Premier League winners and losers: Amorim sack; Emery, Maresca struggle; Arsenal, Woltemade shine
Arsenal have exposed problems at Chelsea, Liverpool look great and Nick Woltemade is fun. But Ruben Amorim needs to be sacked if he is doing ‘everything’.
The Premier League table is taking shape with teams with four wins and four defeats at either end, and Manchester United taking their rightful place of 14th.
But supporters should be content with Amorim’s latest reaction to a 16th defeat in 31 Premier League games. And at least they’re scoring, which is more than can be said for some…
Liverpool
The champions have spent less time in the lead in the Premier League this season than Arsenal, Bournemouth, Brentford, Chelsea, Everton, Manchester City and Spurs, courtesy of winning goals in the 88th, 100th, 83rd and 95th minutes.
One read is that they have been lucky, scamming undeserved victories to land a false position atop the table.
Another is that Liverpool have a perfect record without clicking into gear yet, with their record signing able to be eased in slowly. The odds are that their performances will improve rather than results regressing to the mean of their displays thus far.
And while Arne Slot is still making game-changing substitutions, Liverpool will just continue to make and capitalise on their own luck either way.
Fabio Carvalho
That penchant for a late strike still flows through Carvalho, whose six career Premier League goals have come in the 75th, 80th, 98th, 90th, 89th and now 93rd minutes.
The Brentford long throw gets everyone eventually. They have done remarkably well to keep so much of their identity despite what was lost in the summer.
Nick Woltemade
A club-record signing centre-forward on a six-year contract scoring on his debut might concern Newcastle supporters of a certain predisposition to omens and harbingers of pre-season doom.
If Woltemade’s agents didn’t negotiate a release clause or secure gentleman’s agreements in writing given recent events, that’s on them.
But if these are to be three goal-laden, trophy-winning, Champions League-worthy years before he unceremoniously and controversially destroys his reputation on Tyneside, then what a start to a remarkably enticing role as Newcastle’s saviour.
Few players will have ever enjoyed quite as much leeway as the Alexander Isak replacement. The desperation for anyone to step into those shoes and succeed is palatable at St James’ Park and any sort of goal drought would have been forgiven on the basis of who that player isn’t, as much as who that player is.
And Woltemade just so happens to be an excellent player with a unique skillset which seems wonderfully suited to the Premier League and a Newcastle side who spent the opening month crying out for a centre-forward of any repute.
He alone was the difference between Newcastle starting the season with a defeat and three goalless draws in four games, and belatedly kicking off their campaign with a first completely Isak-less Premier League win since February 2024.
Arsenal
It is a painfully modern prism through which to view a result but the impact of Arsenal’s summer investment helping routinely dispatch the side who poached their sporting director might not have been lost on some in the boardroom.
While Nottingham Forest’s appointment of Edu as Global Head of Football has forced the acrimonious exit of the club’s most successful modern manager and led to a largely scattergun transfer window which has bore no fruits thus far, Arsenal responded impeccably.
Andrea Berta was brought in with the specific remit of identifying and procuring players who can help Arsenal reach the notorious fifth phase of their grand plan. Five new signings starting one of the most impressive wins of Arteta’s reign suggests he has made a decent start.
If Arsenal ultimately are to win trophies – and Arteta knows that is the minimum objective in the eyes of many now – then the two main marks against their credentials must be eradicated: a lack of both attacking variation and squad depth.
He made specific note of the “unpredictability” players like Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze have introduced, with Viktor Gyokeres settling well too.
And Arsenal beating such an accomplished side without William Saliba, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, three players whose absences might have caused the entire house of cards to collapse in past seasons, shows that scratching beyond the surface only reveals more quality now.
It was a focused recruitment drive which didn’t really seem to be within the capabilities of Edu, but Berta has nailed it to give Arteta all the tools he needs.
Spurs
Thomas Frank has spoken frequently about his desire to improve Spurs defensively without impinging on their obvious attacking quality. It is easier said than done but thus far he does seem to have succeeded.
Ange Postecoglou managed 76 Premier League games for Spurs and there was not a single sequence of just one goal being conceded in four consecutive matches among them. Frank has done in his first four games what his predecessor never could.
Andoni Iraola
There is a slight danger of this column turning into a regular love letter to Iraola and Bournemouth but their brilliance is worth frequently commending.
And in winning the Well-Run Club derby to equal their best sequence of victories in all of last season, Bournemouth might actually have usurped Brighton as the blueprint for non-elite Premier League clubs to aspire to.
It is not normal for an 18-year-old to excel on his debut in place of a £34m centre-half who himself was signed to help replace a pair sold for in excess of £100m. But Veljko Milosavljevic is the next cab destined to depart for a small fortune and huge profit after Ilya Zabarnyi, Dean Huijsen and presumably Bafode Diakite.
