Premier League talking points: Chelsea machine splutters as three set to become two

Half-term Report: Johnny Nicholson examines what the second half of the Premier League season has in store.

Manchester City’s Phil Foden takes on James Milner of Liverpool. City’s style of play might be playing classical music very precisely, but Liverpool are rock n’ roll, and have their foot up on the stage monitor of life. Picture: Michael Regan/Getty Images

No jab, no play?

We go into a potentially fractured festive season still with about 16% of Premier League players unvaccinated. Given how many difficulties these people are causing for their clubs — something Jurgen Klopp has recently spoken well about — taking a harder line with them seems inevitable. No jab, no play, no pay is their ultimate sanction, and may have to at least be threatened to pull them into line. The club, as a business, is entitled to dictate vaccination as a qualification for playing for the club. With hard lines being taken all over Europe’s top leagues, all of which are almost 100% jabbed, those holding out will have to be set a deadline, after which they’ll be cut loose.

Three becomes two

It seems likely that the season’s three-horse race for the Premier League will become two over the festive period: Manchester City and Liverpool. The sleek, dynamic, and modern Chelsea of the first third of the season has somewhat evaporated. Romelu Lukaku started well, but has not yet proven to be the difference-maker many thought, and the previously well-oiled team now looks like it is going a bit rusty. Manager Thomas Tuchel can, without doubt, find a way to smooth out the wrinkles in Chelsea’s season, but how he does that will be a significant plot twist in the second half of the season.

The Geordie money tree

As the transfer window opens and Newcastle United start throwing money out of it in a desperate attempt to buy a defence, a midfield and a couple of strikers, their fans will hope huge amounts of cash can convince a few half-decent players to sign on. If they sign, but do not perform well immediately, it will be interesting to see how that is received by fans. It’s one thing calling for money to be spent, but if there is no significant improvement, what then? Football is an ornery beast. Those who like to draw straight lines from spend to success often over-simplify both football and economics. The presumed land of milk and honey via the oil money that many think awaits Newcastle United may turn out to be a field of tares.

Sportswashing in action

The revulsion at Newcastle’s new ownership has not lessened, but we’ve already become accustomed to it. The unpalatable truth is that sportswashing works. We now talk about the team like we talk about any other team. That in itself is normalising their owners. Sportswashing works by persistence. We get so sick of the awfulness we just shut up and close off to it. After all, we have lives to live, we have our loves to love. It is depressing that some of their fans celebrated their takeover with such glee. That sort of acceptance is frightening, but there will be many more such battles in 2022’s culture wars.

The new, improved Stevie G

Steven Gerrard gets more impressive every week as a manager and has already taken Aston Villa into the top half of the table. It seems as though this iteration of Stevie G is a new improved 2.0 model who is far more articulate and intelligent than the player showed himself to be. I’ve long had a theory that dressing-room culture makes bright lads pretend to be more stupid than they are, in order to fit in. Stevie seems to be another example of this. He is developing the hard art of making substitutions which change a game. He’s also introduced a new, more fierce intensity to Villa’s play, which, if maintained, could see them push for a European place that, only a few weeks ago, seemed almost impossible.

Is the future Ralf?

The Ralf Rangnick experiment seems to have fallen out of the headlines with Manchester United’s games being called off, but don’t expect 2022 to be any more straightforward than 2021. If Ralf does well and gets his side into the top four and makes it to the Champions League semi-final, which should be expected given the investment in their squad, pressure will be on to appoint him full-time — indeed, it would seem bizarre not to. But they plan to capture Mauricio Pochettino from Paris St Germain, or at least that seems to be the plan at the moment. The conflict between sticking with a successful man or getting in a new one is a dilemma that is born out of the indecision of the board. It is a problem deferred for six months, but not yet dismissed.

Maths v rock n’ roll

While Manchester City continue to play really well and seem set for yet another title win in 2022, there is something mathematical about how they win games. They apply ‘the plan’ and it works and they win, but how much does it stir the blood? It appeals to the neutral’s intellect far more than the heart. It is maths, not poetry. But the way Liverpool play appeals to the heart and soul. Liverpool always give the opposition a chance. Sometimes they fall behind, but then come roaring back. Their recent drawn game against Tottenham was a thrilling, quite chaotic affair. It might not win as many titles, but it is always preferable to just seeing a 7-0 hammering. City might be playing classical music very precisely, but Liverpool are rock n’ roll, and have their foot up on the stage monitor of life.

West Ham are not as good as was thought

A lot of people were getting carried away by West Ham’s form in the first months of this season, and David Moyes was being hailed as some sort of transformed man. Don’t be so sure. This is an expensively assembled squad that should be pushing for Europa League places, and that is assuredly where they will end the season. Moyes is a decent manager, but he’s not the second coming of Rinus Michels, no matter how much his pals in some sections of the press would like us to believe he is. After a slump in form, which included being knocked out of the League Cup, Manchester United and Spurs — with their new bosses — look sure to overtake them in 2022 and push them down into the Europa League places, which, in truth, is their par-for-the-course. This will, without doubt, provoke serious, big-money interest among the top three for Declan Rice, who has been the jewel in the West Ham crown both this and last season. A player like few others who, effectively, is two players in one: both a defensive screener and a playmaker. Liverpool look an ideal fit, but Manchester United or Chelsea might pay more.

