Was this the weekend that the relegation race ended with 12 rounds of matches still available? The promoted clubs all lost and all conceded four times at home.
Wolves were the only like candidate to provide some interest and they won away at Bournemouth to create a five-point gap. I’m not convinced if any of those three below them will even get five more points.
At the top, Arsenal flunked their chance to build some pressure on Liverpool by losing at home to West Ham – all in on the Champions League now for Mikel Arteta. That’s because Liverpool won what they will have earmarked as their hardest game of the season in August. Beating this version of Manchester City is nothing of the sort.
Chelsea, who were once in a title race remember, lost at Aston Villa. Enzo Maresca will be aware that, this time last year, Mauricio Pochettino was really getting going.
Friday 21 February
Saturday 22 February
Sunday 23 February
Arne Slot’s Midas touch simply cannot be curtailed.
Despite not naming a central striker, leaving three of their top five goalscorers on the bench, Liverpool tore apart a team they have been hanging onto the coattails of for the best part of the last decade.
The football was at times as fluid as anything Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering machine has been able to conjure. Of course, it helps when you have a rejuvenated Egyptian wonder in Mohamed Salah who is a shoo-in for the Ballon d’Or leading the charge, but everyone in this unstoppable red juggernaut plays their part.
As does Slot. Knowing full well Guardiola and City would be out for revenge following their humbling at Anfield earlier this season, the Dutchman was brave with his tactical curveball, deploying a 4-2-4 system with two false nines who proved impossible to control for the champions’ disjointed backline.
The spectacle, as a result, was pleasing on the eye. Liverpool swept from back to front with unerring regularity. Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai dropped deep before springboarding attack after attack into action.
With Salah and Luis Diaz stretching the play gaps became chasms, opportunities these champions in waiting were never going to pass up. By Pete Hall
Read more: How Liverpool tore Man City apart – thanks to a Slot masterstroke
Nothing summed up Arsenal’s futile hunt for a goal against West Ham more than David Raya jogging optimistically up for a corner deep into added time before hurtling back towards the halfway line after it had been cleared.
Raya impressively won his 50-metre dash against James Ward-Prowse but as the Gunners toiled in the final third, it was tempting to feel as though their Premier League title race has been run.
Arsenal deployed a career central midfielder as a striker for 90 minutes and partnered him with a centre-back for the eight added on at the end. It was little wonder they looked so toothless.
There was a giddiness to Mikel Merino’s heroics at Leicester City last weekend, but it took just six days for the bubble to burst. And by West Ham, of all teams.
Speaking after his double at the King Power, Merino revealed he hadn’t played as a No 9 since he was nine. On Saturday, he looked like someone attempting to get to grips with a role he hadn’t played in in almost two decades.
The Spain international is an effective Plan B but an ineffective Plan A. It is easier to adapt to an alien position as a sub rather than starting in one when the patterns and rhythm of a game have yet to be established. By Oliver Young-Myles
For Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo, the refrain was “10 more minutes” as his side slipped to a defeat that was ultimately far less damaging than it might have been.
Had there been more time then Forest would surely have snatched something from a game that was threatening to derail their season at half-time. Flat, error-strewn and ill-disciplined, it made you wonder what had happened to the teak tough defensive solidity that has carried this team into Champions League contention – one hammering at Bournemouth aside.
But the way that they turned the screw on a previously rampant Newcastle side should give them after a rare hiccup here.
The second half gave them a blueprint for what they have to do between now and the end of the season if they are to achieve an unlikely European Cup return. Adventure might have been anathema for Forest on away days this season but they looked much more dangerous when Anthony Elanga, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Elliot Anderson were given some freedom after half-time.
Before it, Forest were far too passive to trouble Newcastle. They have made great strides this season by sitting back but this performance suggested that might have reached its limits. A higher press and greater application gives Forest a chance. By Mark Douglas
First Madrid and now this, Manchester City eviscerated by the great footballing houses they sought to join. The dismantling against Liverpool here was every bit as emphatic as that at the Bernabeu, City lowered by much the better team.
