did in the first half feels like the passing of a rare comet in how long it would take for it to happen again. The visitors were a David Raya fingertip from conceding to Watkins again in the second half, just before they took the lead.
Raya thwarts Watkins (Nigel French/PA Images via Getty Images)
Perhaps it was even more important that Arsenal won the game without being demonstrably the better side, as they were in both those defeats to Villa last season.
“The two previous performances, on paper, you have to win comfortably,” said Mikel Arteta after the game. “But we didn’t, so there was something missing. Today, we did it — with a bit of luck and individual performances, we managed to win the game.”
Manchester City have shown no signs of dropping off from last season, which means someone will need to improve, in whatever way they can. Arsenal winning games like this is a good start.
Should Madueke’s hat-trick teach Chelsea something?
The day didn’t start brilliantly for Madueke, who had posted his thoughts on the fine city of Wolverhampton on Instagram, something that ultimately doesn’t matter but could have made the afternoon ahead more difficult for him.
GO DEEPER
Madueke faces a battle to prove himself once again as he tries to impress a fourth head coach
A harmless but also needless controversy like this mainly served to remind people that Madueke was still at Chelsea. Cole Palmer’s excellent form limited the winger’s chances last season and this summer’s arrivals of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Pedro Neto and Joao Felix, plus Christopher Nkunku’s return to fitness, meant his prospects of getting game time under Enzo Maresca didn’t look brilliant.
Madueke felt like a forgotten man, which you could argue isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the chaos of Chelsea. If people aren’t paying attention to you, it does at least mean you are not being singled out for doing something wrong.
Madueke departs Molineux with the match ball (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
But it also led to suggestions that he could leave Stamford Bridge before the end of the transfer window. It’s a fool’s game to second-guess anything Chelsea do in the market, but after his hat-trick against Wolves, that prospect feels rather more remote.
Maybe this is just a talented but inconsistent footballer having a (very) good day, but it is tempting to think it could serve as a lesson to Chelsea: that patience, and working with what you have, is a more sensible and stabilising approach than how they have been doing things.
Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to simply see whether they could get more of a tune out of Madueke, rather than sign more attackers after some quiet performances in pre-season? Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to stick with Mauricio Pochettino in the summer, rather than create more instability by bringing in a new coach? Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to use Raheem Sterling in some way, rather than creating that mess of a situation?
GO DEEPER
Sterling wants to leave Chelsea – but which teams suit him best tactically?
This could be a one-off. Madueke might do little else for the rest of the season. Or he could make a few of their decisions this summer look a bit silly.
Is Pickford’s error the real sign that Everton are in trouble?
This wasn’t a great weekend for some Premier League goalkeepers.
Emiliano Martinez allowing Thomas Partey’s shot in for Arsenal’s second goal did not compare brilliantly with Raya’s incredible save from Watkins. Jose Sa’s errant positioning for Wolves was only exposed because of Palmer’s exquisite technique, but no ‘keeper who lets in six at home will be happy with their work. Arijanet Muric presenting Kevin De Bruyne with an open goal was a more blatant blooper and killed off any momentum that Ipswich Town might have gained from their early goal.
And then there’s Pickford. It was difficult not to find it funny when the England goalkeeper raised his hands to take the blame after his poor touch had allowed Son Heung-min to score: yes, on balance that one probably was your fault, Jordan.
Pickford apologies to the Everton fans (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
But the error was arguably a bigger concern for Everton than just donating one goal in a 4-0 defeat to a team they probably would have lost to anyway.
Pickford’s reputation is broadly based on his form for England, for whom he has been solid to good for the better part of seven years. Gareth Southgate trusted him, he produced some incredible moments in penalty shootouts and kept the errors to a minimum.
The same can’t really be said for when he plays for Everton. The mistakes have been more frequent and he often looks nothing like an international class goalkeeper.
That said, before this weekend, you wouldn’t say he was anything like their biggest concern. There are too many worries at Everton for them to fret excessively about Pickford, from the broad, existential horror of their ownership situation to the more specific problem that they don’t appear to have any particularly reliable full-backs. Throw in finishing their new stadium, shipping seven goals in their first two games of the season and how Dominic Calvert-Lewin has only managed one shot (not on target) in two games, and they’ve got plenty to worry about.
But if this mistake is a sign of what Pickford’s form will be like for the remainder of the season… well, there isn’t much cause for optimism.
Coming up
- Yes, yes, two rounds of the Premier League are complete, but arguably the season truly starts on Tuesday and Wednesday when some of the big hitters enter the Carabao Cup. On paper, the ties aren’t massively spicy, but perhaps one point of note will come from Newcastle United’s trip to Nottingham Forest. Technically speaking, Sandro Tonali will be available to Eddie Howe after serving his suspension for gambling offences.
- Tuesday and Wednesday will also see the confirmation of the final group of qualifiers for the new Champions League ‘league phase’. Probably the ties to keep tabs on are Galatasaray vs Young Boys, the first leg of which was absolutely bananas and stands at 3-2 to the Swiss side, while Bodo/Glimt are well placed to qualify for this stage for the first time in their history, taking a 2-1 lead into the second leg against Red Star Belgrade.
- When that is all done, the draw will take place on Thursday at 5pm. As you probably already know, there won’t be the traditional eight groups of four in the expanded format, but a single league in which each team has eight fixtures. The mechanics of the draw promise to be quite complicated, so we would advise you just ignore it all until after the fact and wait for us to tell you what’s what.
- The transfer window is slightly easier to follow, but that will come to a close — in England and much of Europe, at least — on Friday. Will anything big happen in the last few days? Will anyone do anything entirely absurd? Or will it all be just a bit of a damp squib, and we’ll have to try to get excited about a few loans and big teams selling off fringe players to turn an accounting profit?
(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
