Premier League winners and losers: Maresca, Disasi, Arsenal, Emery, Hull, Liverpool, Davis
Enzo Maresca showed Arsenal this will not be easy, while Manchester United, Unai Emery and Axel Disasi can all hang their heads in shame.
The Premier League table is starting to take shape, and some teams appear not to have realised they can actually move between the winners and losers columns freely.
Premier League winners
Arsenal
In terms of seven-day spells, Arsenal coming from behind to beat Chelsea, before travelling to win late at Napoli and then engaging in a 90-minute scrap with Sunderland, captures the essence of this ludicrous team perfectly.
No side can adapt to the environment as seamlessly, or alternate between modes as efficiently. Arsenal can play, Arsenal can fight and Arsenal can do everything in between.
With the sort of game-changing individual brilliance running through this squad and those structures as shown by David Raya and Bruno Guimaraes, the champions are operating like a team that has earned the tag.
Enzo Maresca
“After the red card, all the planning and everything doesn’t exist any more,” said Maresca of a strategy that had to be consigned to “the bin” because “we needed to defend with five players”.
“When you are one player down, it becomes completely difficult and changed the game,” he added, having turned a problem into a crisis with some atrocious management.
The circumstances were a little different. Phil Foden a) was sent off after 23 minutes instead of four, and b) is not a keeper. But Maresca learned from the mistakes of his last visit to Old Trafford with 10 men and underlined how that personal growth could keep Arsenal honest in the title race.
A lot of it might come down to how much Maresca felt he could trust the respective players. When Chelsea went a man down less than a year ago, he reacted by immediately replacing two forwards and then having to remove a half-fit third, all within 21 minutes.
The experienced heads at Manchester City guided them through with the help of a coach who stayed the course, did not panic and even made enterprising changes to help inspire victory.
It is, however, worth remembering just how hilarious that implosion was last time.
READ MORE: 16 Conclusions from Man Utd 0-1 Man City
Alvaro Arbeloa
A very promising point – even if he did inherit Rafa Benitez’s short blanket at Anfield.
Hull
If the Manager of the Month award curse cannot take Sergej Jakirovic and his players down, it might be time to consider what the provisions are for Hull just carrying on being brilliant.
As he said after the Chelsea draw: “We’ve shown again that we are a serious team and that it is not going to be easy to beat us.”
But even that probably undersells Hull, who could entirely feasibly have conquered the Blues at Stamford Bridge.
One of the more extraordinary factors of this stunning start is that while Hull signed a league-high 18 players in the summer, they are still relying on their Football League core. Thirteen new recruits are yet to feature for more than an hour in the Premier League this season, with five still awaiting their debut.
Only Konstantinos Tzolakis, Elliot Stroud and Nobel Mendy started against Chelsea after joining in the summer. The latter two were taken off for Lucas Herrington and Sorba Thomas, two more fresh faces who have recognised that for the most part, the players who brought Hull to the dance will be trusted to keep them there.
Brighton
The hat-trick is on: Brighton had the highest number of different Premier League goalscorers last season (19) and the campaign before that (18), with eight players finding the net already in 2026/27.
No other club has more than five.
Oliver Glasner
There he is.
Glasner turned an opening gambit of one win in six into the single greatest period in Crystal Palace’s history, so it will be intriguing to see what he makes of starting with one in five at the two-time European champions.
On the basis of that glorious winning goal, it will be a pleasure to watch.
A narrow defeat and two draws against decaying but ultimately insulated members of the Big Six did not warrant the ringing of any alarm bells beyond those in fear of a Mr. Marinakis madness.
But this was a necessary back-based monkey removal, a first win of the new era buttressed by strong performances from all four summer first-team signings, and inventive, effective coaching solutions born out of injury-enforced necessity.
Forest are starting to click and Glasner is in his groove.
Jarrad Branthwaite
In four of the last five Premier League seasons, James Tarkowski has blocked the most shots of any player. Branthwaite has at least two more than anyone else so far this campaign, including some of exceptional quality against Spurs.
“Jaz is an amazing partner. Strong as an ox, rapid, brilliant on the ball, two-footed, communicates really well,” said Tarkowski, who has the perverse pleasure of personally mentoring his natural successor’s rise.
They must be a nightmare to face in training.
Leif Davis
It will be exceptionally funny when Ipswich supporters take the upcoming England snub of Davis remarkably personally and as an unforgivable slight on their entire existence as a football club, just to feel something in the most interminable of international breaks.
A match-winning display against 10-man Crystal Palace, two weeks after scoring in a Manchester United thrashing, does not provide especially compelling evidence for Thomas Tuchel and his innate bias against Ipswich to ignore.
But Davis is unquestionably a better player than in his first full Premier League campaign two seasons ago. And a different one, too. Ipswich’s chief creator in 2024/25, ninth in the entire top flight for chances created, is being tasked with getting on the end of them more frequently by Gary O’Neil.
“We pick how we use him – sometimes we use him inside, sometimes we move him outside,” said the manager. “He arrived in the box so many times [against Liverpool] but always kept missing the cross. Today, he nailed it.”
The result is Davis having about three times as many shots and twice as many touches in the opposition penalty area per 90 minutes this season on average than in Ipswich’s last Premier League campaign, and already making this the joint second-best season in terms of league goals of his entire career.
He had a hand in all three against Palace. Get him on whatever mode of transport is most suitable.
Crystal Palace
Axel Disasi is suspended for three games.
Premier League losers
Axel Disasi
There is a wider point to be made about the generally abysmal standard of Crystal Palace’s defending, best summed up by their conceding of at least two goals in nine consecutive Premier League games.
