There’s a top-of-the-table Premier League clash to enjoy at the earliest possible opportunity, while the Bundesliga’s brave new broadcasting era has us briefly intrigued.
Game to watch: Manchester City v Tottenham
The fixture computer has blessed us with a top-of-the-table clash at the earliest possible moment. Unless you consider Arsenal v Aston Villa on the very opening day such a thing, in which case you’re a damn fool. Even more so if you’re going to start indulging AFC Bournemouth and their Acme shenanigans in such alphabet-based nonsense.
No, the second weekend of the season is the first time such a thing can legitimately happen, when you have a whole one game’s worth of compelling evidence of how the entire season might look, as long as every other team in the league is roughly as bad as Wolves and/or Burnley.
Embryonic league table whimsy aside, it’s still a fascinating game. Historically, City v Spurs is already a fixture simply not to be missed by anyone for any reason. It has delivered goals, goals, goals and a frankly absurd number of pants-pullings by silly old Spurs.
Last season’s 4-0 splattering was Spurs at their Angeball best against City in the very deepest depths of their astonishing season-wrecking autumn funk, but the wildest thing about that result is that it is only very slightly an outlier.
Working backwards from that game, the Etihad encounters between these two during the Pep era have finished 0-4, 3-3, 4-2, 2-3, 3-0, 2-2, 1-0, 4-1 and 2-2. And let’s not forget that ludicrous Champions League quarter-final second leg in 2019, which City actually won 4-3 on the night as Spurs went through on away goals.
It has been as close to guaranteed entertainment as the Premier League can offer. We’ve run it through the supercomputer and this fixture has the highest xN (expected nonsense) stats of any in the entire Barclays universe.
And yet even without the fact it’s a top-of-the-table clash with sky-high xN values, it would still be the game of the weekend anyway for actual reasons. City looked a million dollars against Wolves last weekend, while Mohammed Kudus and Richarlison looked like absolute world-beaters for Spurs against Burnley.
There were hugely encouraging signs for both teams’ seasons. But the phrases ‘against Wolves’ and ‘against Burnley’ mean care must be taken. We don’t yet really know how much of what we saw last weekend was these teams being good and those teams being rubbish. We have an inkling about which victory/performance was the more reliable long-term indicator, but we don’t yet know.
We should have a far clearer idea about both teams after this game, even if it is one that itself has recent history for deception.
Spurs, because they are Spurs, come into this game on the back of a week where they’ve once again decided to subject their fans to another of their trademark ritual humiliations for sh*ts and giggles, while also taking the bold step of unsettling and alienating the striker who scored two brilliant goals for them on the opening weekend. There really is nobody else who does it like Spurs do.
But we already have a decent clue as to how Thomas Frank might set them up for this one. The Super Cup final ended in disappointment but for 85 minutes Frank’s 3-5-1-1 really did work strikingly well and if we’re honest we suspect Spurs would cheerfully take a 2-2 draw from this one.
In a way, the transfer failings of this week and the summer as a whole make Frank’s job easier for this specific game. He can’t be accused of going too defensive when he has literally no No. 10 anyway.
There seems no reason not to go to City and try the triple-pivot midfield that made life so awkward for PSG in Udine, while who doesn’t want to see Kevin Danso launching long throws at John Stones’ head?
For City, it’s also a bit of a free hit in its ridiculous way. A sterner test than poor denuded Wolves could provide, surely, and one where a compelling victory would lay down a significant early-season marker about just how back they might be. But also one in which failure can just be shrugged off and put down to xN.
READ: Ranking all 97(!) players left out of opening Premier League matchday squads by how p*ssed off they might be
Player to watch: Eberechi Eze
A good way to endear yourself to a new club’s fanbase is to have completely pied off their biggest rivals along the way. Emmanuel Petit knew it. Willian knew it. Eden Hazard knew it. But perhaps nobody has ever known it quite like Eberechi Eze, who kept Spurs on the hook until Arsenal’s time of need was upon them.
Spurs must have known this could happen, and that it would look just awful – especially in the wake of the Morgan Gibbs-White fiasco. We do think Eze would have joined Spurs, but we do think it would only have happened once he was absolutely definitely certain Arsenal weren’t coming back.
