Premier League matchweek 22 awards: Can Manchester United defend or not?

Premier League matchweek 22 was highlighted by a big win for Manchester United, and a bad loss for Arsenal. Here are some awards.

Liverpool are top of the Premier League after 22 matches, but Manchester City remain hot on their heels after their win against Wolves. Meanwhile, David de Gea is still a wizard, Unai Emery hates Mesut Ozil and Sean Dyche’s Burnley are breaking all the important records. Let’s hand out some awards.

The Jose Mourinho Award for Alienating Your Best Player: Unai Emery

Arsenal started well enough against West Ham in Saturday’s early kickoff, and then went 55 minutes without recording a single shot on target. Meanwhile, Mesut Ozil was nowhere to be found. The German, who signed a new, £350,000-a-week contract through 2021 this time last year, has now made only 13 Premier League appearances this season. The reasons for this, as Unai Emery keeps insisting, are “tactical,” which given this is Ozil we’re talking about probably means he doesn’t exert effort performatively enough. That may have been compelling when the Gunners were still riding their 22-match unbeaten run, but with only three wins in eight since then, not playing your best players is beginning to look a lot less enlightened a tactic.

The Sean Dyche Award for Confounding Statistical Achievements: Burnley

Burnley climbed up to 15th in the table with a come-from-behind win against Fulham on Saturday. They still have a long way to go to drag themselves out of the relegation battle, but whatever happens they can at least now hang their hat(s?) on this remarkable statistical achievement: They scored twice (and won, obviously) despite failing to record a single shot on target. Sean Dyche has been confounding stats-types for years, so it’s only appropriate that he would be the one to pioneer this new approach to winning while not creating any good chances.

The Dimitar Berbatov Award for Suspiciously Timely Goals: Willian

Willian hasn’t exactly been dominating opponents for Chelsea this season, with only three goals and three assists in 19 Premier League starts. Since the calendar flipped to 2019, however, he’s been heavily linked with a move to Barcelona, which news Cules the internet over have greeted with their customary response whenever their team is linked with a player who, like, misplaced a pass one time. To be fair, Barca’s transfer strategy over the past few seasons has been slightly, let’s go with, haphazard, but if it worked out for Paulinho, Willian surely can’t be that bad. He demonstrated that much, at least, by scoring an excellent winning goal for Chelsea against Newcastle at the weekend, either to increase Barca’s interest, or to make Chelsea doubt their decision to shell out $73 million for Christian Pulisic, or to feel better about alienating Callum Hudson-Odoi into wanting to play for Bayern Munich. Truly, this is the most confusing time of the year.

The Tim Howard Award for Can A Defense Be Good If The Goalkeeper Has To Make 11 Saves A Game? Manchester United

David de Gea made 11 saves against Tottenham on Sunday to ensure Manchester United held on for a 1-0 win, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s most impressive managerial feat since returning to Old Trafford. As is customary following such matches, de Gea’s performance raised all sorts fun (read: stupid) philosophical questions about the nature of chance creation: Can a defense be good if they need their keeper to make double-digit saves every match? Can a team deserve to win if they fail to score from any one of 11 shots on target? If de Gea had hands for feet and feet for hands, would he be better or worse at goalkeeping?

The Not Vincent Kompany Award for Red Cards: Willy Boly

The title race is close enough, and the two teams involved are good enough, that every game matters — really, really matters. This is, broadly speaking, a good thing, but it also means when Liverpool and City don’t play at the same time, we have to endure 90 minutes worth of outrage from the set of fans whose team aren’t playing. On Monday, this outrage centered on Craig Pawson’s decision to send of Willy Boly for a studs up challenge on Bernardo Silva. Boly won the ball, of course, but then again it’s much easier to win the ball when you go in studs up, with excessive force and endanger your opponent in the process. Still, Vincent Kompany got away with a yellow card for same thing two weeks ago. Must be some sort of conspiracy. It’s the only reasonable explanation.