Premier League Review - Manchester City and Arsenal are the least bad

Everyone is the worst team in the world

Liverpool played West Brom. They almost looked like they might have a challenge for the Premier League. Indeed, Jurgen Klopp took the job, and was appointed, because of such a belief. Arsenal were still Arsenal, and everyone else was destroying themselves. The league was and is a joke.

Which means as Liverpool took on West Brom and Spurs took on Newcastle United, it was the chance of the also-rans to take advantage of the horrendous state of the league. Chelsea wouldn’t play until Monday but Manchester United had lost to Bournemouth. The Champions League places had become winnable and neither side faced serious opposition.

The problem was, of course, that every team is the worst version of their team that they could be. Liverpool are drawing at home to West Brom, and Spurs are losing to Newcastle United. Everyone keeps saying that the top four have no interest in success, but neither does anyone below them. The Champions League places are there to be stolen, just not by anyone in the Premier League.

Manchester United are hopeless under Van Gaal

Louis van Gaal is in danger of having his contract extended. If that happens, then we might as well give up and all go home. As Paul Scholes says - and this is paraphrasing multiplied by the effect of artistic licence - if Van Gaal keeps happening then we might as well all spoon our eyeballs out into our tea saucers. Against Bournemouth, it was obvious what was going to happen, and it happened. United were overwhelmed in their traditional manner.

You can make excuses about defensive injuries if you wish, but it ignores past performances as an indicator of future achievements. That might be a legal requirement when it comes to the stock market, but everywhere else it’s common sense. This season, and last, United have been obliterated by sides which could run harder, for longer, and who played without faff.

Superior sides, with better technique, could beat them too, but that doesn’t give hope to the less expensive sides in the league. Arsenal scythed through the side earlier in the season with their speed and accuracy of passing. United’s defence had neither the experience nor intelligence to deal with it, and so they duly lost. But that is not the only way to play United successfully.

A couple of weeks ago, Leicester City showed that a willingness to attack at pace, and a level of fitness that allowed swift attacks upfield would be enough to trouble United. It might have been set pieces that did for United, as it was against Wolfsburg, but the problem remained that those fouls came from United trying to deal with an opponent who could make use of the flanks and do so with their pace. Playing through the middle to attack, United’s slow trio of Juan Mata, Marouane Fellaini and Michael Carrick were often crowded out. It was obvious, but it was effective.

United are at a point when playing this way is predictable and ineffective, and inferior players can be organised in such away as to attack and defend against them successfully. A quarter of a billion pounds has been deployed to make sure that Van Gaal can organise a team to his tastes, and yet he is incapable of making up an eleven to be the equal to the sum of its parts, let alone better than them. Bournemouth, Leicester and West Ham have demonstrated his limitations, there is absolutely no point in United extending the experiment any further.

Arsenal give themselves a chance, again

Congratulations to Arsenal. Arsenal are the team that are top of the league and therefore it cannot be argued that they are the best team in the country. After all their problems they are at the top of the Premier League table.

Against Aston Villa, they were clearly superior and they made little fuss over dispatching such a miserable, pointless side. It is the kind of side that Arsenal have often struggled against in the past, in that they were eleven men who bothered to turn up for a game of football. But Mesut Ozil and Aaron Ramsey took care of the opponents. Olivier Giroud even got to score, as the charity season really kicked into gear. In the absence of Alexis Sanchez and so much more, Arsenal won.

The thing is, the reason that people might be surprised is that failure is so recent. Only last weekend, they couldn’t even beat Norwich City, an awful side, and incurred injuries to Alexis Sanchez and Laurent Koscielny. They are basically a joke of a side until they finally find the consistency to prove otherwise. There was an article written last week about Arsenal being at the vanguard of the statistical revolution, showing that Arsene Wenger was now not football’s most modern throwback. Well, top of the league, he finally has the chance to show that is the case. It is no surprise that people will remain unconvinced until he manages to be top of the league post-March. Champions League qualification ended up as a remarkable achievement, but this time it might end up hampering him.

Leicester get to show Chelsea the way - possibly

Leicester. Ranieri. Chelsea. Mourinho. Never has anyone who achieved so little ever achieved so much, and never has anyone who has achieved so much ever achieved so little. The whole thing is being set up as a farce, as if Claudio Ranieri has alighted on a sacred formula while Jose Mourinho has utterly lost it. Of course, the truth is something more prosaic, that LEicester City have been admirable but lucky, in the sense that so many goals conceded have cost so few points. Chelsea, on the other hand, have something far more serious going on as players have lost faith in mourinho, and possibly, their careers, and only has he now apparently found a way to plug them back into celebrating life.

It’s a bizarre situation for Mourinho and Ranieri to find themselves in at this stage of their careers, but there can be no doubt, until January at least, that they cannot find some way of returning to what is expected. Leicester should fall off soon enough, and Chelsea should find a way back up the league, even if they continue to remain alienated from their leader.