Worst still, none of this was a surprise. The defeat in the Champions League was City’s 13th in 26 matches. The 14th was no less painful since it saw hegemony passing from Manchester to Liverpool, the visitors effectively confirming the end of City’s unprecedented domination of the Premier League.
Errors were everywhere, each imperfection a micro tear in Pep Guardiola’s soul. The arms went up repeatedly, turning to his bench to vent his frustration, to process the load.
City were faced with a team propelled by the same zeitgeist, the same elemental force that Guardiola’s team once exhibited. The calm refusal to panic, the composure, the confidence to wait that was once City’s is now entirely Liverpool’s. By Kevin Garside
This surreal St James’ Park afternoon summed up the current state of play at Newcastle United perfectly.
Devastating for 30 minutes as they responded to a self-inflicted blow, Eddie Howe’s side made tortuously hard work of a second half in which they toyed with the prospect of frittering away the momentum generated by another double from the electric Alexander Isak.
It was a win – a significant one – but when will the real Newcastle stand up?
In front of watching chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) present for the first time in a year, it felt appropriate that the final whistle was met with relief rather than elation.
The Magpies are up to fifth, have the best striker in the Premier League and a chance to make history at Wembley in a few weeks, but things still feel on a knife edge. By Mark Douglas
Just when you begin to believe in Andoni Iraola staying to lead Bournemouth in the Champions League next season, they go and let us and themselves down with a brainless individual decision that cut through all momentum. More than that, Illia Zabarnyi’s tackle means he will miss the trip to Brighton and the FA Cup tie against Wolves. It breaks up one of the most in-form centre-back pairings in the league.
It raises a question that we have asked about Bournemouth before, namely their ability to create chances against a deeper-lying defence without the answer being to push an extra midfielder up the pitch and leave the central defenders exposed.
We discussed last week Bournemouth’s run of matches against teams outside the top seven. Which is fine if you are adept at beating those teams and avoiding being caught on the counter attack against them. But Bournemouth have now played seven home games against teams in the bottom half at the start of the weekend and have failed to win four of them. Suddenly those next three league games – Brighton away, Tottenham away, Brentford at home – don’t look so appetising.
For just the fourth time in his Chelsea career, Reece James played in defensive midfield. The gamble didn’t pay off.
Together, James (one) and right-back Malo Gusto (two) made three of Chelsea’s five errors against Villa. This was their first start together in the league since the 1-1 draw at Manchester United in November, when James was at left-back and Gusto on the right, and it may be the last for a while.
Except, maybe it won’t be. A look to Chelsea’s bench explained why Enzo Maresca experimented with James in midfield. It was desperately light, although a penny for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s thoughts in this regard – the central midfielder not even coming off the bench when this match was crying out for changes.
Dewsbury-Hall’s minutes amount to just 157 in the Premier League this season, and just one start in the league. Perhaps his omission amid the ongoing injury absence to Romeo Lavia is telling, but he now has a shot in training to show Maresca he is at the very least a short-term solution.
Chelsea need to find the answer, too. They were second when James returned the matchday squad, and now find themselves sixth.
That is an unfortunate coincidence, given there are issues all over the park, but their season looks to be unravelling at a crucial juncture. There’s always the Conference League, but from the position they were in as recently as December, missing out on the Champions League would be a failure. By Michael Hincks
It feels futile reading too much into a Villa win given the stop-start nature of their league campaign, but it is worth nothing Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City have left Villa Park this season with just a point between them.
Saturday’s victory over Chelsea ended a spell of four straight home games for Villa, and having stretched their unbeaten home run to 14 games, they have re-emerged as top five contenders.
