Big Weekend: Chelsea v Liverpool, Tottenham, Postecoglou, Haaland, Kane

It’s obviously all got a bit silly with the talk of things going wrong at Liverpool.

This week has featured far more mention of the word fissures than any of us surely expected or indeed needed about a club that goes into the weekend top of the actual league table.

But they might not be top of it by the time they play at actual crisis club Chelsea in a game that will create an uncomfortable international break for whoever loses it.

Meanwhile Ange Postecoglou continues his residence in the Manager to Watch section, but quite possibly for the last time. Quite possibly while not actually making it to Sunday’s game as a manager at all, watched or otherwise.

And in related news, we’re also confidently predicting some on-brand nonsense from Tottenham.

Game to watch: Chelsea v Liverpool

A rare Saturday outing for the game to watch as crisis club Chelsea take on mini-crisis club Liverpool at Stamford Bridge in the evening kick-off.

We’ve all – especially Mediawatch – had our fun with the idea that Liverpool losing a couple of tight games to a very good Crystal Palace side and a Galatasaray side well used to winning games represents disaster. We’ve all pointed out they are still top of the actual Premier League table.

But there is also a definite and troubling sense that while crisis talk is premature there was nevertheless something present in those defeats that had also been present in many of their wins, secured as so many of them were only in dramatic late fashion.

Another awkwardly difficult away game – Chelsea’s own more obvious current woes notwithstanding – really is not what Liverpool need at this time.

The likelihood is that by the time Liverpool kick off at Stamford Bridge they will no longer be top of the league, with Arsenal facing an actual bona fide crisis club West Ham on Saturday afternoon.

Chelsea have their own problems, of course, and really defeat for them would be even more damaging than it would for a wobbling Liverpool.

Were Chelsea to hit the second international break on just eight points from seven games and likely in the bottom half of the table, it is going to be a deeply uncomfortable couple of interlull weeks for Enzo Maresca given the way the Club World Cup – harshly, perhaps – had raised expectations of a title challenge that has already had to be downgraded to top-four challenge and which simply cannot be lowered any further at this time.

Team to watch: Tottenham

One of the great things about Tottenham is the sheer consistency with which they deliver their banters. You can absolutely always rely on them.

Take last weekend for example. Spurs had the chance to go second in the league, and all it required was a home win against the worst team in the country whose record read played five, lost five.

There is not a football fan in this country who didn’t know deep in their bones and with absolute clarity that Spurs were going to Spurs that up. The only shock was the fact they managed to spirit up an unlikely and entirely undeserved equaliser from somewhere after a second-half display that had achieved the seemingly impossible of managing to dig below the ground-level bar they’d set in the first half.

We all knew Wolves’ appointment with Dr Tottenham would deliver some kind of tonic, and so it proved.

And that brings us to this weekend’s trip to Leeds. Things are going okay for Leeds right now after a sticky start. They certainly don’t present as a classic Dr Tottenham patient at this time, but the good news for them is that they are in line to benefit from one of Spurs’ many other lines of hilarity.

And that’s ‘Pre-international break Spurs’, which, if anything, delivers even more reliably than the good Doctor.

Spurs have lost their last seven Premier League games immediately before an international break, including a 1-0 home defeat to Bournemouth last month that remains – somehow – their only defeat of this season.

Some of the others on the list are absolute doozies. There is, ridiculously, not one but two comfortable defeats at Fulham on the list. A 3-2 defeat at Brighton in which they led 2-0 at half-time. A 2-1 defeat at Wolves in which they led 1-0 at 90 minutes. A Dr Tottenham crossover event in a 2-1 home defeat to Ipswich.

The last team Spurs managed to beat directly before an international break was Luton, and they’ve been relegated twice since then.

There are plenty of reasons to think the trend continues at Elland Road this weekend. All the ingredients are there. An uptick in Leeds’ own form, Spurs apparently requiring increasingly desperate feats every game to save even just draws against quite mediocre opposition, the debilitating effort on a plastic pitch to secure said mediocre draw in midweek at Bodo/Glimt. The narrative is all there.

Player to watch: Erling Haaland

Worrying times for the big Norwegian, who having managed a mere eight goals in his first six games has thus equalled his worst ever start to a Premier League season.

