Premier League winners and losers: Slot, Everton, Forest, Son, McAtee, Lopetegui
Julen Lopetegui and Sean Dyche are in a compelling sack race behind Ange Postecoglou, who needs more from Heung-min Son. Liverpool and Forest are thriving.
Arne Slot
Not a bad 2024: 50 games, 40 wins, nine draws, one defeat and one trophy.
Fair play to Liverpool, who have discovered that the only way to stop people asking about The Quadruple is to let three of your best players simultaneously run down their contracts. Long may Slot sidestep press conference slow balls about Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold after masterminding another victory.
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Nottingham Forest
Just a routine clean-sheet win over a side which held Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in their last three games. It’s what Nottingham Forest do now. It’s better to just accept it.
The Leicester 2015/16 comparisons are becoming a little harder to ignore. The strength of that remarkable side was in unity, togetherness, simplicity but also availability: each member of Claudio Ranieri’s defined first-choice line-up made at least 30 starts but were backed up by quietly excellent, unassuming alternatives capable of filling the same roles.
Despite the mild panic whenever Andy King had to fill in for N’Golo Kante or Marcin Wasilewski replaced a suspended Robert Huth, more often than not the system and structure was solid enough that Leicester were fine.
There is a chance Nottingham Forest don’t win the title but that capacity to have complete trust in the deputies is clear. Murillo pulling out with an injury in the warm-up might have disturbed a few fans but Nuno tweaked the formation and Morato headed away everything in sight instead while Ramon Sosa made his first Premier League start. Ryan Yates missed his first game of the season through injury so Nicolas Dominguez slotted in seamlessly.
Neco Williams has been brilliant since coming back into the side and there is safety in the knowledge Willy Boly can help shore things up despite having barely played since the opening weekend. When Harry Toffolo can be given more than a stoppage-time cameo you know things are going well.
The Saudi Pro League
Perhaps the sportswashing attempts would be better served if they focused on managers rather than players. Nuno and Vitor Pereira have been excellent since coming straight from retirement-baiting Middle East posts. There might be hope for Steven Gerrard after all (but there isn’t).
James McAtee
Pep Guardiola has baldly and fraudulently overthought more about football than the vast majority will have ever known but his blind spot for fresh blood during this miserable run always felt curious.
While it is entirely fair and even the right thing to do to try to shield such players from intense criticism at a delicate time in their development, it became equally true that relying on the same trusted but faltering lieutenants was a mistake; a different approach had long been required.
It never had to be something too drastic but that run of one win in 13 games almost exclusively featured the same faces making the same mistakes before being picked again as Guardiola’s penchant for working with a smaller squad betrayed him.
Nico O’Reilly appeared for the Carabao Cup defeat to Spurs before being put immediately back on ice, not playing since. The same is true of Jacob Wright. Jahmai Simpson-Pusey was forced into the team through injuries and understandably struggled but was unable to build any rhythm across 222 minutes over five games, with exactly a month passing between his penultimate game and his last, both of which were as a late substitute.
Those three players were academy graduates thrown in at the deep end with no prior experience at any senior level before this season, bar Wright’s 17 cursory minutes for Manchester City in 2023/24. James McAtee is a different case, a 22-year-old who made his debut for the club in 2021, with experience of both promotion and relegation as a first-teamer at Sheffield United.
Before Sunday his only meaningful game time this season came in the Community Shield, League Cup and what were deemed to be Champions League dead-rubbers: the wins over Slovan Bratislava and Sparta Prague, and that damaging Feyenoord draw when he was introduced at 3-0 up.
His Leicester cameo amounted to more minutes (24) than McAtee’s previous five Premier League appearances for Manchester City combined (21). And he maximised the opportunity with a fine run and pass in the build-up to Erling Haaland’s clinching goal just as the visitors were holding on at the King Power.
“Sometimes in the situation you are living always you had the feeling to give the responsibility to the senior players rather than the young players, but sometimes the senior players have more pressure than the young ones who don’t have anything to defend,” Guardiola said after the game of his “unfair” treatment of someone who might well have offered a great deal more than his experienced teammates in recent months.
“They want to conquer the world,” he added; McAtee was probably just grateful for the chance and has ensured his manager cannot simply pick the same underperforming team again without rebuke.
Oliver Glasner
A victory which lifts Crystal Palace up to 10th in a Premier League table since his appointment in February, above Spurs, West Ham, Brighton and Manchester United among others. But also a first in English football for Glasner: a win from a losing position.
“The reaction from the team was brilliant,” said Glasner. “We played forward and created chances, even if we missed them – but they always believed.”
Considering Palace’s previous win from a losing position in the Premier League was against Sheffield United 11 months before, that is no small thing. The return to form, fitness and confidence of Eberechi Eze will be vital.
Bournemouth
Another day, more “finishers” and another crucial goal from the Bournemouth bench.
No manager has made more scoring substitutes this season than Andoni Iraola. Those goals and assists through second-half changes have helped turn defeats into draws against West Ham and Aston Villa, a draw into a win against Arsenal and defeats into wins against Ipswich and Everton – the difference between European contention and mid-table boredom, basically.
If all games are split into 10-minute segments – notwithstanding stoppage-time – then the highest-scoring Premier League team this season at any point is Bournemouth with 10 goals between the 81th and 90th minutes. The next best is Liverpool (eight between 41-50 and 81-90), Fulham and Manchester City (both eight between 81-90).
It is very much an Iraola specialty at this point, a characteristic strong enough to survive an increasingly decimated squad.
Fulham
An unbeaten December for Fulham, the only one of four such sides to play as many as seven Premier League games in the process.
Those matches came against the teams currently in 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 10th and 11th, with Southampton the only real gimme. As a response to the debacle at home to Wolves last month it could have gone worse.
