Man City’s midfield, Man Utd’s defence, Tottenham’s attack: 10 gaping holes and concerns in PL squads
The Premier League is back this weekend. Everyone ready for the big kick-off?
No, us neither. Even though it’s later than usual because of the World Cup it’s still caught us by surprise. England have got a whole series of Test cricket that only starts this week, for goodness’ sake. It can’t be the Premier League already, can it?
It can. But we’re not the only ones who aren’t fully prepared for things. Pretty much every team that isn’t Arsenal have got some kind of massive gaping hole in their squad or worrisome problem that threatens to spoil their season.
Here are 10 such holes/problems.
Tottenham’s striker
Harsh to be critical of Spurs’ endeavours this summer. Through sheer dread terror they have done a lot of very necessary things to both their defence and midfield, both of which are going to be far better than the relegation-baiting efforts of the last two years.
But there remains for now a conspicuous point of remaining weakness. Spurs have this summer bought a goalkeeper, a full-back, two centre-backs and two central midfielders. They needed all of those things and several of the ones they’ve bought are excellent. Fair play.
And the profiles of some of those players will undoubtedly help improve an attack that was given no chance under Thomas Frank, who left struggling and underperforming wingers and strikers and playmakers almost totally isolated as he withdrew further into a doomed plan of trying to 0-0 his way out of trouble.
Still, though. The fact Spurs haven’t – yet – made a single overtly attacking signing when their attack was so conspicuously cack last season is a surprise. Especially given how much work they got done so impressively fast earlier in the summer.
Savinho and Cody Gakpo now seem likely but neither is the reliable, transformative goal source they require, and have done since Harry Kane toddled off to Germany. It’s been three years, lads. We know he’s not exactly easy to replace but time to do something, surely?
Manchester City’s midfield
You’ve got to love a Community Shield kneejerk reaction. They’re famously even more reliable than opening-day kneejerk reactions, where we have a long and proud record of proving them to be in large parts guff.
But it was hard not to watch Arsenal’s midfield control the Community Shield in the style of Nelson Muntz holding off a much smaller child with one arm and not think we were seeing something of significance for how the year ahead might go for both clubs.
We all know Elliot Anderson is good, we’ve seen plenty of evidence for it to know that one anonymous outing in a friendly doesn’t change anything. But we do also know that he isn’t Rodri good. That’s a Mondo Duplantis level of high bar, but also the one that will inevitably be used to judge a player who’s cost £116m and is now, whether he or anyone else likes it or not, cast as Rodri’s direct replacement.
It really is only a couple of years since Manchester City had Kevin De Bruyne and Rodri and Bernardo Silva pulling the midfield strings as Pep Guardiola watched over them and even now before a meaningful ball has been meaningfully kicked it does all rather feel like City are heading for ‘I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them’ territory.
Manchester United’s defence
United’s midfield is also a problem despite the canny acquisition of Youri Tielemans from Villa, but never mind that. The alarming truth is that Manchester United are going to start the season with the same defence they started the season with four years ago. And they started that season by losing 2-1 to Brighton and 4-0 at Brentford to sit bottom of the league.
Dalot, Martinez, Maguire, Shaw isn’t a terrible defence, but it’s also not a good one. It’s one that definitely feels ‘four years older’ rather than ‘four years more experienced’ than the 2022 vintage.
And it’s just a dereliction of duty that they haven’t managed to improve upon any area of that defence in such a long time. There is nobody in that back four about whom there are no doubts or questions. None feels unimprovable.
It’s been a confused summer at United, a club where a newly principled stance on not competing in the silly money stakes has seen them left trailing by every other member of the Big Six who, reluctantly or weirdly gleefully, have at least accepted the way the wind is blowing and thrown the big bucks around when necessary. And, admittedly, sometimes unnecessarily.
But United are bargain-hunting. It might work. And they are at least in the position of not needing to perform significant surgery on their attacking options, where the market is now at its most openly absurd with so few apparent options and sky-high asking prices.
Yet as the transfer window ebbs away there’s a gnawing sense when looking across that United squad that Michael Carrick is being set up to fail with a creaking defence and a midfield still short of energy.
Only Johnny thinks differently. And you don’t want to find yourself agreeing with Johnny on predictions.
Liverpool’s fitness
Liverpool’s most obvious problem doesn’t appear to be a personnel issue. Sure, they have depth concerns in some areas as everyone inevitably must and the odd gap here and there and players they’d like to get in. From PSG, mainly, which gives you some clue about the nature of the squad-building that’s happening here.
But the biggest barrier to a successful Liverpool season appears to be fitness related. Andoni Iraola hasn’t been shy of mentioning that he’s found the players short of the level required to sustain the football he wants to play for a full game.
That doesn’t on its own have to be a huge worry just yet, because – and we must keep stressing this – the season hasn’t even started.
The concern is that it’s a pattern. Liverpool frequently wilted in the second half of games in the second half of last season and dark questions were being muttered about Arne Slot’s training methods. There were already real and valid concerns about the general fitness of this squad before Iraola arrived and started speaking openly about it.
We’ve seen at Bournemouth that Iraola’s ways can be incredibly effective when all is going well, and something close to disastrous when they’re not. As a manager stepping up from one of the well-run smaller clubs to one of the big beasts expecting to compete on four fronts, history is already against him.
If his players are blowing out of their arses after an hour of Andoniball then he’s got no chance.
Chelsea’s goalkeeper
One of the very best bits in recent Premier League lore is Chelsea just not bothering with goalkeepers while spending absolutely all of the money on absolutely all of the players in absolutely all of the other positions.