Sure, the fact nobody else in the Premier League has managed to even make it beyond half that number of goals this season might help ease his pain – as might the nine goals he’s scored for club and country in four non-Premier League games this season – but we know it must be hurting to be falling so short of the standards he’s used to setting having already reached double-figures for Premier League goals by this point in both 2022/23 and 2024/25.

Maybe he can get back on track this weekend at Brentford, but the omens genuinely are not good here. The Gtech is one of only two grounds Haaland has played at in the Premier League without scoring a goal. The other is Anfield.

Manager to watch: Ange Postecoglou

We make no apologies for this becoming the Ange Postecoglou Section. If it’s any consolation, we’re pretty sure this is going to be the last time he’s eligible for a good long while.

We’re not even entirely certain he will still be a manager to watch by the time Sunday afternoon’s trip to Newcastle rolls around, with some fairly vocal members of the City Ground support urging Mr Marinakis to schedule an exit interview for Friday morning.

It says a lot about absolutely everyone involved that sacking Postecoglou after just six games wouldn’t be anywhere near the maddest or most controversial thing Mr Marinakis has done during his time at Forest. It’s probably not even as mad as appointing him in the first place.

Even if Postecoglou does survive until Sunday, it’s surely just delaying the inevitable. Newcastle are coming into this on the back of a sparkling Champions League win, Forest on the back of a crushingly disappointing Europa League defeat.

If this game goes the way all logic suggests it should at a ground where Postecoglou lost on both his visits with Tottenham, then the other side of the international break will look a long, long way away.

Three managers by mid-October is an astonishingly real prospect now for a club that six months ago was challenging for a Champions League spot.

As for Postecoglou, it seems wildly unlikely that the next chairman to give him a call will be from the Premier League. And that’s a shame.

Entirely understandable. Entirely correct and right that no other Premier League chairman would now consider Postecoglou’s approach a risk worth taking. But a shame nevertheless.

Football League game to watch: Ipswich v Norwich

The East Anglian Derby takes its place in the league fixture lists for only the second season since 2018/19 with neither side having made a particularly convincing start to the campaign.

Ipswich are pretty lucky their tally reads 10 points from seven games rather than 10 points from eight after the decision that the Blackburn game in which they trailed 1-0 while down to 10 men with 10 minutes remaining must be replayed in full.

And Norwich are even worse off with just two wins from their first eight games leaving them closer than anyone wants to be right now to the Sheffield clubs.

The good news for Norwich is that their record in what has admittedly only been a sporadically played fixture over recent years is decent. The last time they lost at Portman Road the goalscorers included an on-loan Giovani Dos Santos and Jon Stead.

European game to watch: Eintracht Frankfurt v Bayern Munich

There are few guarantees in this life, but there isn’t anything much closer right now than the promise that if you watch this game you will see goals, goals, goals.

Bayern Munich have already scored a plain nutty 22 goals in their five league games so far this season (as well as eight in two Champions League games). Harry Kane has 10 of those 22 goals (and four of the Champions League ones)

There is only one other Bundesliga team who have managed even to score more than half as many as Bayern at this stage, and that team is Eintracht Frankfurt, whose 17 goals scored are complemented by 13 conceded.

The two Champions League games they’ve played thus far have produced a 5-1 win and a 5-1 defeat, while in the league they’ve already managed a 4-3 defeat and a 6-4 win among some more routine 4-1 and 3-1 fare.

We’re no supercomputer, sure, but our rough sums tell us this game should therefore end up something like 7-3 to Bayern, with Kane scoring at least four goals. And at least two of those four will be penalties, obviously. All he scores, isn’t it? If you ignore all the hundreds and hundreds of other goals.

Women’s Super League game to watch: Manchester City v Arsenal

The actual match of the weekend takes place on Friday night, which Big Weekend traditionally if controversially does not consider to be part of the actual weekend.

That Friday night game sees flawless leaders Chelsea travel to second-placed Manchester United in a game where even City fans might hope against hope for a United win or indeed just any kind of hint of some vulnerability in Chelsea’s seemingly unstoppable machine.

Because as it stands, such are the absurdly high standards that Chelsea are setting, it’s already possible to make a fairly clear-headed argument that Arsenal are slipping out of title contention because they’ve drawn two of their first four games.