The Serbia youth international only had three full training sessions but Iraola, the centre-half whisperer that he is, knew Milosavljevic was ready – even with James Hill making only his eighth career Premier League start to the side of him.
Their defensive excellence in the face of ludicrous upheaval has been impressive, and Bournemouth remain an attacking force despite Justin Kluivert and their two expensive summer signing forwards having barely played. None of this is normal.
Manchester City
Pep Guardiola will not be naive enough to think beating Manchester United is a turning point for Manchester City, even if avoiding a regular banana skin from their past is a cause for relief.
But that was an absurdly effective way to underline the difference a world-class goalkeeper and goalscorer can make in a proper team structure. Enzo Maresca should take notes.
Gianluigi Donnarumma was phenomenal at one and and Erling Haaland clinical at the other. It will not always be that simple but there are times when those two playing well will be more than enough.
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Jordan Pickford
With Tim Flowers and Paul Robinson finally overtaken, only 20 keepers have more clean sheets than Pickford (89) in Premier League history. And of those, only Nigel Martyn, Thomas Sorensen and Jussi Jaaskelainen never played for a member of the Big Six.
Pickford has conceded three goals in his last nine starts for club and country. Give him a couple more years under David Moyes and he will usurp Ben Foster (94), Lukasz Fabiaski (97), Jaaskelainen (110), Sorensen (112), Shay Given (116) and perhaps a few others on that list, all while far too many people still pretend he’s rubbish.
Crystal Palace
Never before have Palace gone this long without a defeat either in all competitions or in the Premier League specifically. Their current streak of ten games unbeaten is at least four more than any other side.
That back three of Chris Richards, Maxence Lacroix and Marc Guehi is part of the secret. In the 27 games they have started together they have won 14, kept 16 clean sheets, conceded just 22 goals and lost only four times. If that isn’t worth winding Liverpool up over while costing yourselves £35m then nothing is.
Robin Roefs
The most clean sheets a goalkeeper has kept for a promoted Premier League side in the last two seasons is three by Aaron Ramsdale for Southampton in 2024/25. It cost them £18m and he left once they were immediately relegated.
Roefs is on fire and has already kept two clean sheets in four Sunderland games for less than £10m. For a 22-year-old in only his second full campaign as a professional it isn’t bad going and might represent the most important signing of a transformational summer.
Kevin
Probably need to talk about him at some point. Why not after a 15-minute debut cameo in which he had as many shots as any other player, created one of Fulham’s four chances, completed the joint-most dribbles of any player and made more accurate crosses than anyone all game?
Scott Parker
He might not especially feel like a winner, but Burnley didn’t lose 9-0 and if they ever stop conceding avoidable penalties in stoppage time they might actually be onto something.
Premier League losers
Ruben Amorim
And on go Sunk-Cost Fallacy FC, digging deeper to the core of the actual earth in a desperate search for a semblance of proof that the last year of relentless redundancies, cost-cutting and expensive squad overhauling has been in any way worth it.
The idea that Manchester United have people in place at any level from boardroom to pitch who are, as Sir Jim Ratcliffe put it in February 2024, “best in class, 10 out of 10s”, is and will remain for the foreseeable future entirely preposterous. The man himself completely undermines it.
This manager in these circumstances certainly isn’t best in class, nor are the players he is trying to awkwardly force into something resembling a palatable shape and system, nor the individuals responsible for appointing him and backing him in spite of mounting evidence they have made another catastrophic mistake.
The captain is pointing out tactical deficiencies in post-match interviews. The best academy product in a decade is a weapon in a culture war between the coach and an unhealthy proportion of the fanbase, with a couple of others already sacrificed at the altar of managerial ego. In almost a year there has been no sign that any of this is building towards anything positive or sustainable.
But fans should fear not: Amorim is “suffering more” than them and he “will do everything” to change that. Aside from compromising even slightly on a detrimental game plan which suits none of these players; or making suitable in-game alterations; or managing to go a whole press conference or interview without alluding to resigning or being sacked.
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Unai Emery
It will require a far more sustained spiral of awfulness to properly threaten the job security of Emery, around whom Aston Villa have deferentially built for the last three years. But Victor Lindelof in central midfield did feel like a ‘Where It Went Wrong’ long-read in the making.
Not to mention the continued deployment of Emi Buendia, which has only been exacerbated by the Argentine actually being their best and seemingly most committed forward so far this season.
The damning indictments on the composition of this squad only continue with a brief glance at the line-up picked against Everton: most of the players were signed by Dean Smith and no summer signings have been deemed ready or worthy yet.