It is, now we think about it, perhaps the clearest single indicator of their modus operandi. That this is not so much a football club any more as it is a player-trading facility where footballers are merely assets to be bought and sold with the primary purpose of looking good on a balance sheet rather than a football pitch.
No money in goalkeepers, is there?
And now here we are again. Even in a summer where Chelsea have employed a proper manager rather than a LinkedIn yes-man gratefully for the gig, even in a summer where they’ve bought your Welbecks and Hendersons, which are definitely not long-term profit drivers, they still haven’t addressed this most important of positions.
Chelsea absolutely could and should be challenging for the title this year. They’ve a huge squad of excellent players, an excellent manager who might just be able to pull it all together and turn those impressive but often random and disparate raw materials into a compelling whole, and they’ve no European football to get in the way.
But they’re still going to have to do it all with Robert Sanchez, a man so blessed with entirely misplaced confidence in his own competence that he should really be in politics.
Aston Villa’s midfield
The estimable John McGinn has been a totemic figure for Villa for years now, but if Villa manage to continue defying gravity this season he might have to have his best season ever.
Youri Tielemans is gone. Amadou Onana is a long-term injury absence. Boubacar Kamara is making his own way back to fitness, but has at least managed valuable and encouraging pre-season minutes in recent weeks. Joao Gomes’ injury in the Super Cup against PSG is another short-term inconvenience.
It’s been another summer of flux and frustration for Villa, but while Unai Emery remains you know they’ll be fine in the end. But even for a manager of his talents, and even with a squad that looks reliable enough at both ends of the pitch, it’s hard to do anything consistently if you can’t control the middle of the pitch. It’s been a key strength of Villa in recent years, and one that suddenly looks stretched thin.
Newcastle’s Newcastle
One could, if one were so inclined, do this whole top 10 just about Newcastle. The only positive we can think of for Newcastle is that expectations for them this season are now so low that it’s actually almost impossible for them to fail. Even relegation wouldn’t really be that surprising, despite a right crop of Burnleys among the promoted trio.
Newcastle’s summer 2026 has made Newcastle’s summer 2025 look like a lovely time. They’ve lost their manager and another three of their best players with the guts ripped out of the elite midfield that did so much to keep them afloat during last season’s distress.
The replacements are unconvincing. An unproven manager and youngsters from outside Our League who cannot reasonably be expected to swiftly take up the necessary slack created by the departures.
Liverpool, Tottenham, Bournemouth, Leeds also has the distinct look of an early fixture list designed specifically to expose where Newcastle’s season could take them.
Fulham’s manager
We’ll definitely be wrong about the specifics here, but the sheer number of mid-table clubs who’ve had to take new-manager punts this summer means it’s absolutely certain that one of them has got it disastrously, catastrophically wrong.
We think it’s Fulham. Alvaro Arbeloa to Fulham is just altogether too compellingly a Shein version of Xabi Alonso to Chelsea. It surely all just falls apart at the seams in the first wash.
It could definitely just be us. It could definitely just be our own aversion to the idea of Fulham being managed by anyone other than Marco Silva.
But we do feel strongly that this was one of those times where the right manager turns up at the right club at the right time, and those are rare. The result was Fulham becoming a very steady and entirely reliable mid-table presence after a few yo-yo years.
That really could all change very, very fast.
They are far from alone, of course. Bournemouth, Palace and Newcastle have all had to take punts of their own. Nottingham Forest have chosen to, because Mr Marinakis cannot be stopped.
But while any or all of the appointments made by those clubs could go wrong, it just feels easier to at least see what they’ve gone for, what they’re trying to achieve. Fulham’s just feels like the biggest and riskiest punt of the lot, and not just because it comes after a period of such stability.
Coventry’s Sky Bet vibe
If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that what promoted teams did in getting themselves into the Premier League is swiftly of almost entirely secondary importance to what they do once they are actually there.
It really doesn’t matter at all how impressively you got yourself out of the Championship. You are going to need to give that squad a hefty coat of Premier League gloss if you want to have any chance at all.
Sunderland went for it with great success. Leeds were slightly different but still made clear and necessary improvement.
We don’t think either Hull or Ipswich can survive this season, but you can at least kind of see an effort.
Coventry have made some reasonable signings. But we fear they haven’t done the Sunderland-level work required to get the whiff of Sky Bet out of the place. Frank Onyeka. Loum Tchaouna. Taiwo Awoniyi. Especially Gus Hamer. We don’t hate any of those transfers on their own, but all of them look like great work for an aspirational club plotting their way into the Premier League rather than one that’s already here.
We’re not saying that every promoted club can just pull a Brian Brobbey or a Granit Xhaka out of thin air, but we are saying that Coventry look a conspicuously long way from doing that.
The Championship is a brilliant football league. But it’s very, very different to the Premier League. Too much faith in those who got you out of it has very quickly in the last few years become the surest route back into it.
Crystal Palace’s defence
The loss of Oliver Glasner, the most successful manager in Palace history, was always going to be the biggest wrench this summer.
But they’ve made as good an attempt at bottling that lightning by appointing Pierre Sage on the back of a season of absurd overachievement in France.
The obvious concern for him lies at the heart of Palace’s defence. They started last season by holding Chelsea to a goalless draw with a really very good back three of Guehi, Lacroix and Richards.
Two of those three are no longer around, and the only senior replacement is Takehiro Tomiyasu, last seen in our league as a vaguely unconvincing utility full-back at Arsenal.
Not hard to see how things have reached the ‘Fear For Them’ stage here.