Category: English Premier League

A hat-trick from Eberechi Eze helped Arsenal dispose of a sorry Tottenham and extend their lead at the top of the table to six points

Arteta speaks, explaining that he went for Hincapie because he thinks this is the best partnership available to him in the absence of Gabriel. Odegaard and Gyokeres aren’t far off he says, and he expected to face a back three as Frank has done it against Arsenal before and they’ve planned for it.

“It’s a massive and a beautiful day,” he concludes. “So many people you can make happy.”

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Five defeats in six and the anxiety is beginning to show for Leeds. For the second game in a row they took an early lead through Lukas Nmecha but ended up with nothing, Morgan Rogers producing a pair of remarkable finishes to lift Aston Villa into the Champions League qualification slots. Leeds remain in the relegation zone.

“Performance-wise we’ve turned back to what we want to be,” said Daniel Farke. “We should’ve taken some points from this game. We are not back to our best. We can still improve, but at the end we are just disappointed we did not get any points.” Given the way Leeds faded in the second half and their lack of guile throughout, that was perhaps an overly sanguine reading.

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Midfielder has made a big impact at Tottenham but knows upsetting Arsenal is vital to ignite team’s stop-start season

The Premier League’s ball-recovery king wants to zoom out a little, even if the theme does not deviate too far from his stock in trade. This is the thing with João Palhinha, whether in matches or in life. The Tottenham midfielder fights back.

The statistics from his time at Fulham between 2022 and 2024 are telling. The 30-year-old made the most tackles in the league in each season, winning more than anyone else in the first and coming second on the list in season two – one behind Sheffield United’s Vinícius Souza.

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Harvey Barnes was Newcastle’s two-goal hero as Eddie Howe tasted Premier League success against City for the first time in his career

25 seconds: Donnarumma gets away with a dreadful pass out from the back. Joelinton nips in ahead of Foden, who didn’t want the ball, and pokes to Barnes. The Newcastle winger, on the left-hand edge of the D, aims for the bottom right but his curler is weak and the keeper makes amends. What a start that could have been!

Eddie Howe and Pep Guardiola greet each other warmly, then Manchester City kick off. A huge roar from the St James’ Park faithful. Oh me lads.

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Newcastle’s recent slide left them 15th in the Premier League at kick-off but, by the end of an always absorbing, sometimes almost anarchic, evening they had ascended to Cloud Nine.

It is very hard to argue that Eddie Howe is not an elite coach – what price he ends up eventually being poached by Liverpool as Arne Slot’s successor? – but, until this watershed win, his record against Pep Guardiola was pretty dismal. In 16 previous Premier League matches against Guardiola’s Manchester City, with Bournemouth and Newcastle, Howe had lost 14 and drawn two. All that changed as, with Harvey Barnes scoring twice, his players dealt a potentially debilitating blow to City’s title hopes. Guardiola’s side now sit third, four points behind Arsenal and one in arrears of Chelsea.

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Bart Verbruggen was the hero for Brighton after his stoppage-time penalty save from Igor Thiago earned a dramatic victory over Brentford. Brighton had looked like tasting defeat after Thiago’s ice-cool first-half spot-kick had the visitors in front.

Danny Welbeck’s 71st-minute leveller sparked a grandstand finish for Brighton and substitute Jack Hinshelwood completed the turnaround with six minutes left.

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Enes Unal scored moments after climbing off the bench to snatch a point for Bournemouth. The Turkish forward, making his second substitute appearance after recovering from a second ACL injury, struck nine minutes from time to deny West Ham a first away win under Nuno Espirito Santo. “Everyone is so happy and so pleased when these things happen,” said Andoni Iraola, Bournemouth’s manager. “Ten months fighting almost alone, with the physios.”

Callum Wilson had marked his return to his former club with two first-half goals, but when he went off West Ham’s momentum went with him. Marcus Tavernier pulled one back from the penalty spot before Unal struck, with the 28-year-old visibly emotional as he celebrated.

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• Manager laments club’s £3m fines for late second halves

• Burna Boy pre-show ‘made Champions League final late’

Pep Guardiola has lamented the Premier League’s strict rules that have led to Manchester City being fined more than £3m for 30 late second-half restarts in the past three seasons, jokingly bemoaning that Burna Boy did not suffer a similar fate after delaying the kick-off in the 2023 Champions League final.

