The Table Doesn’t Lie: Manchester United look very good, Chelsea don’t
Manchester United were the Premier League’s standout team on opening weekend, as Chelsea’s title defense got off to an inauspicious start.
Related Story: Premier League 2017-18 season preview
The Premier League returned this weekend, and promptly reminded us all why it’s going to send us to an early grave. Liverpool apparently still can’t defend, Arsenal also still can’t defend, Tottenham can defend, but might not be able to attack against 11 players and Everton started their campaign to spend an entire season in seventh place on the right foot, in seventh place.
The big shock of the weekend came at Stamford Bridge, where first 10-, then nine-man Chelsea lost to Burnley, though they cut their deficit from 3-0 to 3-2 in an encouraging second half. Manchester City cruised against newly-promoted Brighton, winning 2-0 without really breaking a sweat, but by far the best performance of the weekend came at Old Trafford, where Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United dismantled West Ham. That win ended Huddersfield’s short-lived run atop the table after 25 glorious hours, and prevented Frank de Boer from finishing his first weekend as Crystal Palace manager at the foot of the table.
Elsewhere, Southampton’s strange inability to score goals at home survived their managerial switch, as Mauricio Pellegrino’s new side drew 0-0 with Swansea at St. Mary’s, despite dominating the match, while West Brom eked out a 1-0 home win against Bournemouth thanks to a goal from a set piece. If that sounds a little too familiar, the guy who scored it, Ahmed Hegazi, was making his first Premier League appearance.
With a new season comes a new column, The Table Doesn’t Lie, in which I’ll endeavor to live with the consequences of my own stupidity. The idea is this: as part of our season preview, I predicted how the Premier League table will finish in 2017-18. Each week, I’ll compare my predicted table to the real thing, focusing on one team from the top half and, first, one from the bottom.
20. West Ham (preseason prediction: 10th, difference: -10)
19. Crystal Palace (11th, -8)
18. Newcastle (14th, -4)
17. Brighton (20th, +3)
16. Stoke (16th, –)
15. Bournemouth (8th, -7)
14. Chelsea (5th, -9)
Chelsea aren’t newcomers to the Awful Title Defense, having sleep-walked through the 2015-16 campaign for no other reason, apparently, than that they felt like it (or didn’t, as it were), but their performance against Burnley on Saturday moved the genre in new and unexpected directions.
The Blues started well enough, but things went south quickly after Gary Cahill got sent off for a lunging tackle on Steven Defour. Was it harsh? Maybe, but his foot was high, his studs were up and he didn’t get the ball. There’ve been better tackles.
Antonio Conte’s side collapsed for the remainder of the half. Sam Vokes, unmarked in the box, scored the first after 24 minutes, Stephen Ward added a second in the 39th, almost certainly the best goal he’s scored in his life, and Vokes made it three five minutes later. That, as it turned out, was that. But not without a fight.
Chelsea responded well, considering — pulled one back in the 69th minute, had another disallowed for offside, went down to nine men and then scored a second. For those worrying about a 2015-16-style mental vacation, Antonio Conte’s side showed more than enough Saturday to suggest they care. Which is good news, wrapped though it is in several layers of terrible, terrible news.
More than anything, the loss exposed weaknesses that have been obvious since the end of last season, not least because Conte’s spent all summer complaining about them. The Blues’ squad is very, very thin, as evidenced by the fact they started with a front three of Willian, Michy Batshuayi, who started one league game all of last season (and that only after Chelsea had wrapped up the title) and the only youth product the club haven’t yet managed to send out on loan, Jeremie Boga. No, wait. That’s not right. There’s one other, Andreas Christensen, who was the first option off the bench after Cahill was sent off.
With Cahill and Fabregas both facing bans, and Eden Hazard, Pedro and Timeoue Bakayoko injured, the Blues’ lack of depth is going to be tested immediately. They travel to play Tottenham at Wembley next week and at this rate their starting XI’s going to contain Boga, Christensen and, like, Cahill and Fabregas wearing novelty Groucho Marx nose-glasses.
