Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday, The Athletic discusses the biggest questions posed by the weekend’s Premier League action.
This was the weekend that Manchester United bolstered their Champions League hopes with another surprise victory, while Arsenal lost for the first time this season after they had taken the lead in a Premier League match.
Liverpool’s winless league run extended to five matches with a dramatic defeat at Bournemouth, while Aston Villa’s unlikely title prospects were revived with an impressive victory at Newcastle United.
Here, we discuss the new title and relegation battles, highlight some very disappointing comments from one of the greatest managers the game has ever known, and ponder why Villa have got a march on the clubs below them.
Have Arsenal opened the door to a title race?
Just when you thought the season was getting a bit predictable, Arsenal have given us a title race.
If they had won their last three matches, Arsenal would be 11 points clear, a lead even greater than Liverpool’s nine-point advantage at this stage last season (incidentally, the champions, believe it or not, are now 20 points worse off than they were a year ago… £450million well spent).
Instead, Arsenal’s draws against Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, though not disastrous results when analysed individually, combined with a surprising 3-2 home defeat to Manchester United on Sunday, have opened the door to the chasing pack.
That pack comprises two teams: Manchester City, who, under Pep Guardiola, are a team to be feared at this time of year, and outside wildcard pick Aston Villa. Make no mistake, for a few weeks at least, this title race is back on.
Is a bit of jeopardy exactly the kind of galvanising motivation Arsenal need to click back into gear? Or are we seeing signs of them cracking?
Accusations of mental fragility have been levelled at Arsenal for a couple of years now and while those questions have been quiet in recent months, given their place on top of the Premier League, Champions League, and potentially heading for the Carabao Cup final, they will now resurface again.
Teams don’t win the league in January — ask Villa, Newcastle United or Leeds United from the late 1990s, or indeed Arsenal in recent seasons. Being top now, as Sir Alex Ferguson, Guardiola or Arsene Wenger will tell you, is the easy part. Seeing it through spring is the real challenge.
On Sunday, Arsenal looked inhibited at times. They looked stifled. Carefree, positive, nothing-to-lose United were their worst nightmare. In truth, Arsenal aren’t playing much worse than from a couple of months ago. They still struggle to break teams down from open play, they do still rely on set pieces, and they haven’t got a regular goalscorer. The difference on Sunday was that they were easy to play through in midfield, something that hasn’t been the case all season.
The atmosphere at the Emirates was nervous, too, and their next two opponents — Leeds (away) and Sunderland (home) — will give no quarter. It’s probably just a blip. You’d expect Arteta has surely learned the lessons from recent seasons. Either way, we’re about to see what Arsenal are really made of.
Are Spurs sparking a five-way relegation battle?
Meanwhile, on the other side of north London, Tottenham Hotspur are giving us a relegation battle.
Like the top end of the table, this issue felt cut and dried just a couple of weeks ago, with West Ham United struggling for form under Nuno Espirito Santo.
Two wins for Nuno (aided by his new assistant coach Paco Jemez) and a big victory for Nottingham Forest at Brentford have tightened things up at the bottom end too, with Leeds, Spurs and the free-falling Crystal Palace all in the mix now.
Thomas Frank has not yet been put out of his misery, despite almost the entirety of the Spurs fanbase seemingly having turned on him (one ‘Frank in or Frank out’ social media poll of 8,000 voters offered just five per cent support for the head coach).
January was the month for Spurs to head towards the top half with a run of winnable fixtures against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley. Instead, they took a paltry three points and are heading nearer the relegation zone… and in February, they’re facing both Manchester clubs, Newcastle United and Arsenal. Sacking Frank won’t solve Spurs’ long-term issues of poor recruitment and mismanagement at high levels in the club, just like sacking Ruben Amorim hasn’t fixed the inherent problems at Old Trafford, despite their recent improvement.
But what Spurs wouldn’t give for a Michael Carrick-esque boost to pierce through the engulfing gloom. It’s not like he used to play for them and was available a couple of weeks ago or anything.
Good luck, Farai Hallam — you’re going to need it
We’re all probably of the agreement that refereeing in English football is of a substandard level, right?
Compared to cricket and rugby, perhaps compared to other footballing countries, referees regularly make high-profile mistakes in the Premier League, and the introduction of the VAR system has been shambolic at times.
