When Results Are Unsurprising
"My role is not to burst peoples' bubbles. Let them get excited and ahead of themselves, that's the beauty of being a supporter."
Depending on which Premier League club you support, you have either been hammered with headlines about the starting goalkeeper position facing a revolution or you’re reading about Manchester United’s (annual) demise to the hands of the revolutionaries of footballBrighton & Hove Albion.
Both stories are very interesting and deserving of the spotlight they are receiving but without sounding unpatriotic, there were other non-revolutionary stories this weekend that deserve light as well. Tottenham and Liverpool both came back from 0-1 deficits to win their respective games and Chelsea continue to perform unlike a top Premier League.
Liverpool (& Wolves)
Wolves started the Premier League season with all the characteristics of a team to-be relegated. Their manager left before the first match, they lost their best player and captain Ruben Neves, and their recruitment was a nonexistent. Yet somehow watching this group play they are not setup like a team that won’t earn 35pts to 40pts this season.
In beating Wolves, Liverpool have to break down a very organized and well drilled team. Jeanricner Bellegarde, the midfielder brought in to replace Neves, looks fantastic and Pedro Neto, having seen so many of his Wolves teammates move on, is playing with a point to prove.
It will never not be wasteful to start Mac Allister at the 6 position, but Liverpool continue to do it.
Tottenham
As we continue to watch Tottenham’s games, their system of play is becoming more obvious, even predictable, but what was not obvious to me was that Dejan Kulusevski covered 13km or 8miles in one match, the most by any player so far this season. Phil Foden (12.45km) and Bernardo Silva (12.57km) were the only wingers on the top 10 list.
Tottenham, similarly to Liverpool, conceded first to go down 0-1 in their match against Sheffield United. The goal was conceded late, in the 73rd minute - let me remind you that last season at their worst Spurs lost 6-1 to Newcastle and were a disgrace.
This time around, with a new manager and reinforcements, big time runner Dejan Kulusevski scored the winning goal in what is officially the 90+10th minute of the game in a massive display of resiliency and character shown by the team.
Tottenham are clearly trending in the right direction, but as I continue to watch the standout tactics, I can’t help but want to fast forward to the point where the team is found out, a point that I have to believe, in a league with such high quality, will inevitably come.
Chelsea
The only matchup that Chelsea is winning these days is being the lead cliché, ahead of Man Utd, as the shining example that the transfer market cannot solve all your problems. It’s not necessarily that Chelsea have signed bad players, but rather they signed projects or players that need development work. The quality of Premier League is too high to allow a team to start 5 (Mudryk, Jackson, Ugochukwu, Gusto, & Disasi) young and unestablished, Ligue Un quality players. Project players need to play through mistakes and through mistakes develop a football IQ.
When you’ve built an established team with elite personnel like Manchester City have, you can use this developed structure to plug in a project-player like Jérémy Doku and with this backing, excel.
To make matters worst, Chelsea have surrounded their projects with players who are only marginally more experienced in Colwill & Gallagher (vice-captain). This puts the burden of experience on Raheem Sterling as well as Thiago Silva, who will be 39 years old next week.
Chelsea entered into the season with a former Tottenham manager and hopes of seeing their team play the same style of football displayed by their North London rivals but instead they have flattered Liverpool’s squad building ability and are in the same team-position they were 6 months ago. Is this a surprise?