Curiously, every other club in the top nine has scored more and conceded fewer goals than Villa, but going forward Unai Emery now has an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
The chaotic option that was Jhon Duran has gone, but in has come quality. Marcus Rashford may not have started but he was a menace in the second half, and with benches around them – notably Chelsea’s – looking weak and injury issues impacting clubs even higher up, Villa’s options could prove a difference later down the line.
They brought on Rashford, Leon Bailey and Donyell Malen on Saturday, while Marco Asensio, Morgan Rogers, Jacob Ramsey and Ollie Watkins all started. Seven terrific options for four positions – rival clubs may well be looking on with envy, and even more so come May. By Michael Hincks
Read more: The local lads leading Aston Villa’s bid to end 29 years of hurt
Brighton have – they hope – got through their sticky patch by beating Chelsea in two competitions and Southampton in one. The unfortunate home defeat to Everton and shambolic loss at Nottingham Forest were dismal for different reasons, Fabian Hurzeler actually has six wins in eight games and two defeats in 12. If this is Brighton creaking…
The main issue in the 7-0 at Forest was the complete absence of central midfield, the versatile – but still more of a defender – Jack Hinshelwood operating as a lone holding midfielder and given roughly 17 different jobs to do.
So it was lovely to see Yasin Ayari back in the team this weekend, not least because I’d slightly forgotten his existence after a fine start to the season. Ayari is still 21 and was loaned out twice to the Championship last season (Coventry City and Blackburn Rovers). There’s definitely work to do in terms of improving his physicality, but watching Saturday’s game I wonder if Ayari and Carlos Baleba might be the most natural central midfield combination here.
The numbers do back that up. Of the 14 games Brighton have played this season with Ayari and Baleba in the team, they have only lost two. They have lost five of the 17 they have played without one of them in the team. In those five defeats, opponents have been able to overpower the midfield and Brighton have conceded 19 goals.
It’s also absolutely classic Brighton to have such technically proficient central midfielders at such a young age. A list of every Premier League midfielder aged 21 and under with 10 or more starts this season: Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United), Carlos Baleba (Brighton), Yasin Ayari (Brighton).
Marco Silva has done a tremendous job at Fulham, no doubt, but their best campaigns continue to be dogged by galling inconsistencies in performance and results. The difference between last Saturday against Nottingham Forest (dogged, hungry, energetic in central midfield, ruthless, defensively solid) and this weekend is night and day. Not for the first time, Fulham supporters online debated how everything can swing so significantly in several days.
Extend this current run to the wider picture and Fulham really are…well, weird. It’s over two years since Fulham won more than two league games in a row. The good news: it’s 14 months since they lost more than two league games in a row. That last run, three defeats on the spin without scoring against Newcastle, Burnley and Bournemouth, immediately followed consecutive 5-0 wins over Nottingham Forest and West Ham.
Two of the best performances I’ve seen from Fulham this season were away at Palace (2-0) and at home to Forest (2-1). They followed those up with a 4-1 home defeat to Wolves and a 2-0 home defeat to Palace. Go figure.
If that inconsistency typically produces a mid-table team achieving mid-table points totals, welcome to Fulham. Should then win four, draw four and lose four of their final 12 matches, the natural results for an inconsistent team, Fulham will finish on exactly 55 points for the third season in a row.
Remember when Brentford couldn’t win away? Thomas Frank’s side had won three of their previous 23 Premier League away games – and none this season – before the turn of the year. Since then, they have won all four and scored 12 goals. It does help when Southampton and Leicester, two wretched home teams, are included, but still: Brentford are back.
The key, I think, is being more front-footed away from home.
“I think I would go as far as saying we have a front four and [Mikkel] Damsgaard really gets them going,” Frank said after the game on Friday. “The second goal, a great run from [Yoane] Wissa to open up the space for Bryan and then of course he does the hard work. The way they connect, I think in the front four we have all the abilities you need.”
