Daniel Storey: For once, big guns deliver a feast of entertainment
Manchester City’s Portuguese star Bernardo Silva meets up with his fellow countryman, Liverpool’s Diogo Jota, at the final whistle in yesterday’s Premier League match at the Etihad Stadium.
So often the Premier League’s biggest matches disappoint, either producing a stalemate in which both teams are content to take a single point or — as has become a trend in recent seasons — one side imposing their dominance and embarrassing the other. This was the perfect balance, two managers intent on playing attacking, front-foot football and taking it in turns to knock on the door in a blur of aesthetically wonderful entertainment.
Jurgen Klopp surprised with his front four, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino playing as a strike partnership with Diogo Jota and Sadio Mane as wide forwards.
Manchester City initially struggled to cope with the attacking overloads and the way Liverpool’s forwards blocked the passing lanes to Rodri and Gundogan.
But Liverpool’s shape had to leave space in behind, in which Kevin de Bruyne and Ferran Torres found space and began to hurt Liverpool. They should have taken the lead before half-time when De Bruyne became the latest of Pep Guardiola’s players to suffer the penalty yips.
Guardiola will rue that miss and Jesus’ misdirected header as City passed up their chance to propel themselves back into the title race.
Klopp will point out that Liverpool had more shots and created more chances. The neutral was left a little underwhelmed by the second half, but breathless from the first.
The signing of Hakim Ziyech went slightly under the radar at Stamford Bridge.
The reasons were threefold: He was signed very early in the summer, that signing was followed by Kai Havertz and Timo Werner for larger transfer fees and he was injured until late October.
But on Saturday Ziyech demonstrated that he might just be the key man in this new-look Chelsea attack. He created six chances, equalling the highest individual contribution in a Premier League game this season, assisted two goals and linked midfield and attack beautifully by dipping in from the right wing and playing perfectly judged passes with his left foot.
At 27, Ziyech understands that he must adapt quickly to Premier League life. Mason Mount and Callum Hudson-Odoi are both younger than him and have a deeper connection with Chelsea. But Ziyech’s class can win out. If there are six players (Hudson-Odoi, Mount, Tammy Abraham, Timo Werner, Christian Pulisic and Kai Havertz) fighting for a maximum of four starting places, Ziyech is now a must-pick for Frank Lampard.
Every time Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is forced to peek over the edge of the cliff and see his potential destiny in full focus, back come Manchester United to drag him back. Defeat at Goodison, made likely by Bernard’s opening goal, may have signalled the end of the Solskjaer years at Old Trafford. Now Solskjaer will fight on for another fortnight at least.
This victory doesn’t change anything in the long term. There are still huge doubts about Solskjaer’s ability to create a sustainable, flexible strategy to engineer a run of positive results against differing styles of opponent to engineer a title challenge that should be possible during this season of all seasons.
Manchester United will not play badly and fail to win every week; the starting XI contains too much quality for that.
But this was at least proof of something that we already suspected: The tactics may occasionally be haphazard and the team may too often play as a lesser sum than the total of its parts, but the players have not downed tools yet. That was suggested far too strongly by far too many in the aftermath of last weekend’s defeat to Arsenal.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using the Panenka penalty technique. It might appear to be an unnecessarily flamboyant approach to scoring, but research shows that a Panenka can be devastatingly effective when carried out perfectly.
But boy does it look silly when it goes wrong. Ademola Lookman’s weak chip was hit so softly that Lukas Fabianski could have dived full-length, stood up and still had time to catch the ball before it crossed the line.
Given that it was the last kick of the match and thus could have salvaged a valuable away point, Lookman spent the weekend in the spotlight with pundits pouring scorn on his misery. Had he simply drilled the ball low and hard and Fabianski guessed right, the reaction would have been different.
Fulham simply cannot afford these mistakes. They missed a penalty against Sheffield United that might well have given them two extra points and threw away another one at the London Stadium on Friday.
Just another reason that they will probably be relegated.
There were a few eyebrows raised when Leicester City agreed to pay £36.5m to sign Wesley Fofana from St Etienne this summer.
Fofana was just 19, was yet to be called up by the French national team and had played 20 top-flight league matches in his short professional career.
But Leicester’s faith already looks to be a masterstroke. Fofana has taken to Premier league life with remarkable ease.
Leicester have conceded three goals in their seven matches with him in the side. His composure on the ball, combined with the non-nonsense attributes of more stereotypical central defenders, draws obvious comparisons with Virgil van Dijk and that doesn’t even feel hyperbolic.
The boy can do it all.