But Emery cannot persist with an attacking plan which has produced nothing so far. While Harvey Elliott, Evann Guessand and Jadon Sancho do not solve issues with width and pace, they should at least bring a semblance of energy, bite and variation to a hilariously stilted forward line.
Aston Villa cannot spend the entire season muttering under their collective breath about PSR. The time for Emery to compartmentalise those issues and find viable solutions on the pitch was about a month ago.
Brighton
Fabian Hurzeler felt Brighton “dominated” Bournemouth despite barely any positive metrics actually weighing in favour of the Seagulls, who were also undermined by the eye test on an afternoon when their faith in experience faltered.
Lewis Dunk, James Milner and Danny Welbeck have been crucial in what Brighton have built under numerous different managers, but there are occasions on which their inevitable shortcomings will be exposed. Bournemouth are precisely the sort of team which will and did target them.
It is still early in the season, but Brighton took 10 points from the equivalent fixtures last campaign. Four points this time around only enforces the sense that they have either taken a step back or are standing still while others overtake them.
Ange Postecoglou
Not a game in which the sense in Nottingham Forest’s decision making could be even vaguely judged. Postecoglou had barely trained with his new squad and followed a philosophy which, by his own post-match admission, will be overhauled by the next game.
“I cannot afford to waste time. This is not a project,” he said, noting Wednesday’s Carabao Cup game against Swansea as when “we will start to see some real principles be embedded”.
As ever with Postecoglou, he said all the right things and motivating even an understandably disoriented dressing room will not be difficult.
But even he acknowledged a need to deliver instantly, which is no guarantee for a coach who in his last 27 Premier League games has only beaten Southampton, Ipswich, an abject Manchester United and a Brentford side whose manager replaced him at Spurs.
Enzo Maresca
It feels like Chelsea’s line-ups and performances in Premier League matches before midweek Champions League games will be an ongoing story this season.
Maresca spoke of how the “focus” was on beating Brentford but his team selection and the half-time triple substitution he felt necessary said otherwise.
While they were building from different positions of strength this summer, Chelsea and Arsenal both sought to vastly improve their squad depth to compete on different fronts. Yet Facundo Buonanotte and Jamie Gittens feel like significant steps down, Jorrel Hato cannot be relied upon yet and it feels like Maresca has too many of the “options” he spoke about after the game to choose from.
They face Brighton, Nottingham Forest and Spurs in their next three pre-Champions League matches. A repeat of this sort of rotation will be punished again.
READ MORE: Chelsea should sack ‘arrogant’ Maresca over ‘trash’ football as ‘man-child’ Garnacho slammed
Wolves
“Last season I proved that I can increase the level of the team, me and my staff, and I will do it again,” said a bullish Vitor Pereira after Wolves started a league season with four consecutive defeats for the first time in their history.
It is a fair argument. Pereira pulled Wolves clear of trouble and inspired a run of form which culminated in a sequence of six straight victories which had them briefly eyeing a first top-half finish in three years.
But those half-dozen wins across March and April which have preceded this eight-match winless streak came against the three relegated sides and the three worst ever-presents since the start of last season aside from Wolves themselves.
The “level” that Pereira believes he can “increase” was lowered by yet another summer of important sales and speculation to potentially accumulate in terms of new signings.
These things take time but Ladislav Krejci, Tolu Arokodare, Jhon Arias and Jackson Tchatchoua really do not seem to be of the requisite immediate standard, with Fer Lopez probably needing more than a few minutes each game to reach it if indeed he can.
It just feels entirely beyond Pereira to make sense of this messy mishmash of a squad quickly enough. And that is no insult: it is difficult to think of any coach who could make this work.
Mads Hermansen
It is not known quite what compelled West Ham to spend £18m on Hermansen, although any amount of time trying to make sense of the club’s recruitment since the dawn of time is an infernal waste.
But he really does seem absurdly ill-suited to the task of helping keep a club afloat in the Premier League. When opposition managers start devising game plans to specifically target a goalkeeper from set pieces the writing is so often scribbled indelibly on the wall; not every keeper can transform themselves like David de Gea, and West Ham certainly aren’t in a position to be patient with Hermansen just in case he miraculously does.
A painful chapter in West Ham’s history might well be repeating itself. “He had responsibility in several goals. The team was losing confidence, the results were denied and the owners decided to change,” Manuel Pellegrini once said, blaming his eventual sacking on the substandard performances of a player he specifically pushed for in Roberto.
If Potter cannot turn this around – and the evidence he can has become infinitesimal – then the signing of Hermansen will take its rightful place alongside a midfield of Tomas Soucek and James Ward-Prowse as the chief reasons atop his P45.
Leeds United
And still only two players have ever scored more than a single Premier League goal under Daniel Farke. How much would Teemu Pukki and Todd Cantwell cost in January?
Gabriel Gudmundsson
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