He’s right. Before Damsgaard really came into form, Brentford would play with a definite front three and, away from home, that quite often had the wide forwards dropping deep to help and the centre forward isolated. With Damsgaard central, Brentford tend to control the game more in the centre of the pitch and the wide forwards stay high to get on the ball because they want to make penalty-box runs.
It’s also about the pressure off the ball. With Damsgaard higher up the pitch, Brentford are able to contain teams more easily, push their defence and central midfielders higher up the pitch and look for the high turnovers that Frank wants.
This hasn’t been an easy season for any Tottenham player to show their best, but Djed Spence might just be the most improved player in the Premier League and its Player of the Month for February.
Spence flourished as a makeshift left-back under Ange Postecoglou, albeit one picked basically because everybody else was injured. He preferred to come infield on his right foot, thus inviting Son Heung-min to stay wide and create the overlap. His defending, completely unused at Tottenham before this spell, has always been better than people give him credit for.
Now Spence is on the right, with Destiny Udogie fit. Not only is that his own preferred position, it also enables him to double up with Brennan Johnson as they did so effectively at Forest. Now Spence can overlap himself to put crosses into the box, while Johnson can get into the box and Dejan Kulusevski can push high and create overloads against full-backs.
Nobody is celebrating an injury crisis that has ruined Tottenham’s season, but the development of Spence is a genuine ray of light. He deserves to be their first choice either on the left or right next season.
One of the truisms of football is that we must write down the formation, pre-match, in a symmetrical shape. It doesn’t matter if it’s 4-4-2, 4-3-3 or 3-4-3 – the wing-backs and central midfielders must be level with each other and so must the two forwards.
The reality, of course, is nothing of the sort: one forward tends to drop deep, one midfielder tends to protect and the other roam, one winger might tuck inside and the other stay wide. Sorry if this offends but football is asymmetric.
I thought about that a lot while watching Fulham vs Crystal Palace because I don’t think there is a better example of asymmetry in the Premier League than Oliver Glasner’s full-backs and there may have been no more appropriate match to show it off.
Tyrick Mitchell and Daniel Munoz are, according to the teamsheet at least, both full-backs. On Saturday, Munoz touched the ball 19 times in the opposition final third, a total only Eberechi Eze could surpass (and even then only by one). Munoz tried to dribble past a player three times (again, only Eze could beat that). The best sign of how high Munoz got up the pitch: he received six passes that had travelled at least 10 yards towards goal to find him. That was more than anyone else.
What makes this Palace team so interesting is that Munoz’s role is not as the typical attacking full-back. He didn’t attempt a single cross against Fulham, so it’s not a case of bombing forward to deliver. Instead, he’s trying to get into the penalty area to find space and take shots. He only ranks behind Eze, Ismaila Sarr and Jean-Philippe Mateta for shots at Palace this season. It’s super fun, it’s super imbalance and it is super working for Glasner.
Does anyone deserve what is happening to Everton in their final few months in their famous old stadium than David Moyes?
The damage that his short stint at Manchester United 12 years ago did to his reputation was ultimately irreparable, but with hindsight, we must change our perception of a career that deserves so much more acclaim than it gets.
Replacing Sir Alex Ferguson, and inheriting that squad, was always the Impossible Job. But in the right environment he remains, regardless of any social media ridicule, an elite-level coach.
That environment, it turns out, is back where he made his name. On most other days, Everton’s late penalty would have stood on Saturday to earn the Toffees yet another victory in their remarkable mid-season revival.
Without spending any money, Moyes has got a team who couldn’t buy a goal scoring two or more in their last four home league games in a row. They have in fact hit the back of the net 14 times in the last six since Moyes returned, after 11 in 16 matches before.
Goodison Park is a happy place to be, just as it gets ready to say goodbye. It could not be more heartwarming that it is Moyes who gets to guide them through it all. By Pete Hall
After going into the interval without a shot on target, United have now gone 11 matches without scoring an open-play goal in the first half of a Premier League encounter.