Given all this, it’s hard not to wonder what on earth the club were thinking when they agreed to sell Nemanja Matic to Manchester United last month. Bakoyoko is by all accounts an excellent player, maybe even an improvement on Matic, but he is, alas, only one player, and Chelsea’s problem isn’t their starting XI.
Conte keeps saying he wants more signings — hell, even Cesar Azpilicueta, the most agreeable player in the history of Chelsea Football Club, chimed in on the subject — and Chelsea made some late additions last August who turned out to be key players in the title race. There’s a good chance the same happens again this season.
But wouldn’t it be nice if the people in charge of the club hadn’t let it come to this?
13. Leicester (15th, +2)
12. Swansea (17th, +5)
11. Southampton (9th, -2)
10. Watford (13th, +3)
9. Liverpool (3rd, -6)
8. West Brom, (12th, +4)
7. Everton, (7th, –)
6. Burnley, (19th, +13)
5. Arsenal, (6th, +1)
4. Tottenham, (4th, –)
3. Manchester City, (1st, -2)
2. Huddersfield (18th, +16)
1. Manchester United (2nd, +1)
It’s only one match, but … so began a thousand sentences Sunday, as Manchester United not only dominated a game at Old Trafford, but also finished their chances, winning 4-0 against Slaven Bilic’s new-look (or old-look, I guess, if you’re looking at Pablo Zabaleta) West Ham.
It’s only one match, but something needs to be said, so what should it be? The standout tactical feature was Mourinho’s decision to play Paul Pogba and Nemanja Matic as a double-pivot in central midfield — not as part of the three many were expecting to see ahead of the season.
The thinking then was that Matic’s arrival would free up Pogba and, to a lesser extent, Ander Herrera to contribute more further up the pitch. That wasn’t the case Sunday, although Pogba saw plenty of the ball in advanced positions, owing primarily to West Ham’s lack of attacking and defensive and midfield presence.
The question going forward is whether Mourinho will stick with such an attacking lineup. Marcus Rashford started on the left, but was occasionally a sort of auxiliary center-forward alongside Romelu Lukaku, while Juan Mata and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were the creative outlets in attacking midfield.
Against a better team, that would have left Pogba and Matic with a lot more work than they ultimately had to get through without the ball. But it’s also, you know, the Manchester United way, which means it automatically qualifies as a good decision.
It’s likely Mourinho will revert to a three-man midfield in away matches and at home against better teams, but this could be the way forward at Old Trafford against the lesser sides, in which games the Red Devils were horrible last season.
They drew 15 times in the league in 2016-17, and 10 times at home, and once at home against West Ham, so this performance was encouraging for more than just the result. Not only did United win, they did exactly those things that were the difference last season between a title challenge and a sixth-place finish. Then again, they won some lopsided games at Old Trafford between the draws, too, so: it’s only one match. But United were very good.
The other standout features of the game were the performances of Lukaku and Matic, the Red Devils’ two marquee summer signings. Given United’s main problem last season was a failure to convert chances, Mourinho will have been pleased, if not particularly surprised, to see the Belgian score twice on his debut. Lukaku has been one of the most consistent goalscorers in the league since he was handed a starting role at West Brom five seasons ago. He’s a flawed player, but if you give him chances, he’ll take them. So he proved again.
Matic was arguably even better, though West Ham were, um, forgiving opponents. The Serbian’s arrival at Stamford Bridge in January of 2014 proved to be the turning point of Mourinho’s second stint at Chelsea, and the indication on Sunday was that he’ll have a similarly transformative effect on the United midfield.
Talented though he is, his greatest value seems to be his willingness to do a job no one else wants, which is kind of a remarkable thing, that last season Mourinho couldn’t persuade anyone to reliably stand around on the halfway line while the rest of his teammates were busy attacking. Call it the Casemiro effect.
Obviously it’s not that simple, but it’s nonetheless strange (what, one wonders, was wrong with Morgan Schneiderlin last season?). Anyway, Mourinho clearly has some special ideas about what he wants from his holding midfielder, and Matic understands what they are, and United are better for it. It’s only one match, but …