Daniel Storey: Scale of Liverpool's demolition resets expectations
Liverpool's Mo Salah scores his sides sixth goal during the Premier League rout of Crystal Palace. Picture: Adam Davy
There has been much talk of a Premier League title race potentially containing as many as six clubs; the unique constraints of this season appeared to have levelled the playing field, albeit only between the financial elite.
But on Saturday lunchtime Liverpool produced an attacking performance of such dominance, and with so many different actors playing a part, that it shifted our expectations significantly. Jurgen Klopp’s team scored seven goals despite resting their top scorer until the final 30 minutes. Seven different players from the same club assisted a goal in the same match for the first time in Premier League history. Make no mistake, everyone is now playing catch-up.
It is a huge credit to Klopp and his players that Liverpool have established a lead at the top. Despite the loss of Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez to serious injury and twice having to cope with an injury to the best goalkeeper in the country, Liverpool are on course to reach 84 points and score 97 league goals. For all the frustrations of their autumn, Klopp’s side have still lost fewer league games this season than any other team.
And so after all that promise, Tottenham take one point from a possible nine during a crucial week and are closer to 13th than Liverpool in first place. For all the obvious improvements at Tottenham over the last few months, they already look unlikely to mount a serious title challenge.
We were told that Jose Mourinho’s risk-averse, safety-first, counter-attacking approach was only being used against higher-level opponents, but we have now been offered two examples in three matches of where it falls down. Against Crystal Palace, Spurs sat back and invited pressure. Against Leicester City they barely got going at all. If the counter doesn’t work — and Leicester guarded against effectively — Tottenham very quickly look a little stale.
With a trip to Wolves to come next, Mourinho must decide whether he needs to find a Plan B against opponents who are just as happy to sacrifice possession and defend deep. On this evidence, they are a top-four also-ran rather than the forward-thinking title challenger their early-season run promised.
There is no one reason why Mikel Arteta may soon come close to losing his job as Arsenal manager, but the dismal form of Willian since signing offers a perfect embodiment of their problems.
The Brazilian made it clear that he wanted a longer-term contract than Chelsea were prepared to offer. While Frank Lampard was able to sign Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech and Kai Havertz, Arsenal chose to give a three-year deal to a 32-year-old whose form at Chelsea had tailed off.
It was one thing for Arteta to push for Willian’s signing despite the clear reservations of supporters who felt that this was proof of super agent Kia Joorabchian’s influence over the club’s transfer policy, but another entirely to keep picking him after meagre early-season returns. Willian was left out of the side for the visit of Southampton last week, but returned to the XI for the trip to Goodison.
Willian is offering nothing to suggest that he fits the high-intensity, pressing style that Arteta seems to want to implement. That might be permissible if his attacking output was high enough to counteract those weaknesses, but Willian has had one shot on target in 889 league minutes this season and created 12 chances in 11 league games since his debut.
We were told that Mesut Ozil would not be considered for selection because his style did not fit in with Arteta’s vision for Arsenal. Right now, Willian looks like just as awkward a fit with far less creative influence. Arsenal supporters understandably feel that they have been taken for a ride.
This has been a wonderful week for Carlo Ancelotti. It started with a gusty 1-0 win over Chelsea, continued with a fabulous away win at Leicester, and ended with Everton guaranteed a top-four place at Christmas for the first time since 2004. Ancelotti’s team have beaten three sides who began the season at short odds to finish above them.
This period of efficient form and gritty resilience is most pleasing because it followed a spell in which Everton threatened to fall back into mid-table. The absence of James Rodriguez created a temporary absence in creativity that Ancelotti seems to have solved by switching formation and playing Gylfi Sigurdsson as a No. 10 to support Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Ancelotti may reason that his team sharing around the goals offers evidence that this return to form may not be a passing fad. Calvert-Lewin scored in each of Everton’s first five league games of the season — they were over-performing because he was over-performing. But Calvert-Lewin’s goals have not been needed in any of Everton’s last three wins and their last seven league goals have been scored by different players.
Steve Bruce had eased the pressure on his job with victories over Crystal Palace and West Brom, but he has never been more than a fortnight from ignominy throughout his tenure. In their last two games, Newcastle’s problems have come rushing back.
The 5-2 defeat to Leeds was defensively shambolic, Newcastle forced to search for a route back into the match and left exposed to two brutal counter-attacks — these things happen. But against Fulham on Saturday evening, Newcastle played for 30 minutes against 10 men having been handed an ill-deserved chance to atone for a miserable first half.
In those circumstances, against a promoted team haunted by the lingering threat of relegation, Bruce must surely have instructed his team to play on the front foot and overpower their opponents. But in the 34 minutes after Callum Wilson’s penalty, Newcastle managed only four shots and badly struggled to create clear-cut chances. That is the story of their season to date.