Jorgen Strand Larsen
The best gangly Norwegian striker in the Premier League.
Sergio Reguilon
Welcome back, old friend.
Premier League losers
Everton
And there it is. After the meat and potatoes of low blocks, long balls and set-pieces against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, when it came to digesting something slightly different, Sean Dyche and Everton simply could not stomach it.
While Nottingham Forest are above all three of those clubs, they are thematically and spiritually far closer to Everton. So to see Nuno effortlessly mastering that style was painful. Dyche was hoist by his own Chris Wood-shaped petard, given most of the ball against two strong centre-halves and failing to conjure anything in the way of inspiration.
This was why those successive draws, as conceptually impressive as they were, meant little. No-one doubts that Dyche can set up a defence to soak up pressure against stronger teams. The question is what he can do around that, whether it can be the foundation for something greater. It is increasingly obvious that it cannot.
Under Dyche, Everton have had more than 50% possession in 11 of 74 Premier League games. Their record in those matches is two wins, four draws, five defeats, eight goals scored and 15 conceded. Those victories came against Leeds and Sheffield United, both 1-0 at home to teams who would be relegated that season.
It is miserable and precisely why supporters will never get carried away with those resolute defensive performances; they have become not only Everton’s trademark, but the one style they are capable of actually playing. If Dyche coaches either attacking or possession-based drills in training it doesn’t show.
Craig Dawson
Not great as a centre-half for Wolves against Spurs, but also far more pertinently Everton’s top scorer in their last 10 Premier League games.
Heung-min Son
Like many of his plans for the season, Ange Postecoglou’s desire to “manage the workload” of Son has been rather undermined by the club’s injury crisis. Richarlison, Wilson Odobert and Mikey Moore are among those who might have been able to share a responsibility clearly inhibiting the captain.
Missing a penalty for Tottenham in a post-Kane world is in many ways understandable due to lack of practice but Son is becoming a liability in open play. The decisions he makes are so often wrong and the execution even worse.
As heartening as it is to see Dejan Kulusevski pick up the slack so capably, the accelerated nature of Son’s decline is a concern. There are two phenomenal 32-year-old Premier League forwards on expensive and expiring contracts this season; Salah is putting his Spurs rival to shame in making a compelling case for an extension.
Julen Lopetegui
West Ham supporters will not have celebrated the return of a Lopetegui staple against Liverpool: the multiple half-time substitution.
Lopetegui has made a half-time change to his starting line-up in all but seven games so far this season, including two or three substitutions at the break in five matches. It screams coaching incompetence, an inability to establish and prepare the right set-up before kick-off compounded by a rush to correct things when they inevitably go wrong.
A 4-2-3-1 with the disinterested Lucas Paqueta sat deep alongside the ineffective Edson Alvarez was one of the less orthodox approaches when encountered with this swashbuckling Liverpool side. Aaron Wan-Bissaka being stationed on the left to try and quell the threat of Mo Salah did at least make a modicum of sense considering his phenomenal one-v-one defending attributes but a) he ended up inverting and playing ludicrously high anyway, and b) it necessitated a start for the atrocious Vladimir Coufal on the other side.
Lopetegui explained that he wanted to restore “consistency” and “control” by taking Coufal off for Jean-Clair Todibo – who should have started – at half-time, but the horse had already bolted and been turned into glue with the Hammers 3-0 down.
Off went Alvarez for Niclas Fulkrug, back dropped Emerson Palmieri and Wan-Bissaka switched sides. Then Liverpool scored a fourth within nine minutes of the restart because these issues are so fundamental and ingrained that simply shifting personnel around in something vaguely resembling a formation will not quite suffice against teams in any way competent, never mind the league leaders.
The irony is that while their manager chops and changes out of desperation to clean up his own messes, West Ham are too stubborn themselves to act at the halfway point of this sorry shambles of a season and part with a manager who should never have been appointed in the first place.
READ NEXT: Postecoglou Sack Race favourite after latest Spurs slip-up ends miserable 2024
Ruud van Nistelrooy
Leicester coming away from arguably their best performance of the season with a 2-0 home defeat against a side on a historically poor run does rather emphasise how strange a decision it was for Van Nistelrooy to cash in on his temporarily high stock with such a low-bar squad.
There is a clear structure in place which was not evident nearly often enough under Steve Cooper, proof of both a plan and an ability to adapt. Leicester were ludicrously open in Van Nistelrooy’s first five games as they faced 101 shots and had 35. Against the reigning champions there was a far better balance with 11 shots to 14.
The Foxes have also oscillated between philosophies under the Dutchman, going from 39% possession to 56%, 41%, 54%, 32% and 54% against title challengers, European hopefuls, mid-table fodder and relegation candidates. Manchester City fit into one of those categories, we’re just not sure which.
Bilal El Khannouss was impressive and deserved more but really this just looks like a Championship team in too many crucial areas: central defence and midfield, but not least in net with Mads Hermansen out and up front with a 37-year-old Jamie Vardy somehow as important and irreplaceable as ever.
Van Nistelrooy sensed “a good connection with the crowd” and that should not be downplayed, but it just feels as though survival is an objective beyond this squad, never mind this manager.
Ivan Juric
Take that sentiment and times it by a thousand for Juric, who cannot possibly have been so desperate for a crack at Premier League management as to willingly inherit this ungodly mess.
There are some gems within. Tyler Dibling has been phenomenal and Kyle Walker-Peters becoming the world’s greatest one-v-one dribbler at left wing-back was to be entirely expected.
But this is a dreadfully underprepared squad for whom survival cannot be an even vaguely feasible target. It is damning that the only bar Southampton should be aiming for was placed on the floor by Derby in 2007/08, when even they had more points at this stage of the season.
