The Premier League is back, baby. For the next nine months, your weekends are going to be dominated by goals, glory, despair and all sorts of nonsense. That’s why we love it.
Gameweek one is in the books, with plenty of thrills and spills to whet the appetite. Liverpool opened the season with the defence of their title, only to suffer a bit of a wobble in a late win against Bournemouth, while أرسنال secured a victory away at مانشستر يونايتد that was more gritty than glamorous.
For the most part, fans enter the first weekend of the new season full of optimism. What if their team really can win the league? What if their dreams do come true? Those who emerge from those first games victorious often cling on to that sentiment, but the losers’ spirits go up in smoke. The first and last days are the only ones to bring out that emotion.
So, in honour of gameweek one, BALLGM have cobbled together our hottest takes. Not necessarily things we’re certain will happen, but some quick rethinks over how the season may play out.
The Premier League is back, baby. For the next nine months, your weekends are going to be dominated by goals, glory, despair and all sorts of nonsense. That’s why we love it.
Gameweek one is in the books, with plenty of thrills and spills to whet the appetite. Liverpool opened the season with the defence of their title, only to suffer a bit of a wobble in a late win against Bournemouth, while Arsenal secured a victory away at Manchester United that was more gritty than glamorous.
For the most part, fans enter the first weekend of the new season full of optimism. What if their team really can win the league? What if their dreams do come true? Those who emerge from those first games victorious often cling on to that sentiment, but the losers’ spirits go up in smoke. The first and last days are the only ones to bring out that emotion.
So, in honour of gameweek one, بالجم have cobbled together our hottest takes. Not necessarily things we’re certain will happen, but some quick rethinks over how the season may play out.
Managers need time to implement their ideas and that’s becoming decreasingly possible in the modern game. Those are both true, at odds as they unfortunately are. There’s a school of thought that Ruben Amorim will make Manchester United great again if given the right tools and that he deserves patience. That said, no one can deny how worryingly little they’ve kicked on since his appointment last November.
Sunday’s 1-0 loss to Arsenal has been labelled gutsy and promising. In some senses, yes, that’s a fair assessment, given the stronger team on the day finished 15th last season and the other has realistic aspirations of winning the title. In another, it shows the levels of straw-clutching you have to go to in order to praise what United are nowadays.
What do Amorim’s United do well? Score goals? Nope. Keep goals out? Nuh-uh. Control possession? Only when the opposition plan for it. Play their formation correctly? Not even that – there’s a long history of other managers’ 3-4-3 systems working far more cohesively than this hodgepodge of players almost randomly thrown together.
Amorim has now won only seven of his 28 Premier League games at the wheel – a shockingly low win rate of 25 per cent – and is the fastest manager to reach 15 losses of a side that hasn’t just been promoted, per أوبتا. It’s not looking good, is it?
There is a clear desire on all levels at United to run with one plan for better and worse – Marcus Rashford urged them to do this as the door hit his bum on the way out – but you can’t help but feel they’re running with Amorim for worse and worser.
Let’s stay at Old Trafford for one more point before we take this rodeo elsewhere. Sunday was the first time that United’s Benjamin Sesko and Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres had played in the Premier League, with both finding out how difficult it is to adapt to life in England’s top tier.
Gyokeres started and completed 60 minutes before being replaced by Kai Havertz having appeared off the pace while boasting only a couple of moments of any quality whatsoever – winning a free-kick for being thrown to the ground, and then outmuscling Matthijs de Ligt for a loose ball. There was no sense that he was going to score or create any danger in the box whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Sesko had to settle for a place on the bench and was introduced shortly after Gyokeres’ withdrawal. However, he too struggled to get into the game, though at least he could point to having to face one of Europe’s most formidable centre-back duos in William Saliba and غابرييل Magalhaes.
Big-money strikers don’t always pan out as planned, even despite the hype and the supposed guarantee of goals they’re meant to bring. Remember when Arsenal, تشيلسي and United fans bickered over Alexandre Lacazette, Alvaro Morata and Romelu Lukaku? Those deals all went swimmingly.
Gyokeres and Sesko clearly need more time to settle, but at first glance, they’re going to need to do a lot more suffering if they’re to actually prove successful signings, particularly given the weight of expectation they’re having to manage.
Football’s best signings at the elite level rarely prove to be those north of around £70m, but rather the ones between £40m and £60m. They often turn out to be the best value for money. You can look at most of مانشستر سيتي‘s major purchases in the Sheikh Mansour era to realise that.
Kevin De Bruyne, رودري, Riyad Mahrez, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva are some of their more understated purchases who boomed into club legends. Jack Grealish at £100m, for example, didn’t really live up to the hype, and Erling Haaland at £50m isn’t the same because of the agent fees and supremely high wages he’s on.
At £46.5m, Tijjani Reijnders has half a chance of making that first list. His debut on Saturday, scoring and assisting in a 4-0 thrashing of Wolves, was one of the very best in Premier League history. There is a De Bruyne-shaped hole that City must fill and he’s made a pretty decent first impression. If this is more than a one-off and he reminisces the Belgian playmaker even more so, then he will have a huge say in where this year’s title goes.
“He is a typical player we need in the Premier League,” Pep Guardiola said of City’s new No.4. “He is an incredible, big signing for us. His work ethic, a holding midfielder occupies a lot of spaces and then after the control with the ball and his movements. And then he is trying to get in behind and score – really pleased.”