Rasmus Hojlund is without a goal since early December. Joshua Zirkzee has gone even longer without a league strike. This is £110m worth of strikers unable to muster a shot on target against Premier League strugglers.
Alejandro Garnacho’s introduction from the bench changed things, as much as Hojlund’s withdrawal did. With young Chido Obi at least doing some running, United offered a threat – something normally taken for granted. Not by Amorim.
“I see what players saw and they know and what people see,” Amorim said of the first half display. “We lost a lot of balls without any pressure.
“That’s why you get disappointed. We did a lot of work in the week. We didn’t play first half. But it’s a good thing that in the second half they play in the same position with more energy, more quality and that makes the difference.” By Pete Hall
Read more: Amorim’s latest Man Utd dig overshadows comeback in controversial Everton draw
After a hugely encouraging debut year in English football, Mohammed Kudus has suffered from a not uncommon affliction: second-season syndrome.
In 2023-24, the Ghanaian scored eight goals and set up six more in 33 league appearances, averaging a direct goal involvement every 177 minutes. In 2024-25, he has netted only three times and provided one solitary assist, averaging a direct goal involvement every 438 minutes. He has gone nine games without a goal or assist since scoring in a draw against Brighton just before Christmas.
A five-match ban for slapping Micky van de Ven, which lasted over six weeks, can’t have helped Kudus’s momentum. Julen Lopetegui struggled to get the best out of him, famously taking him off at half-time away at Brentford to the bemusement of the travelling supporters and the departure of Johnny Heitinga (a former confidante and coach of Kudus’s at Ajax and West Ham) to Liverpool over the summer also didn’t help.
However, there were signs at the Emirates that Graham Potter is helping the ex-Ajax forward get back to his best. Deployed in tandem with Jarrod Bowen up front, Kudus was excellent. He held the ball up brilliantly, used it effectively (completing 24 of his 26 attempted passes) and dragged his side up the pitch with his pace on the break.
Although the Hammers already had Bowen’s goal to defend, it was Myles Lewis-Skelly’s red card for a desperate grab at Kudus, after he had picked his pocket and charged towards an unguarded goal, that gave the visitors some welcome relief. There were still 25 minutes to play (including added time) but West Ham saw them out pretty comfortably.
Potter will need to get Kudus firing again – West Ham can’t continue to be so reliant on Bowen for their goals – but will be encouraged by a display that suggests a mercurial talent is rediscovering his form. By Oliver Young-Myles
All hail Vitor Pereira and a Wolves team that might just coast to survival now. This club has perfected the art of “don’t know what you were worried about” late-season salvos under new managers since coming up. Pereira is making this look simple.
There’s no magic secret here either. Wolves are getting more points because they are vastly improved defensively. Their four league wins under Pereira (as many as Gary O’Neil managed during his last nine months in charge) have not been down to luck. Wolves have beaten Leicester, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Bournemouth while conceding a combined xG of 2.2.
To put that into some context, on 5 October O’Neil’s Wolves teams allowed Brentford to register 4.2 xG – almost double that four-match total – in the space of one game. There’s now a firm platform from which Wolves can start to build and it means Matheus Cunha can be the difference maker, rather than scorer of consolation goals.
A weekend that may just confirm Ipswich Town as Championship participants next season. West Ham were never going to be dragged into trouble, leaving Wolves as the only other hope for the promoted three. Wolves have now won two of their last three games. Ipswich have won three games all season. The maths isn’t difficult.
There should be questions asked of this Ipswich season, if this is how it ends. As ever, there were bright spots: they missed chances at 0-0 and 1-0 down against Tottenham and legitimately could have taken something from the game if things had shaken up differently. But that offers far too much sympathy to a club that has spent £130m this season and who cannot defend.
