Johnny Nicholson on the Premier League: The sound that gives football meaning returns
A general view of the fans during the Premier League match at Old Trafford
From the first moments of the first game, to hear a real crowd at a Premier League game was to hear the sound that gives football meaning. The noise we had for so long taken for granted was back after an extended, much-mourned absence. Without fans, many struggled to see the point in matches being played at all, they all looked and sounded like training games. Not now. Now it all makes sense again. Football’s soul has returned.
At every ground this weekend, fans were beside themselves with joy to be witnessing a game again. It was evident everywhere. It isn’t just the songs or the goal celebrations, as important as they are, it is also the pauses for breath as the ball goes out of play, the rising roar of anticipation as a player goes on the attack. It sounded fresh and new and yet beautifully familiar. Let’s hope we don’t take ourselves for granted ever again and that football doesn’t do so either. It was a gripping first weekend that more than once, glazed the eye with emotion for what we have lost and what we have had returned to us.
That Arsenal didn’t seem in any way prepared for the Brentford game was entirely predictable. Ok, they had key players out, but this was a horrible performance born out of terrible defending. They were second to everything and at times overrun by a fizzing Brentford team, keen to prove themselves.
The summer’s big-money buy, Ben White, looked like Arsenal had instantly made him worse, but Pablo Marà and Calum Chambers were, if anything, even more dreadful. In an echo of their panic over Rory Delap’s throw-ins 13 years ago, they defended a Sørensen long throw with the traditional lack of coherence.Â
Do they recruit players who lack grit, or does their grit disappear once at Arsenal? That they play such games consistently poorly isn’t an accident, it must all stem from the top. The oft-repeated mantra to trust in the project is misplaced. There is no project. It was an act of faith that Arteta would be good enough, or that he would learn to be. He isn’t and he hasn’t. With games against Chelsea and Manchester City next, Arteta’s position will soon be untenable. He should’ve been sacked last year but was saved by a lack of fans' vocal critique.
That isn’t a privilege destined to last much longer.
Are they back to their best? You could certainly be forgiven for thinking that Liverpool’s three-goal win at Norwich City was from their title-winning season, as it had so many similar qualities. They gave the Canaries a few half-chances early on and the home team held their own for 25 minutes, but when they lost the ball in midfield, the Reds tore them open.
As ever, it’s their ability in the transition that impresses and Norwich just couldn’t cope with it. Too quick, too direct and too precise, this was a reminder of how different playing a top Premier League team is to playing Championship football for the newly-promoted side. Mo Salah scored in Liverpool’s Premier League opener for the fifth consecutive season with a lovely, if poorly defended strike, indeed the home side's defence looked decidedly Championship standard throughout.
You always feel the opposition has a few chances to score against Liverpool, but by then they’re usually three or four goals to the good. Trickier games await Liverpool, but this was one where everything clicked back into place. However, the homophobic chants directed at Billy Gilmour require action. The culprits will be identifiable and should face prosecution. The banter defence will be deployed, of course. It is no defence.
Beating Leeds United 5-1 is one thing, doing so with four high-class assists by Paul Pogba and a hat-trick by Bruno Fernandes made a special afternoon for Manchester United. Will this stop the endless moaning about the Frenchman in the media? His pass to Mason Greenwood for the second goal from inside his own half was one right off the technical drawing board, judged inch-perfect.
Greenwood accelerated, took two touches and scored. Football is often overthought to an almost infinite degree, but this was simple and devastating football. After an early slice wide, everything Pogba did was near-perfect. It’s not just having the vision to make the pass, it’s that he does so often with his first touch, as for Fred’s fifth goal, and that he weights the pass so perfectly.
It may be an understated art form, but it is an art nonetheless. But those blotchy red and white training tops have to go, they make the players look like they’re wearing children’s pyjamas at a play centre, which may be an effective marketing ploy for a childrenswear range, but doesn’t do much for the image of the players.
Was this really a Rafa Benitez side? The famously dour defensive Benitez who would be jeered by his own fans? No. It wasn’t. Despite being a goal down at half-time through Michael Keane’s amateurish blunder, their second half performance was excellent. Here was a side that was playing attacking, wide and direct football in contradiction to the notion that Bentiz plays a boring defensive game. They bombarded the box with 17 crosses from the left and the right. This was clearly a well-planned tactic and it paid off big.
Having drawn level thanks to the sort of hapless defending that sees sides relegated, they went for Southampton’s jugular and tore them apart. Abdoulaye Doucouré’s strike was one of the goals of the day, powered into the top right-hand corner, off the post in fine style and Dominic Calvert-Lewin's close-range diving header sealed a triumphant second half. This set a high standard. Can Rafa be loved by both blues and reds? He can if they keep playing like this.
