Category: English Premier League

The spoils were shared after an uneventful match at Elland Road

2 min: A fairly nondescript start to the game, during which Leeds see plenty of the ball. Elland Road in good voice.

Leeds get the ball rolling. The rain tipping down in West Yorkshire.

Joao Pedro and Enzo Fernandez scored to give Chelsea the points but Fulham were furious about two VAR interventions

5 min Fulham try to play out from the back and lose the ball. Joao Pedro rakes a left-foot drive from 25 yards that is held to his left by Leno.

2 min Fulham have started with a back three/five, so this is their revised line-up.

Three seasons of work from the head coach on the same host body have led in a straight line to Anfield where Arteta can shape his destiny

After tea and cake and Declan Rices. After Ebe Eze and Viktor Gyökeres. Should I, after three straight second places, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? Hmm. Maybe not. With all due apologies to the living descendants of TS Eliot, the love song of Mikel Arteta still doesn’t really scan or rhyme or have a clear endnote as yet, even as the six-year anniversary of his appointment as Arsenal manager approaches.

This is normal enough. It is obviously incorrect to conclude, as many have, that Arsenal’s manager has to win a trophy this season or be remembered not just as a fraud, but as a Lego-haired billion-pound-spend fraud, the worst kind of fraud there is. Sport doesn’t work in simple metre. Uncertainty is key to its fascination.

Liverpool and Arsenal clash at Anfield on Sunday while a beleaguered Manchester United host Burnley on Saturday

Saturday 12.30pm TNT Sports 1 Venue Stamford Bridge

• United ready to accept £35m-£40m for winger

• Garnacho out of favour with Ruben Amorim

Chelsea are close to an agreement to sign Manchester United’s Alejandro Garnacho in a deal likely to be worth between £35m and £40m.

Talks are yet to conclude but there is an expectation United will lower their £50m asking price and reach a compromise that will allow the winger to move to Stamford Bridge. Chelsea are waiting to hear back from United and are confident the deal will go ahead. Garnacho has no future under Ruben Amorim but Chelsea regard the Argentinian as a top talent and believe they can get his career back on track.

Goodness knows what the man who was not there made of it all. Might Alexander Isak have felt the tiniest bit guilty at the sight of his increasingly overwrought understudy, Anthony Gordon, missing a couple of extremely presentable chances before being sent off for a ridiculous first-half tackle on Virgil van Dijk?

And how did Newcastle’s currently striking star striker assess Hugo ­Ekitiké’s attacking performance for Liverpool? Even as Isak continues to endeavour to engineer a move to Anfield, did he celebrate Will Osula’s unexpected late Newcastle leveller to make it 2-2? What, precisely, did he feel when the 16-year-old visiting substitute Rio Ngumoha won it for the champions in the 100th minute?

Questions around goalkeeping and style of play raise questions about whether Man City can regain the aura of invincibility that once surrounded them

The truly great sides always come with an aura. One of the elements that makes them so hard to beat is that beating them seems so inconceivable. Even when they hit a bad run, the expectation is always that at some point they will rediscover their form. To some extent, Manchester City did that last season. As miserable as much of the campaign was, after losing to Nottingham Forest at the beginning of March, they put together a run of 10 games unbeaten and ended up third – even if defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final demonstrated the shortcomings that remain.

That game showcased City’s flatness at times going forward but also a strange openness at the back that was apparent again in the 4-3 defeat to Al-Hilal in the Club World Cup. Pep Guardiola sides, given how high their line is, will always be susceptible to direct balls played in behind them if something goes awry with the press; it’s an inevitable part of the risk-reward of that style of play.

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.

Richarlison and Martín Zubimendi are changing things up at Spurs and Arsenal while Graham Potter needs to get ugly

Ruben Amorim has been a highly successful Manchester United manager against continental opposition and promoted Premier League clubs. He’s been respectable against the top teams in England, with a win at the Etihad, a draw at Anfield and a win on penalties against Arsenal. But he’s been hopeless when faced with opponents from mid-table. Last season, after taking over in November, Amorim supervised 14 league games against clubs that ended up between seventh and 17th. United won two, drew two and lost 10, scraping eight points out of a possible 42. One of those two wins was at Craven Cottage, a streaky 1-0. Here, again, they needed luck to take the lead as Leny Yoro got away with a two-hands push on Calvin Bassey; this time they blew it, and they couldn’t complain. United had been the better team for 20 minutes, Fulham for about 75. Tim de Lisle

Match report: Fulham 1-1 Manchester United

Match report: Everton 2-0 Brighton

Match report: Crystal Palace 1-1 Nottingham Forest

Match report: Manchester City 0-2 Tottenham

Match report: Arsenal 5-0 Leeds

Amorim tells United to ‘grow up’, Fernandes says referee triggered penalty miss

Match report: Brentford 1-0 Aston Villa

• A Rodrigo Muniz own goal put United ahead

• Emile Smith Rowe flicked home Alex Iwobi’s cross to level

On the same subject … “So,” says Roger Kirkby, “with most teams now having played two games, only two have won both and only two have lost ’em. If the season carries on in the same manner, we are in for a treat of a season.”

What’s at stake (realistically). Man United are 18th in the table with nul points, so they can either stay there if they lose today, go 16th or 17th if they draw, or leap to somewhere between fifth and ninth with a win. Fulham, currently 14th, can slip a place or two if they lose, stay 14th if they draw, or soar to fifth with a win. All to play for!

El Casico wasn’t a classic

2 min: Nothing doing on the pitch yet. In the stands, the Forest fans launch the first aural salvo, informing the home support that Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis “does what he wants”.

Palace get the ball rolling. El Casico is go!

It had been billed as “El Casico”. But after crossing swords with Nottingham Forest at the court of arbitration for sport following Uefa’s decision to demote them from the Europa League, Crystal Palace couldn’t find a way to beat them on the pitch.

Public enemy No 1 in this part of south London after his perceived role in the Cas verdict, Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis was conspicuous by his absence at Selhurst Park, although a phalanx of beefy security guards accompanied the visiting players when they arrived. A banner that was unveiled midway through the first half made clear the animosity of the Palace fans towards Marinakis.

Viktor Gyökeres and Jurriën Timber both score twice as the Gunners rout Leeds, though injuries to Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka remove some of the gloss

Leeds get the ball rolling. Arsenal soon take it off them.

… and now the players ready for tonight emerge. Arsenal in their traditional red and white, Leeds in second-choice blue. A genuine buzz in the stadium, a heady mix of first-home-fixture-of-the-season excitement and new-signing thrill. We’ll be off soon, but just before kick-off, there’s a moment of applause in memory of former Arsenal director and board member Richard Carr, who died recently.

How to rally Tottenham after the Eberechi Eze farrago: turn up at Manchester City and mastermind a dominant 2-0 triumph that takes your side to the top of the Premier League – for a few hours at least.

By doing so Thomas Frank issued a fine calling card regarding his professionalism, and suggested his Spurs project will be as strategic as Ange Postecoglou’s was gung-ho. Witnessing how the visitors caused Pep Guardiola’s men headaches caused one wag to question if Eze might change his mind (again) about which club to join.

Three home wins in the Premier League on a day that belonged to Coventry in the Championship

Burnley v Sunderland teams

Burnley: Dubravka, Walker, Esteve, Ekdal, Hartman, Bruun Larsen, Cullen, Ugochukwu, Hannibal, Anthony, Foster. Subs: Weiss, Worrall, Edwards, Tchaouna, Flemming, Ramsey, Sonne, Pires, Laurent.