The Weekend: 4th September 2023
Evan Ferguson is the new apple of the big clubs' eyes, but perhaps he should speak to Anthony Elanga about being a young player at Manchester United.
The conveyor belt keeps turning, then. Like a factory dealing in the manufacture of prestige automobiles, no sooner was Moises Caicedo packaged up and sent off to Chelsea to live out his humble boyhood dreams of being unbelievably wealthy for generations by the time he’s 25, than another name has started to be whispered of as being likely make the level of receiving an offer to lose in the Europa League semifinals and finish fourth in the Premier League for five times as much money as he currently earns at Brighton.
In truth, Evan Ferguson’s hat-trick for Brighton against Newcastle wasn’t particularly brilliant. The first goal came about following defending straight out of the Keystone Kops Academy for Performing Arts, the second was nicely taken, albeit after the centre of the Newcastle defence had opened up before him as if he were Moses, and the third came with the aid of a huge deflection. This isn’t a criticism of him, obviously. Take your chances when they fall to you. A goal’s a goal. That’s all anyone can really ever ask of a striker.
It is notable, the extent to which transfer talk is now just this perpetual white noise, these days. There couldn’t really have been any longer to the start of the next window than Saturday, but for the very online fan who’s never been to a game in their life that doesn’t matter. They want the player they feel they deserve NOW, dammit.
But Manchester United supporters already preparing their version of the ‘footballer living his dream’ narrative (the start of a narrative cycle which ends with him receiving death threats on social media for not reaching the beyond perfect standard expected of him) should probably be reminding themselves that Tony Bloom drives a hard bargain and that the Glazers will almost certainly still be running the show at Old Trafford next summer, if current reports are to be believed.
Newcastle, by contrast, just weren’t very good. To start banging on about them having lost three in a row as though this is definitely some sort of CRISIS seems a little silly, especially considering that those losses have come against Manchester City, Liverpool and Brighton. But their performances absolutely have not been improving game on game, and against Brighton they were defensively profligate and flattered by the eventual 3-1 scoreline.
And as though things couldn’t get any better for Brighton supporters, the ongoing flatulence to be emanating from Stamford Bridge continued to parp away for another ninety minutes on Saturday afternoon as Chelsea stumbled to a 1-0 home defeat against Nottingham Forest. Forest were a lot of the things that Chelsea aspire to be but weren’t, defensively compact and with a hint of electricity running through them when they had the chance to break.
The decision to liberate Anthony Elanga from Old Trafford felt like one that could reap Forest rewards. His winning goal st Stamford Bridge seemed a little further reinforcement to the idea that playing for Manchester United is more likely to break a player than anything else, these days, and his goal looked like a player spreading his wings. Chelsea continue to look like a bloated, incoherent mess who are flattered by being in 12th place in the current Premier League table.
Manchester City stay top with a 5-1 win against Fulham, but no-one particularly cares about that, so we move on. Spurs and West Ham retain their improbable places in the Premier League’s top four. For just over a quarter of an hour, it felt as though Spurs’ EFL Cup hangover might continue when they fell behind early on at Burnley, but a Heung Min Son hat-trick and goals from Cristian Romero and James Maddison helped them to a comfortable 5-2 win, while West Ham had gone top of the table with their Friday night win at Luton on Friday night. Elsewhere, Sheffield United and Everton ultimately cancelled each other, while the 2-2 draw between Brentford and Bournemouth continued these two teams’ mixed starts to the season.
In the Championship, early season results had suggested that this season might prove to be as uneventful at the very top of the table as last season was, but this was punctured slightly at the weekend. It’s tempting to wonder whether Southampton might have sold a couple of players too many after they were beaten 5-0 at Sunderland. The other two clubs relegated from the Premier League didn’t fare much better, with Leicester City beaten 1-0 at home by Hull City and Leeds United held to a goalless draw at home to bottom of the table Sheffield Wednesday.
Preston North End are the surprise early pace-setters in the Championship with four wins and a draw from their first five matches, with Ipswich Town in second place, continuing momentum from their impressive promotion from League One last season. But there are only three points between top and seventh place in the table, so as ever the advice from these quarters is to treat any league table with extreme caution until at least the clocks go back.
There are surprises at the top of League One as well, with three of the top four places occupied by Exeter City, newly-promoted Stevenage, and Port Vale. But again it’s tight at the top, with just four points between Exeter at the top of the table and 14th-placed Shrewsbury Town. The biggest game of the day saw more than 21,000 turn out at The Toughsheet Community Stadium—nothing says community like Toughsheet; you can have that slogan free of charge— to see Bolton Wanderers beat Derby County 2-1 to move to third place in the table, a scrappy match resulting in two penalty kicks, an own goal and a red card. At the other end of the table, Wigan Athletic have slipped back into the relegation places after losing at Blackpool. It remains a consequence of their points deduction that they’ve still won more of their first five games than all the rest of the bottom six have between them.
