Category: English Premier League

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“I handle the good moments - I handle good the bad moments,” said Manchester City’s manager in his pre-match press conference. “I have had bad ones in my career as a manager but we were able to come back and now it takes longer.

“I take experience with that. I have had 40 days of bad days in terms of results. That is the truth when you compare to eight years which is much better. There have been eight years of incredible [results] and now we have 40-45 days of [bad results].

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Aston Villa take on Manchester City on Saturday while Liverpool visit Tottenham in Sunday’s standout fixture

Saturday 12.30pm TNT Sports 1 Venue Villa Park

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Bournemouth look to repeat Old Trafford heroics, Saints must get ugly and it’s Füllkrug time for West Ham

Approaching the halfway point, it is hard to gauge where Aston Villa are at. Regardless of Manchester City’s extended wobble, a result at home to Pep Guardiola’s side will go a long way to providing an indication. It was always going to be a big ask for Villa to better or even equal last season’s achievements but, with automatic qualification to the Champions League last 16 a distinct possibility and a top-four finish within reach, it has been another solid, if imperfect, start. Only once this season have Villa recorded victory after a European night, in September after winning at Young Boys. This time last season Villa were third in the division, two points off the summit, on 35 points. They may be 10 points worse off now but, despite defeat at Nottingham Forest last time out, they remain in a good spot. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Manchester City, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Brentford v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Ipswich v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Arsenal, Saturday 5.30pm

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• US company buying 98.8% stake in Merseyside club
• ‘Exciting new era’ promised after deal worth about £500m

The Friedkin Group has completed its takeover of Everton and brought the turbulent era of Farhad Moshiri to an end.

The US company (TFG), owned by the Texas billionaire and proposed new Everton chairman Dan Friedkin, agreed a complex deal to purchase Moshiri’s 94.1% shareholding in September. Through its entity Roundhouse Capital Holdings Limited it has acquired 98.8% of the shares in Everton and converted the club’s short-term debt to equity.

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• ‘There is a limit for me, and then I can get emotional’
• Slot to miss Southampton tie after third yellow card

Arne Slot has said he must reflect on the touchline behaviour that has attracted three yellow cards this season, but he admitted Premier League referees are breaking his limits.

The Liverpool head coach will serve a one-match suspension in the Carabao Cup quarter-final at Southampton having collected his third booking, in the draw against Fulham on Saturday. Slot was also shown a yellow card against Chelsea and Arsenal, the latter after a mix-up with the fourth official, who thought he was swearing at him and not Ibrahima Konaté.

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Suddenly, fascinatingly, every game seems fraught with possibility, even if that has meant mostly pain for the struggling champions, Manchester City

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Sometimes the only explanation that makes sense is that football is governed not by the laws of physics, by data and xG and logic, but that it is in fact a malevolent deity, capricious and mischievous and that sometimes it turns on you and there’s really not much that can be done.

The Manchester derby had been a largely dreadful game between two tentative sides, lacking confidence and conviction, poking and prodding and giving very little indication they’ve been the two most successful clubs over the history of the Premier League. But City had had all three of the shots on target in the first half and, in that sense, were worth the lead given them when Joško Gvardiol headed in Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected cross, a goal that would have seemed freakish had it not been the eighth United have conceded from a corner this season, and the fourth under Ruben Amorim.

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Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim explained Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho's surprise omission from his squad for their match against Manchester City was not for disciplinary reasons but was intended to push them. Amorim said 'it's important the performance in training, the performance in-game, the way you dress, the way you eat, the way you engage with teammates, the way you push your teammates' and added that the team proved through their victory again City that they 'can leave anyone outside the squad and manage to win'.

• Manchester United view sidelining Marcus Rashford as key to cultural reboot

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Nottingham Forest are dreaming of Europe while Ismaïla Sarr is a reason for Crystal Palace fans to be cheerful

Manchester United’s selection was something of a surprise, with Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho left out of the squad completely and Ruben Amorim further raising eyebrows by saying the decision had been made after analysing “everything – training, performance, engagement with teammates”. It was only something of a surprise, however, because the XI was posted on Facebook by Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News at 10.23pm on Saturday night, a little over 18 hours before kick-off. “Interesting an XI has already leaked this evening,” he wrote. “Teams have leaked out of United for years but the current regularity, brazen manner of it and apparently public identity of the source make it more of an issue.” Amorim’s twin tasks are to create a successful team and a disciplined club where nobody threatening the collective to promote their individual agendas. Despite this welcome result, he has a lot to do on both fronts. Simon Burnton

Match report: Manchester City 1-2 Manchester United

Guardiola feels he is ‘not good enough’ after City’s late defeat by United

Match report: Liverpool 2-2 Fulham

Match report: Arsenal 0-0 Everton

Match report: Wolves 1-2 Ipswich

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Five first-half goals give Spurs thumping win over hopeless Southampton, whose fans turned on manager Russell Martin

This has a bit of a desperate feel to it. Both managers on TNT were doing their best to mask their anxiety (at least that’s my pop psychology take). They know that the ice below their feet is getting thinner.