Still, it’s a thankless job, mostly because the abuse levelled at referees up and down the country at all levels of football every week from fans, players and managers far, far outweighs the crimes committed.
Into that climate comes Farai Hallam, the Premier League’s newest referee.
It’s important that Hallam is supported as best he can be for a couple of reasons: one, he’s from an ethnic minority background and two, he’s a former professional footballer, both of which make him a rarity in refereeing ranks.
Hallam, a defender, played professionally for three seasons, including at Stevenage and in Spain. An argument has long been made that referees give poor decisions because ‘they’ve never played the game’ and with player salaries at the level they are, how on earth do you attract ex-pros to go into refereeing when they retire, especially given the incessant accusations of bias they would receive?
Hallam made his Premier League debut at Manchester City versus Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday. He was presented with a difficult decision in the first half when Omar Marmoush flicked the ball up, and it bounced off the underside of Yerson Mosquera’s arm.
Hallam said no penalty. After a three-minute check, video assistant referee Darren England, vastly more experienced than Hallam, advised Hallam to go to the screen and review his decision. Hallam, in a bold and unusual move, stuck with his decision, deeming Mosquera’s arm to be in a natural position.
Given that Marmoush’s arm was symmetrically making the same movement as the pair tried to keep their balance, it was hard to disagree with that. Mosquera was also about six inches away when the ball was kicked at him.
Anyway, it’s not a clear-cut call. It was subjective, and the ball did hit Mosquera’s arm, so you could argue the other way, too, but Hallam made his decision.
How disappointing, then, for Guardiola to spend most of his post-match press conference questioning Hallam’s judgement, starting with this patronising and disingenuous remark: “The referee made a huge debut, now everybody will know him.”
Suggesting that Hallam was trying to make a name for himself was a depressing line for Guardiola to attack. The Manchester City manager then added he expected Howard Webb, chief refereeing officer at PGMOL, which oversees the officiating in English professional football, to “appear in the media to explain why it’s not a penalty”. He was also critical of fouls not being given for challenges on Jeremy Doku.
City didn’t lose this match because of a decision Hallam made. They won an incredibly forgettable and pretty inconsequential match 2-0. For Guardiola to focus on lambasting Hallam was pretty pathetic, all told.
If a manager of Guardiola’s experience and intelligence can’t see that in hindsight and offer an apology this week, then all you can do is wish Hallam the best of luck. He’s going to need it.
Are Premier League teams managing their squads right in Europe?
If further evidence was needed that the Premier League is stronger than ever, witness last week’s results for Liverpool, Newcastle and Spurs.
Liverpool sauntered past France’s third-best team, Marseille, on their own turf last week, overcoming an incredibly intimidating atmosphere to breeze to a 3-0 win. At the weekend, they lost to Bournemouth.
Spurs were equally as comfortable against Germany’s second-best team, Borussia Dortmund, winning 2-0 in north London. In the league, they couldn’t beat Burnley and indeed have only won twice (against Brentford and Crystal Palace) since October.
Newcastle also didn’t concede a goal in Europe, easing past PSV 3-0, but they too couldn’t repeat that form domestically, meekly losing at home to Aston Villa.
The trio sit in the top eight of the Champions League table going into this week’s final round of matches. What does this tell us? Yes, as has become evident in the past couple of seasons, the Premier League is becoming akin to England’s own super league, but also, none of those clubs are managing their squads terribly well right now.
Given how easily Liverpool wins in France, perhaps Hugo Ekitike could have been rested there instead of at Bournemouth, for example. Thomas Frank (among many other things) has struggled to combine managing the two big competitions (doing so for the first time in his managerial career).
The master at juggling European and domestic commitments is Unai Emery. While Slot was moaning about having to play two away matches in four days (and about missing a couple of key players), Emery, also without important figures such as Boubacar Kamara, was overseeing his Villa side playing the same tough schedule and win both games without conceding a goal. He rested centre-back pairing Pau Torres and Ezri Konsa for their impressive 1-0 victory at Fenerbahce on Thursday, and both were back at Newcastle to play crucial roles in a hard-fought win.
That’s how you do it.
Coming up this week