There’s a reason why Brazilian football experts were higher on استيفاو Willian than even his Palmeiras team-mate and Real Madrid striker إندريك, and that’s because this boy is quality. Chelsea were largely laboured in their 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace, though that wasn’t for the want of their new winger trying.
Estevao played with the fearlessness you’d expect of a wonderkid of the Selecao. He burst down the right wing whenever an opportunity was afforded, took up every invitation to get on the ball and try to make something happen. In a Blues team that can turn monotonous if the game isn’t going as planned, that’s going to prove an invaluable trait.
“The personality has been top,” concurred Enzo Maresca. “You can see that he is from البرازيل, they are different and he is going to be a fantastic player for the club. We know about Cole [Palmer], Estevao needs time to adapt but he is going to be important for the team… He is already showing that in our training sessions and for no doubt – slowly, slowly – he will become a very important player for this club.”
How slowly Estevao gets there may be the more pertinent question. As Maresca alluded to, Palmer became a global superstar quite soon after a fine run of games for Chelsea, and there’s nothing to suggest the Brazilian teenager can’t follow a similar path. These sorts of stories about a young player suddenly exploding are hardly isolated cases.
Across London, another Brazilian made headlines this weekend, with Richarlison scoring two exquisite goals in Tottenham’s 3-0 victory at home to Burnley. The first was a perfect redirection of a Mohammed Kudus cross back towards the far post, and the second an acrobatic scissor kick reminiscent of the one he scored for Brazil at the 2022 كأس العالم.
Saturday’s performance followed a mighty showing during Spurs’ UEFA Super Cup defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties, and despite Thomas Frank previously highlighting his admiration of Dominic Solanke, the No.9 spot is now Richarlison’s to lose.
“He deserves a lot of praise,” Frank said of the Brazilian. “He was very good against PSG and today he was exceptional, with his work-rate, driving the team, link-up play, hold-up play, just dominating and then the two finishes. So happy on his behalf and again performance department, medical department did a top job to build him. I think a few of you know he was not involved in the first friendly because we had to build him. That will be continuous and something we need to look at throughout the season. It is only the second game of the season, there is a long way to go but very positive with him.”
Frank has an almost flawless record of getting the best out of his strikers. During his first season at Brentford, Neal Maupay scored 28 goals to earn a £25m move to Brighton. Remember, that’s £25m in 2019 money. Remember, that’s Neal Maupay. Ollie Watkins was then converted from a winger into a striker and found similar fortune in finding the net, while Ivan Toney, Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa hit new heights under Frank’s management.
Whenever Richarlison has been fit and actually playing as a centre-forward, he has scored goals for Spurs. If he can keep injury-free, he will benefit from Frank’s game plans. We usually see at least one outsider enter the Golden Boot race each season, and two of them in Mbeumo and Wissa played under the Dane in 2024-25. There’s method in this mad thinking.
Well, ideally Liverpool would extend Ibrahima Konate’s expiring contract to avoid another player leaving for diddly squat, but this is more about the principle. The club shouldn’t be afraid to lose him next summer and he mustn’t be deemed irreplaceable.
Talks over Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi are ongoing irrespective of Konate’s future, given the Reds’ lightness in the centre-back department anyway. That’s also the main reason why Liverpool shouldn’t be forcing the Frenchman out before the end of this window.
However, Konate, once a pivotal partaker in Jurgen Klopp’s high line, hasn’t appeared anywhere near as comfortable in a similarly chaotic system with Arne Slot organising it. He’s meant to have fresher legs than veteran partner Virgil van Dijk, yet it was the younger of the two who found themselves in a heap at the hands of Antoine Semenyo on Friday when Bournemouth ended up losing 4-2.
Liverpool, the supposed kings of the transfer market having already made around £200m in player sales this summer, should not be at the mercy of any of their players. They won’t be held to ransom, and if Konate wants to continue his career elsewhere, they should be fine with letting him decide that freely for himself. Their story will go on and they will find a way to get by and improve, even in the PSR era.
The Alexander Isak saga is boring, at this point. Just get it done with and let us get on with our lives. Let’s get him in that red shirt in time for a return to Tyneside for Monday Night Football next week.
Newcastle are said to be eyeing two strikers before the window shuts, with Brentford’s Wissa and one more in their sights. As it turns out, they may already have the ready-made replacement for Isak in their ranks already.
Eddie Howe decided to start Anthony Gordon through the middle for Saturday’s trip to Aston Villa, which somehow yielded only one point instead of three. Newcastle were at their brilliant, suffocating best even without their fierce St James’ Park crowd roaring them on and acting as the 12th man. In beginning with three wingers – Gordon, Harvey Barnes and the electric Anthony Elanga – the Magpies ran amok and on another day would have scored a hatful. They didn’t need a nominal No.9 to carve Villa to pieces, and Howe may have stumbled into a longer-term solution.
When asked if he saw starting Gordon as a centre-forward as playing without one at all, Howe replied: “I don’t look at it like that, though. He has played there for us before and he’s played very well. He’s played there a lot in training as well. He’s played the No.9 coming on, moving when we’ve made a change in a game, so that’s not something totally alien to him. He’s done it many, many times. He enjoys the role, so that’s another big thing. It’s not like you’re asking him to play there and he’s going, ‘I don’t really want to do that, I don’t enjoy it’. I think everyone likes to be the focal point of the team. I thought he played well, so I don’t see there being a negative.”
If allowed a run of games, the goals may flow again for Gordon, whose Premier League tally dropped from 11 to six over the last couple of seasons. Get him in threatening positions and he should do the damage.