I accept that Ipswich are not an established top-flight club and so perhaps I was expecting too much. But the money spent this season dictates that we are allowed to ask a little more. This isn’t Luton Town, saving their money and hoping to come back stronger (and their Championship season may stop anyone else trying that trick again). Ipswich spent to consolidate in the Premier League and they have failed miserably.
And why? Because they are unable to protect their own goal either in possession (making stupid mistakes with the ball, both passing it and getting caught on it) or out of possession (players caught up the pitch and the central midfield combination never looking strong enough.
Ipswich only rank 16th for shots faced; they have allowed fewer than Brentford. But while Brentford look to limit where those shots come from (roughly they try and reduce xG per shot rather than reducing the shot numbers themselves), Ipswich have been appalling at that. Only Leicester City have conceded with a higher percentage of shots faced and only Manchester City have a higher xG per shot faced. In terms of total xG faced, only Southampton have a worse record and that’s not a club you want to be on the guestlist for.
Thing is: it’s getting worse. You expect promoted clubs to take time to settle but eventually find a rhythm, a system for squeezing out points that works. Ipswich have picked up two points in 2025 and have conceded 14 times in their last four home games. By any measure, that’s appalling.
There is a strange affliction at Leicester City this season that affects any player who gets into the team. As soon as they are on the pitch for more than one or two games, their reputation falls through the floor and supporters angrily ask why they are in the team. “How on earth is [Player X] not getting a game,” they demand.
Of course, what then happens is that several of these players are brought into the team because it always loses and the manager believes that he has to try something new. At which point, the players who were popular become the ones to make fans angry and they demand why these players are in the team. There are few better places for your reputation to grow than on the Leicester City bench in 2024-25.
On Friday, full mutiny finally engulfed the King Power. This has been a diabolical season and one which was so predictable from August onwards.
It’s hardly unreasonable to think that Ruud van Nistelrooy should probably be sacked now, right? Leicester City supporters didn’t like the football Steve Cooper played (10 points from 12 games) but Van Nistelrooy’s tenure (seven points from 14 games) proves what many of us thought at the time. This was a worse defence than the one that got relegated last time and, as such, needed a manager intent on protecting it rather than trying to play expansive football that wouldn’t work anyway.
It may well be too late for the firefighter. Leicester are five points and goal difference away from safety, that team above them is in far better form and all confidence and belief looks absent. You can’t just send out the Sean Dyche bat signal and assume that he will change it all overnight.
But they also might as well try because this has been an embarrassing mistake played out in full. Leicester should have stuck with Steve Cooper or tried to persuade David Moyes to take this job when Cooper left. Instead they bowed to fan opinion on the type of football they wanted to see and it has left them devastated. If they go down, the EFL are licking their lips.
Another four goals conceded, another superbly damning xG scoreline: Southampton 0.13-4.01 Brighton. When the good news from your Saturday afternoon is that your team probably should have lost by six or seven goals at home and didn’t, it must be tempting to take the rest of the season off.
I’m honestly getting sick of watching Southampton and writing about them. They are a joke because they play as if they are in mid-table comfort. I understand that heads have gone down because relegation has looked a certainty from October onwards and it must be hard to play in front of supporters who are going out of habit and grim loyalty rather than expectation.
But my goodness: try to give them something to be proud of. Nobody is calling for prison-rule football, but my goodness it is frustrating to watch how easy opposition teams have it against Southampton and I’m not even a supporter. There seems to be no plan for creating chances or stopping their opponents creating them, but worse than that there seems to be no ambition to make life harder for the other team.
Nobody tracks runs. Nobody seems to want to sprint to put a tackle in. Nobody wants to defend for their lives other than as a tardy reaction to a mistake, either in technical prowess or concentration. Everybody seems to act as if ugly football is beneath them, rather than a typical ingredient of a promoted club battling to stay up (or, in this case, avoid points records).
I can take my club losing most weeks. I cannot take my club looking like they accept defeat without putting up a fight nor having a logical strategy to avoid conceding three or four goals in every game.
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