Category: English Premier League

English Premier League News

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Arsenal’s rout of Manchester City shows how great empires end

Pep Guardiola was thought to have stabilised City’s form, but Sunday’s 5-1 demolition by Arsenal shows that the champions’ reign is now surely over

By the time Ethan Nwaneri whipped in Arsenal’s fifth, the mood at the Emirates was euphoric. The 17-year-old’s finish, arced into the bottom corner from that inside-right position through which so many of Arsenal’s attacks had come, felt like the perfect finale to a dominant 5-1 win over reigning Premier League champions Manchester City. And it was, in more ways than one.

Its youthful chutzpah seemed an appropriate way to round off a win in which 18-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly had been the most eye-catching player, having scored the third goal with an impudent shimmy into the box. Yet there was a strange realisation on seeing the replay. Nwaneri’s finish hadn’t nestled in that close to the corner of the goal; it wasn’t quite as good as it had initially appeared. And that felt emblematic of the game as a whole.

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Transfer deadline day: Rashford, Tel, Nkunku, Disasi, Félix news and latest moves – live

Manchester United would not be surprised if Chelsea make a cheeky late bid for Alejandro Garnacho though the early signs are the west London club may not. For United, after letting both Marcus Rashford and Antony go on loan (to Aston Villa and Real Betis) there would surely be serious uproar if Sir Jim Ratcliffe allowed another wide forward, who Ruben Amorim talked up last week, to depart.

Ruben Amorim left more than £100m of striker on the bench in yesterday’s 2-0 defeat to Crystal Palace. Surely he wants the Manchester United hierarchy to invest in someone that guarantees goals. He also sanctioned the departures of Antony and Marcus Rashford, leaving them short of options in attack, not that either has done anything of note this season.

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Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action

Arsenal relish City demolition as Sels shines while Liverpool carry on regardless at the top

Any successful title challenge needs a statement victory to install belief and reset previous concerns. Beating Manchester City must now be Arsenal’s foundation and not the zenith. Arsenal have played much of this season as if distracted by situations beyond their control – referees, their rivals’ dispositions and their relative luck with injuries. The second-half performance was a reminder of how Mikel Arteta previously took Arsenal to the verge of title wins, playing high-grade attacking football, pressing their opponents into mistakes. Has the high-quality football returned at the right time? Arteta’s team maintained discipline, not rising to provocations before taking advantage of City’s malfunctions to run in five goals. All without Bukayo Saka, whose loss was supposed to be the end of the affair. In Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri, both on the scoresheet, the next generation made its contribution on a perfect Sunday for club and manager. One to celebrate and build on, not bask in. John Brewin

Match report: Arsenal 5-1 Manchester City

Match report: Brentford 0-2 Tottenham

Match report: Manchester United 0-2 Crystal Palace

Match report: Wolves 2-0 Aston Villa

Match report: Bournemouth 0-2 Liverpool

Match report: Ipswich 1-2 Southampton

Match report: Everton 4-0 Leicester

Match report: Newcastle 1-2 Fulham

Match report: Nottingham Forest 7-0 Brighton

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Potter goes back to Chelsea with point to prove in calmer West Ham waters

A win against Fulham and draw at Villa are early signs of a better fit at West Ham on manager’s return to his old club

Graham Potter’s return to Chelsea coming on deadline day feels symbolic. West Ham’s head coach does not look back fondly at the extravaganza of player trading when he was in charge at Stamford Bridge in January 2023. It was a time of chaos and unreasonable pressure. The new owners were spending like there was no tomorrow and by the time the window closed it was left to Potter to make sense of a squad so bloated there was not enough space for everyone in the first-team dressing room.

Good luck with that. Chelsea had crowed after beating Arsenal to Mykhaylo Mudryk. Negotiations with Benfica led to a British transfer record for Enzo Fernández. Noni Madueke, David Datro Fofana and Benoît Badiashile joined. A deal for Malo Gusto was confirmed for the summer. João Félix arrived on loan. Jorginho took his experience and nous to Arsenal. Hakim Ziyech’s loan to Paris Saint-Germain collapsed because of technical issues. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had to be cut from the squad for the Champions League knockout stages. Potter, who takes West Ham to Stamford Bridge on Monday night, watched it all unfold and knew that expectations were about to go through the roof.