The players are now making their way out the tunnel. All the noise, all the pressure, all the injuries and absentees, this could be anything.

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Two goals in the last few minutes saw Manchester United steal victory in a high-drama, low-quality derby

An email! “Looks like City’s injury crisis is really starting to bite, with just £200m of talent on the bench,” writes Tim Woods. “Still, as a Liverpool fan I find myself in that rare position of hoping for a United win. Despite their troubles, I still fear City can put together a 25-game winning run to deny us (or Chelsea) the title once again.” Obviously I’m completely impartial, but it would be nice if a different team won the league for a change. Four in a row and six out of seven is quite enough for the time being.

It’s only a few months since United’s then manager, Erik ten Hag, described the idea of Rashford being dropped as “crazy”, and that “I would almost say that, as a person, you are not OK when you bring such speculation … I’m very happy with Marcus, with everything. With his defending part, offensive, he performs very good.”

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When Ruben Amorim oversaw his previous victory over Manchester City – with his old club Sporting in the Champions League – it was to push the reigning Premier League champions towards crisis. That was in early November and it was City’s third defeat on the spin.

As Amorim repeated the trick here, it was to pep up his new project at Manchester United and leave Pep Guardiola on his knees. There seems no way out of the misery for the City manager, this an eighth defeat in 11 matches in all competitions, the decline of his all-conquering team stark and extraordinary.

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Arne Slot’s ten men rescued a late point at Anfield, Arsenal were frustrated and Ipswich piled more pain on Gary O’Neil

Arsenal 0-0 Everton. A fast start for the hosts, with the sheer presence of Bukayo Saka causing the dithering Jordan Pickford angst. The keeper sorts himself out just in time. Then he claims a Declan Rice corner. “Greetings from Free State California,” writes Mary Waltz. “It’s pitch dark, pouring rain, the perfect surroundings for watching my Everton march into the Arsenal home ground. Not feeling especially optimistic but who knows … who am I kidding, it’s going to be ugly. Sigh.”

Liverpool 0-0 Fulham. Andy Robertson has taken an early knock on the knee, courtesy of Issa Diop, who goes into the book. Robertson’s up and about, but took a while to get back onto his feet. A concern for the hosts at Anfield.

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Hungarian defender is, like his club, a bundle of energy with grand ambitions – and he wants to build a lake

A broad smile unravels on Milos Kerkez’s babyface as he watches a clip of himself doing what he probably does best: putting his body on the line for the cause, in this case his previous club, AZ. It was May last year, deep into a 3-0 Eredivisie win at Nijmegen, when the ball squirted free after he executed an expert slide tackle on the touchline. Having gone to ground, Kerkez was surely at a disadvantage to beat Anthony Musaba to the punch?

“My teammate Tijjani Reijnders went: ‘No, no!’ I was like: ‘I have to do something,’” says the Bournemouth defender. So Kerkez, on his backside, scrambles towards the ball, throwing his body at it, twirling mid-air like a commando, to block and retain possession. “I wanted to hit it with my head but it came off my back. I mean, it’s still a good tackle, no?”

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Enzo Maresca’s team started the season in chaos and uncertainty. But that was the case the last time they claimed the league crown

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Nobody saw Chelsea coming the last time they won the title. The key moment came in the sixth game of the season when they found themselves 3-0 down at half-time away at Arsenal. They’d lost at home to Liverpool the previous week and drawn at Swansea the week before that. Their manager, Antonio Conte, having tried to accommodate himself to the squad decided enough was enough: the squad had to bend to him. At half-time he switched to his preferred back three and in the comforting drabness of a goalless second half of a game that was already lost, was born the revolution.

Chelsea won their next 13 league games and by the time anybody had worked out how to deal with their 3-4-2-1, with N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matić an apparently impenetrable shield at the back of midfield, it was too late. There was no European football to worry about – the previous season had seen José Mourinho’s meltdown and a 10th-placed finish – and so Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso remained fresh enough to keep tearing up and down the field at wing-back. Elsewhere the stars aligned: Manchester City were still getting used to Pep Guardiola in his first season in English football, Arsenal were still in their late-Wenger drift, Liverpool still building under Jürgen Klopp, and so Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham were Chelsea’s closest challengers. But 93 points would probably have won the league whoever came second.

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Fulham’s Antonee Robinson shines against Bukayo Saka, Tottenham squander another lead and woe at Old Trafford

There are numerous issues when taking over a team mid-season. One is that a new head coach might not have the right players for his plan and he has very little time to implement what he wants with those he does. Ruben Amorim has arranged his players – in various combinations – into his preferred 3-4-3 formation and it is clear what the strategy is, although there are flaws. The defence is struggling, where the three centre-backs are not performing their main duty of keeping clean sheets. Against Forest every set-piece looked like it might result in a goal. Only Nikola Milenkovic did score from a corner but the others were more farcical as André Onana got confused by Morgan Gibbs-White and a seemingly harmless Chris Wood header was allowed to drop in off the post. Maybe chopping and changing is Amorim’s issue and he needs to back a first-choice back three to allow them to settle and offer a foundation to build on. Will Unwin

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