Chelsea were so effortlessly in control of their game against Crystal Palace, that for a while it was a real men against boys situation at the Bridge. Palace didn’t threaten Chelsea's goal until over an hour had passed. Faster of foot, quicker of mind, first to almost every ball, this was Thomas Tuchel’s calling card for the new campaign and it put the blues at the forefront of a push for the title, even on the first day of the season and even without Romelu Lukaku. This was pedigree stuff. They smothered Crystal Palace so comprehensively that it was surprising that Palace had 38% possession in the game. At times it must’ve been 80/20. This was one of those matches where the comprehensive nature of the win wasn’t matched by the score; a 7-0 masquerading as a 3-0. Trevoh Chalobah’s 25-yard strike goal in his first Premier League game was a moment to warm even the coldest heart.
Worryingly, post-game Patrick Vieira spoke of bringing in even more players having let 11 go so far and bringing in five. He wouldn’t be the first manager to mistake quantity for quality and end up in trouble for doing so.
When you lose your opening game at home to Brighton after taking an early lead, once again it raises the relegation question for Burnley. It must be a strange situation to be on everyone's ‘this is the season they could go down the list’ and to have to constantly prove people wrong. There has to be only so much satisfaction in doing that. In an even game, Brighton’s boss Graham Potter, who does look like a cerebral detective in a Scandi Noir series, use of substitutes made the difference and it is in such decisions that the manager earns his money.
Jakub Moder entered on 72 minutes and set up a goal in the 73rd. Alexis MacAllister was brought on after 76 minutes and two minutes later, scored the winner. An interesting and engaging man, the very opposite of the self-regarding, ego-filled, self-regarding monsters we have seen over the years, Potter has a reputation as a thoughtful, educated and quietly radical manager and when such decisions pay off big, that reputation only grows further, which, all things considered, must be very annoying for Sean Dyche.
If you remember, the defenders of VAR, when it was used to adjudge a toe being offside, would puff out their chests and tell us imperiously with an evangelical zeal that ’offside is offside’. And after all, VAR was introduced to iron out mistakes such as offside. But now it seems offside isn’t offside anymore, as long as it’s only a bit offside. The mythical ‘lines’ have been made mythically thicker apparently, thus restoring us to the position we were in before VAR when no-one called a toe offside.
That this is being hailed as a great development shows how far through the looking glass we are on VAR. This season when we hear the expression 'VAR is working much better' this will just mean it’s not being used as much and in that, it is restoring the game to how things were before VAR. In other words, it is quietly being withdrawn for all except the most glaring errors, errors which the referee, 99 times out of a hundred, will see anyway. One thing we can all agree on, football is better without VAR, even if the VAR is still in operation.
It is sometimes said that Allan Saint-Maximin is too good for Newcastle United and should be at a big club. You might argue he made the case again early in the game against West Ham with a typical surging run to set up Callum Wilson’s goal. While this is a little patronising towards the Magpies, it is also incorrect. He’s a wild card: an X Factor. And as such, he can’t play him in the sort of disciplined organisations one of the elite teams play. He only works loosely in any system, is a free spirit and will simply run at the opposition as and when he feels like it. However, he is ideal for Newcastle Utd who need his change of pace, his surging directness and creativity, but it is not a coincidence that he’s not got a full cap for France though has played at U21 level. However, the buzz of anticipation every time he gets the ball at St James Park is something to behold.
They’ll need him regularly on top form to keep out of trouble. That he is on half the money Joelinton earns, is just one more bizarre decision made at Newcastle United.
Spurs fans chanted the question, sticking it to their disloyal striker. Their resolute win against Man City probably made the Kane transfer more certain. They were absolutely devastating on the counterattack and in the second half took the fight to their opponents with some style. Kane was not missed at all. Could it be that their new manager is a considerable upgrade on the miserable Mourinho? It proved that the North Londoners can win games without Kane, even against the finest opponents. Tanganga played perhaps his best ever game for the club and Dele Alli looked reborn, longer of hair and seemingly bulked up giving him more power.
Given Manchester City have lost all their games at White Hart Lane 2.0 with Son Heung-Min scoring in all of them, he and Tottenham are a bit of a bogey team, but even so, they did look like they were missing a Harry Kane-shaped centre-forward. With Tottenham needing money to buy more strength in depth, an £150m deal looks like it would suit both clubs and suit both to agree to it as soon as possible, so that replacements can be brought in before the end of the window and so that we can all shut up about it.
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