Down down, deeper and down

The relegation battle is already marked out to be between Watford, Burnley, Newcastle, or Southampton to join Norwich. Those four clubs have just two wins out of 20 between them in the last five pre-Christmas games. The effect of Newcastle’s spending will be the X-Factor. If Leeds don’t recover from their injury crisis, they may be pulled in too, but I wouldn’t be looking outside of these five for anyone else to join them in the fight to stay up. The truth is there are some rank poor sides in the league this season, as there is every season. Even though the Premier League sells itself as some holy citadel to football, it isn’t. It is, like all football, a bit rubbish much of the time. That’s OK, but don’t try to sell us sh*te as though it’s sugar.

Can England go one better?

With the World Cup in Qatar set for November 2022 — we’ll see what Covid thinks of that — this summer, the Nations League will be good preparation for all the top European sides, assuming the players are not all broken. England’s challenge is to consistently beat top sides such as Italy and Germany, and who’s to say they won’t? One thing we’ve learned about Gareth Southgate is that we underestimate him at our peril. He’s realised that a unified, well-motivated team is most of the job. If he can master making effective substitutes, maybe, just maybe, England can take the next step.

Hurrah for women’s football

If 2021 was a bad year for sexists, 2022 will be even worse for them. Emma Hayes joined ITV and won Pundit of the Year in the Broadcast Awards. Vicky Sparks and Robyn Cowan made good commentators, Alex Scott took over Football Focus and just about everything else, Karen Carney, Rachel Brown-Finnis, and others did a good job of co-comms and punditry. There are also the women’s Euros in England to look forward to. England are one of the favourites and will get huge audiences for their games, further cementing the popularity of women’s football. If you don’t like women being involved in male football media, 2022 will not be for you.

VAR was sold on a false promise

VAR will continue its dysfunctional reign in the coming year, even though many of us wish it would just go away. The anger about it seemed to die down with the relief at being able to go and watch football again and was put into perspective by the pandemic. But it is still ruinous to the enjoyment of football, still the coitus interruptus at the moment of climax. It has also added to the abuse of officials, because VAR promised it would be the solution to refereeing errors, so those who believed in it thought a new golden dawn was coming. But it turned out to be no different, just with mistakes farmed out to Stockley Park instead of on the pitch. So people are frustrated. They’ve gotten a bum deal and now they’re angry about it, but in denial about the real cause of the anger. Or is that Brexit? The solution is to just accept mistakes happen. Once you do, VAR, and all the fury it generates, becomes pointless. But no one is listening, and 2022 will likely be angrier than ever.

The Conte revolution is under way

The way Antonio Conte goes about shaping Spurs into a coherent and dangerous team will be one of the year’s more fascinating themes. He is a ruthless operator, and it already looks like he is getting a tune out of Dele Alli, which in itself is a minor miracle, because this once-fantastic player’s talent appeared to have evaporated over the last four years and he became a shell of the player he once was. Conte’s big year will be next season once he’s moulded the side into the unit he wants, but they could cause a lot of trouble for the other big five in the second half of this season, taking valuable points from any of them. A battle with Arsenal for fifth seems on the cards. Key in Conte’s 3-5-2 system will be how well he gets Eric Dier operating. He’s already talking him up. Whether Dier can live up to his rhetoric will be fascinating to watch.

Arsenal’s youth lead the way

The second half of the season will be a test which will reveal how much progress Arsenal are making. Can they take a top-four place? Or win a cup? They are packed full of superb youngsters in the first team and in the development squad. Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka, though only 21 and 20, almost seem like experienced veterans already and are now establishing themselves as internationals. The key is whether Arsenal can lock the back door and defend consistently well. The feeling that they have a soft underbelly remains.

Burnley need to be relegated to give them some point

And finally, 2022 may, at last, be the year that we say goodbye to Premier League status for Burnley. They are not scoring enough and are looking defensively weaker than usual, but more than that, they have the air of a club that just doesn’t quite know what it is for anymore. They never have long cup runs, and have no chance of getting into Europe. Hanging around the bottom third is all they have to look forward to at the start of the season, and that just isn’t enough to keep players motivated. For Burnley, relegation would, perhaps counterintuitively, be a relief, and will give the club back some purpose and drive. It will also likely mean winning a lot more games. That is not a bad thing.

There will be twists and turns along the way, not least over whether the season even gets completed, should Covid wrecks the winter months. We live in interesting times, let’s hope football helps keep our minds off all the hardships.