The whole ‘Oh he just wants to play in the Conference League qualifier to help Palace out before he leaves’ turned out to be the bullsh*t it always appeared to be, a convenient way to drag a transfer out even when dealing with the arch transfer-dragger-out himself in Daniel Levy.
The result is Eze being an absolute hero to Arsenal fans before he’s even kicked a ball for them. It’s a lovely place to be. And it’s distinctly possible he still won’t kick a ball this weekend, but he’s still going to be the player to watch.
He’ll surely at the very least be presented to the crowd before Arsenal’s opening home game of the season against Leeds, and should help ensure a buoyant atmosphere. There will be songs. There will be p*ss-taking. There will be endless shots of Eze in the stands watching on and penny-for-his-thoughtsing from the commentators.
And that’s the worst-case scenario. That’s if he doesn’t play. Imagine if he does.
READ: Eberechi Eze might be Arsenal’s Bruno Fernandes or Mo Salah
Team to watch: Manchester United
There was a lot to like about Manchester United’s performance against Arsenal on the opening weekend, but any optimism from that narrow, unfortunate defeat will dissipate quickly if they don’t get a result at Fulham this weekend.
United were simply unready and unprepared for the start of the new season, still stuck with the same utter absence of reliable goalkeepers. It is staggering to us how often really big clubs do this. The window may be open until September 1, but the start of the season is in mid-August, and those games do still count. It wasn’t sprung on United with no notice.
Another week has passed and nothing has been done to address the most obvious and glaring of issues.
Fulham were as lucky to nab a point at Brighton as United were unlucky to walk away with nothing against Arsenal, but they represent a deeply awkward second fixture given the way the first one has gone.
Fulham away is nobody’s idea of an easy game. It is not one where victory would normally necessarily be mandatory. But for United, after last season and the way the opening weekend panned out, it already feels like one where the result is of far greater importance than performance.
This is Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About. You can’t be taking the positives if you find yourself with one point or worse from two games after finishing 15th the previous season and when the flaws in your squad are and remain so very, very obvious.
Manager to watch: David Moyes
It will be a proud moment when Moyes leads his Everton team out against Brighton for the first ever Premier League match at their magnificent new stadium, but one that he surely approaches now with a touch of trepidation.
The wave of optimism he and Everton rode on his return to the club last season has crashed, and Monday night’s effort at Leeds was a pretty pitiful one for an established Premier League club against a newly-promoted one.
Everton were passive and ponderous, allowing Leeds to set the tone and tempo of the game throughout. It nearly delivered a point – although for what it’s worth we simply cannot understand the fuss around the penalty given the way James Tarkowski moved his arm towards a ball coming at him from such a distance – but it wasn’t exactly a showing to inspire confidence for the season ahead.
A new stadium is blessing and curse, with home advantage no longer quite the familiar helping hand it once was as everyone gets used to the new surroundings. Yet Everton and Moyes cannot afford to make a slow start to life on the docks if the club is to avoid the kind of worries and anxiety that have been all too common in recent Premier League seasons.
Football League game to watch: Charlton v Leicester
It’s not been a convincing start to life back in the Championship for Leicester, who needed a late goal to beat existential dread’s Sheffield Wednesday at home and then lost at Preston having also gone out of the Carabao to League One Huddersfield.
Charlton, meanwhile, are at this early stage faring rather better on their own return to the second tier from the other direction having beaten Watford, drawn with Bristol City and avoided Carabao banana skins (their newest flavour of surely deliberately undrinkably unpleasant energy drink).
European game to watch: Bayern Munich v RB Leipzig
We don’t normally include Friday night games in here, but come on. Bayern v Leipzig would be a fine opening night Bundesliga game in a regular season. But now it comes with added Mark Goldbridge. You have to admit you’re intrigued.
You can watch it on the BBC as well if you like, or on YouTube. But out of sheer morbid fascination if nothing else we’ll be watching to see just how and how quickly the world’s most Deliberate Partridge performatively perma-furious internet ragebaiter manages to make Bayern Munich v RB Leipzig all about Andre Onana and Altay Bayindir.
Just this once. And then never again.