For all the fuss that was made about Wrexham over the course of the summer and since the new season started, it’s the team that spent last season getting on with their business in their shadow last season, Notts County, who are currently leading the way. Almost 10,000 people were at Meadow Lane to see them beat Accrington 3-1, while Wrexham are now in 13th place after a 1-0 win at Tranmere Rovers, who stay worryingly close to the bottom of the table alongside one of the pre-season favourites Stockport County, whose big spending has resulted in one win from their first six games of the season.
In the National League, there are four at the top who have a little bit of a buffer. Barnet are top, while Chesterfield are second after a 4-3 win at Aldershot Town. We could have had surprise leaders. With ten minutes to play of their match against newly-promoted Oxford City they led 3-2, but an equalising goal for Oxford kept them off the top of the table. They’re in third place, with freshly-relegated Hartlepool United in fourth. There’s a single point between these four teams.
At the other end of the table, there remain two clubs about whom you do rather start to wonder whether the HMS Crisis Club could be about to board. Oldham Athletic were supposed to be among the favourites to win the league this season, but they’ve now gone five straight league games without a win and who sit in 18th place in the league table, just a point above the relegation places, following a 2-2 draw in Saturday evening’s live match at Gateshead.
Still, at least—and I say this in the full knowledge that this comfort comes at a temperature of absolute zero—things aren’t as bad for them as they are for now perennial banter club York City, who have failed to win any of their first seven games of the season and would be bottom of the National League table had Southend United not been docked ten points for their high court shenanigans at the end of last month. Their latest bottoming out came with a 4-1 defeat at Ebbsfleet United. This time last week, York were becoming one of the first clubs this season to sack their manager. Signs of improvement were largely conspicuous by their absence, five days on.
Sunday brought twelve goals and three home Premier League wins. Crystal Palace and Wolves woke up after 45 fairly tepid minutes to play out a five-goal second half, with Palace winning 3-2, Liverpool brushed Jekyll & Hyde Villa 3-0 with Mo Salah scoring a few days after a bid of £150m in fossil-fuel money was offered their way from Saudi Arabia which they rejected. They stay third.
All the Sunday excitement seemed reserved for the match between Arsenal and Manchester United. There’s always something fundamentally humorous about these matches, whether it’s the hubris, the nostril-flared anger with which they’re played, or the conspiracy theories that come out afterwards, and this early season match was no exception, with Arsenal eventually winning 3-1 thanks to extremely late goals from Declan Rice and Gabriel Jesus.
Rasmus Hojlund made his league debut for United as a second half substitute and ran around with the gait of an excited golden retriever for 25 minutes to about the same amount of effect as a dog chasing a ball around the pitch. Still, at least he didn’t Chic Brodie anyone. Peter Drury made much of his “SIX GOALS IN SIX GAMES FOR DENMARK” (it is a truth universally acknowledged that Drury only ever speaks in capital letters), but didn’t mention that these six goals had consisted of a hat-trick against Finland, two goals against Kazakhstan and one against Slovenia. Still, he looks fun, and supporting Manchester United hasn’t looked like much of that in years.
The winning goals came after a conventional afternoon of VAR controversy, with Arsenal having a penalty called back following a VAR inspection and Manchester United having a goal ruled out for one of those “it doesn’t matter whether it was by three microns or not, OFFSIDE IS OFFSIDE (unless it’s the team I support, which case I can only implore for a common sense application of the rules which ignores I said earlier in this sentence)” goals. Did Arsenal deserve the win? Probably, on balance. Were they a little lucky to get it? Probably, on balance. But this was their best Premier League performance of the season so far, and certainly a substantial improvement on their previous 2-2 draw with Fulham.
Of course, none of this prevented Erik ten Hag from coming out after the match with his best ‘the only reason I’m not wearing a tin foil hat right now is that I don’t have any tin foil to hand’ routine, blaming every single 50/50 decision that didn’t go his team’s way, as though that was the only thing that made any difference to his team’s fortunes rather than, I dunno, ending the match with Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans as their central defensive pairing. Evan Ferguson will probably bring their woes to an end, because signing young big name players has worked so well for Manchester United over this last few seasons. If Ferguson is considering such a move, he could do worse than give Anthony Elanga a call to find out what it’s really like.