The literal last time they didn’t ship two or more in a Premier League match was against a) a team no longer in the Premier League, and b) a team daft enough to borrow Disasi for a bit.
West Ham very much enjoyed the Chelsea outcast’s stylings but Palace, through no fault of Disasi’s, needed so much more.
The two best centre-halves in their history have been sold for an already underpriced £72m this year and their replacements were a relegated loanee, a free agent in Takehiro Tomiyasu, and two deeply inexperienced teenagers – one obviously leased from Chelsea.
With Disasi as the leader of that unit it is little wonder it crumbles. His brainless red card for a shin-high tackle midway inside the opposition half was not the only baffling individual mistake made by a Palace defender (or goalkeeper) against Ipswich, but it was undoubtedly tone-setting and the most ruinous.
Coventry
Have Coventry been unfortunate to have faced each member of the current top four in their first four games of the season? Or is that just the current top four because they are the only teams to have faced Coventry? Insert Matt-Le-Tissier-hmm.jpg.
The mystery as to why clubs keep hiring Frank Lampard abounds. If he genuinely feels “the players gave everything until the end” of a 5-0 defeat in which they conceded thrice from the 70th minute onwards, the Championship preparations might as well begin now.
READ MORE: Coventry suffer Premier League’s ultimate indignity: they are measurably worse than Spurs
Manchester United
Their failings can, should and have been dissected meticulously in 2,500 words. These are unremitting defects which warrant equally acerbic takedowns one-third the length but no less withering. And there are legitimate tactical angles to damn Manchester United from too.
But really they just remain a fundamentally unserious football club, with unserious football players and an unserious football manager. Manchester United had never lost against ten men at Old Trafford in their entire history, and have now done so twice in the last ten months despite boasting a player advantage for well over an entire half of football each time.
The inclination may be to hide behind or blame one subjective refereeing call, but their sheer inability to exploit the edge offered by another rather diminishes any sympathy.
Roberto De Zerbi
Just let Harry Redknapp have a few games to unblock that mess, fella.
Unai Emery
Money can’t buy you luck, and Aston Villa would probably feel obliged by SCR regulations to sell half their team to fund its purchase anyway.
They would likely have held out for a draw with 11 players, but Ian Maatsen’s late injury came after Emery had made all five of his substitutions. Another one of those was enforced by Pau Torres having to come off in the first half, while it was noted that the booked Nicolas Jackson was toeing the sort of fine disciplinary line he often fell off at Chelsea.
That change necessitated the introduction, too, of Alysson, because by Emery’s own admission Villa were not going to get defence-stretching runs in behind from Tammy Abraham.
So by half-time Villa had made three substitutions, meaning their double change on the hour could expose them to a scenario such as John McGinn freelancing at left-back and inevitably being targeted to great success.
On a different day, Forest might have had a player sent off for the challenge which sidelined Maatsen, Emery could have enacted a different series of tactical calls and their best chances may have fallen to someone not named Victor Lindelof.
But as it is, fortune is not on Villa’s side and Emery himself will acknowledge it’s his “responsibility” to shift the momentum.
Chelsea
Xabi Alonso lamented twice how his team was “soft”, the Spaniard yearning for a more “boring game” defined by Chelsea control.
This is a process, and the Blues do not seem particularly close to consistently dictating proceedings against any opponent at this level; in their current guise, games are happening to them and results are simply prescribed by the natural flow of 90-minute matches.
No Premier League side has conceded more shots on target this season, which implies an element of misfortune in terms of their collective opponents’ accuracy on the day, but also betrays Chelsea’s tendency to give up better chances with abysmal choices in dangerous positions.
The cliche to not let the ball bounce exists for a reason. Wesley Fofana, Malo Gusto and Jorrel Hato were all guilty of it from a long Tzolakis kick for Hull’s first. And a deeply naive corner set-up – Mohamed Belloumi had no player within at least ten yards of him on the edge of the area as Chelsea committed players forward for a potential counter – coupled with Emi Martinez’s failed punch, contributed to the second.
Chelsea’s next game is against Brentford – the team they kept their last Premier League clean sheet against, a quite preposterous 21 games ago. They are certainly too “soft” to challenge for the title, but if left unaddressed that could cost them Champions League qualification.
Liverpool
Since securing the title 17 months ago, Liverpool have won 18 of their 46 Premier League games: fewer than Brighton, as many as Brentford and just one more than Everton.
Andoni Iraola, who has drawn five of his last six, 11 of his last 16 and 21 of his last 38 Premier League matches, is inherently not the cause of a long-standing problem with winning at Liverpool, but nor has he quite shown enough to be trusted as the definite solution just yet.
At Anfield in particular, the hosts seem to be struggling. Fulham are one of only four teams Liverpool have beaten at home in the Premier League this calendar year, and were great value for their first point and clean sheet of the season in front of a stadium which had a notable amount of empty seats before the final whistle.
It had vague whiffs of Jurgen Klopp’s first couple of months in charge.
Iraola was not reaching for the excuses in pointing out “a lack of freshness” in a somewhat rotated team with Kostas sodding Tsimikas in the apparently cursed left-back slot; he added that “it’s going to be the same way during the season” and “we have to adapt to these circumstances”.
But a two-game-a-week grind the manager is not accustomed to has interwoven awkwardly with Liverpool’s loss of their home aura – and some sustained abysmal recruitment – to create a potent sense of stagnation.
Bournemouth and Brentford
It makes sense that the two worst clubs for dropping points from winning positions would take turns doing so against each other, both managing only to defend their respective leads specifically by four minutes.