City play at Newcastle on Saturday evening, beginning a hectic schedule in which they will play twice a week until mid-January. They travelled to the north-east on Friday afternoon, leading to a change in routine at the Etihad Campus and an early pre-match press conference in order to comply with Premier League rules and avoid another punitive fee.

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Newcastle host Manchester City at Saturday teatime while Arsenal face Tottenham in Sunday’s north London derby

Saturday 12.30pm TNT Sports 1 Venue Turf Moor

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Semenyo can lift Bournemouth, Isak must show up for Liverpool and north London derby rivals left to rue injuries

A Mancunian reunion of sorts is on the cards should Kyle Walker of Burnley face Alejandro Garnacho on Chelsea’s left at Turf Moor. The winger has started to settle at Stamford Bridge after his summer move from Manchester United and showcased his range against Wolves before the international break. His assist for Pedro Neto combined wicked pace with a perfect ball along the carpet. His setup for Malo Gusto involved shifting on to his right foot before a dinked cross to the far post. His celebration with Neto, replicating his sitting embrace with Kobbie Mainoo and Rasmund Højlund, was a reminder of how quickly things change. The last time Garnacho took on Walker? When the former scored for United in their FA Cup final win over Manchester City. Taha Hashim

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The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions. Today, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them

Pep Guardiola has done a lot with his 1,000 matches as a manager. At Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, he has lifted 40 trophies (including three Community Shields, because why wouldn’t you count them?), yet not even this fact quantifies the way Guardiola has defined an entire era (or two) of the sport.

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England’s keeper and a 19-year-old French forward are part of our selection of players who are essential to their clubs

Unless his arms suddenly enjoy a miraculous growth spurt the T rex jibes will never fully be banished, but Jordan Pickford has been one of the Premier League’s most reliable goalkeepers for some time. His long passing and shot-stopping have always been of decent standard, but, over time, he’s developed his short game, able to keep the ball moving and begin attacks by picking out teammates at closer range. His handling is tidier, meaning mistakes are fewer, and he is no longer as affected by his emotions as he was in his youth.

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Wolves are yet to win a game in the Premier League this season but their older fans know it could be far worse

By That 1980s Sports Blog

You fear for Wolves. Eleven matches into the season they are without a win, have sacked manager Vítor Pereira and look likely to be relegated after nearly a decade in the Premier League. It turns out that selling your best players and failing to replace them adequately is not a recipe for success. But surely things cannot be as bad as they were during the 1980s, when they went from the First Division to the Fourth Division in three years.

Wolves experienced the perfect start to the decade when they won the League Cup in 1980, beating the reigning European champions Nottingham Forest at Wembley. But all was not well at the club. The decline can be traced back to their decision in the late 1970s to spend £3m on the John Ireland Stand (now the Steve Bull Stand) at Molineux, which left the club financially drained during a time of declining attendances. They were relegated from the top flight at the end of the 1981-82 season and, with debts totalling £2.5m, were minutes away from going out of business that summer.

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• Clubs face each other in cup quarter-final on 23 December

• Their weekend league games go from Sunday to Saturday

Arsenal and Crystal Palace have succeeded with requests to the Premier League to move their fixtures the weekend before they meet in the Carabao Cup quarter-finals.

The teams play in the cup at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday 23 December and had been due to play at 2pm GMT on Sunday 21 December. Instead Arsenal’s game at Everton and Palace’s at Leeds will take place at 8pm the previous day.

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The defending Premier League champions spent big over the summer, but it’s hard to see how the new players fit

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What was it supposed to look like? Amid all the talk around Liverpool and their disappointing form at the start of this season, that is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer. What were they trying to do? If it had worked, how would this team have played?

The champions spent £424m (about $550m) on new signings in the summer, but if all had gone well, they would have spent an additional £40m ($53m) to land Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guéhi. The England international would, at the very least, have given an extra option at the back (the injury to Giovanni Leoni has diminished their defensive options further), allowing Arne Slot to rest Ibrahima Konaté, whose poor form continued in the 3-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday. An early City penalty was a direct result of Konaté getting in Conor Bradley’s way as Jérémy Doku cut in from the left.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

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