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Wolves 2-0 Aston Villa: Premier League – as it happened

Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Matheus Cunha got the goals as Wolves took advantage of Villa’s latest Champions League hangover

Not long now: Skippers Nelson Semedo and John McGinn lead their teams out on to the Molineux pitch with kick-off just a few minutes away. In a splendid piece of symmetry, the two clubs are separated by 21 miles geographically and the same number of points in the league table. Nice.

Fun fact: Aston Villa have failed to win any of the last six Premier League games they have contested following a midweek Champions League excursion, drawing three and losing three against West Ham (D), Nottingham Forest (L), Chelsea (L), Liverpool (L), Bournemouth (D) and Manchester United (D).

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Raúl Jiménez and Muniz on target as Fulham hit back to stun Newcastle

Maybe Newcastle were distracted by the prospect of reaching Wembley on Wednesday night or perhaps they have simply hit a bit of a mid-winter wall but, whatever the precise reason, they could not cope with Adama Traoré and his friends from Fulham.

The visiting right winger excelled on the counterattack as goals from Raúl Jiménez and Rodrigo Muniz consigned Eddie Howe’s side to a second successive home defeat. Quite apart from denting their hopes of Champions League qualification it was hardly an ideal dress rehearsal for Newcastle’s midweek Carabao Cup semi-final second leg home date with Arsenal.

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Abdoulaye Doucouré’s lightning-fast strike sets Everton up for Leicester rout

David Moyes did not play down the importance of Leicester’s final league visit to Goodison Park. “Crucial,” he called a contest that could not only nudge Everton towards Premier League safety but enable the club to start planning for a better future. A team reborn under his leadership delivered.

An opening blitz that included the fastest goal ever scored at the historic old stadium destroyed Ruud van Nistelrooy’s abject visitors and secured a third successive league win for Everton under their new manager. Sean Dyche managed three wins in five months and 19 games in the Premier League this season. Everton have now scored six goals from open play since the Scot returned, one fewer than the team had managed all season under Dyche.

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Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

There’s a huge game at Bournemouth, a huge game at Arsenal and … er, a huge game at Portman Road

Nuno Espírito Santo said that at Bournemouth last weekend, where they were humbled 5-0, his Nottingham Forest side had been “not accurate and missed a lot of passes”. It is interesting that four of Forest’s last five – and five of their last eight – Premier League games rank in their bottom eight of the season on pass completion. “We have to perform much better,” he said. “We have to be more solid and play better football. We have so many things to improve.” Though results in that period, at least until last week, continued to be good they have relied on statistically unlikely displays of finishing prowess. Before their trip to Bournemouth, Forest had scored with nine of their previous 12 shots on target in all competitions and the last time a Chris Wood shot on target failed to go in was before Christmas. Both Nuno and Fabian Hürzeler were sent off for misconduct during a rancorous conclusion to the fixture between these sides at the Amex Stadium last September. Simon Burnton

Nottingham Forest v Brighton, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Bournemouth v Liverpool, Saturday 3pm

Everton v Leicester, Saturday 3pm

Ipswich v Southampton, Saturday 3pm

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A chronic lack of ambition has laid waste to Tottenham | Jonathan Wilson

Ange Postecoglou has serious shortcomings as Spurs manager. But he has hardly been helped by a team trying to do things on the cheap

The good news for Ange Postecoglou is that it seems relatively straightforward to recover from being Tottenham manager: his two immediate predecessors, Antonio Conte and Nuno Espírito Santo, are top of Serie A with Napoli and third in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest respectively. As the banner unveiled on Sunday by Spurs fans during the defeat by Leicester read: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy”. Nobody really looks at Tottenham any more and thinks the problem is the manager.

But it is usually the manager who pays the price. Their past 10 league games have yielded four points. They have just lost against Everton, who had not won in six, and Leicester, who had lost their previous seven. They’ve reached a stage at which it feels possible that they could lose any given fixture. The only saving grace is that they are 1-0 up against Liverpool after the home leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final and that they are sixth in the Europa League table, assured of automatic passage to the last 16 if they beat the Swedish side Elfsborg on Thursday.

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