Is it Arsenal’s title to lose? Should Slot be a bit less open? Are Wolves doomed? - The Briefing

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.

This was the weekend when Manchester United won their third game in a row, Sunderland continued their astonishing start to the season, Bournemouth proved they are maybe the most exciting team in the Premier League and Tottenham Hotspur comfortably beat Everton.

Here, we will ask if anyone can really challenge Arsenal, whether Arne Slot should be a little more circumspect in what he says and whether one of the relegation places is already decided.

Is this already Arsenal’s title to lose?

The Premier League season is nine games old. Only a quarter of the campaign has elapsed. This is only just the point at which we can think of the league table as representing a big enough sample size to pay attention to. Not a time when we can draw grand conclusions about where everything is headed.

That said… it is now Arsenal’s title to lose.

The top of the table has a rather unusual and refreshing look to it, with Bournemouth and Sunderland in the Champions League places. The former is the result of steady progression under Andoni Iraola and displaying the virtues of smart transfer business, the latter an exhilarating first few weeks back in the top flight that might drop away soon, but for the moment, nobody cares about that.

Both are having the time of their lives, which is more than you can say for the teams that most of us expected would be challenging at the top of the table.

Manchester City’s defeat to Aston Villa on Sunday is their third of the season already, and their habit of knocking over struggling teams but losing to good ones doesn’t bode well for their prospects of closing Arsenal down.

Liverpool are now seven points back, and perhaps even more embarrassingly, are behind the newly competent Manchester United in the league table. Chelsea’s policy of signing exclusively children might be good from a player-trading perspective but is proving less successful from a consistently winning games perspective. Tottenham are third, but don’t have the depth of talent to threaten Arsenal.

Nobody is even close to being as reliable as Arsenal. On the face of it, they’re grinding out these wins, getting the better of teams by one or two and you might wonder whether their relative lack of goals will be a problem at some point. But for now their defence is so strong (they haven’t conceded a Premier League goal in a month) that it really doesn’t matter if they only get one or two.

And remember that Arsenal are doing this without Martin Odegaard, Noni Madueke and Kai Havertz, so you’d expect more creativity when they return.

In previous years, there’s been a flimsiness to Arsenal, a sense that they don’t quite have the ruthlessness required. Not now. Arsenal are the most reliable team in the Premier League, and that will surely be enough.

Should Slot be a little less open about Liverpool’s struggles?

The good news for Liverpool is they’re not the first defending champions to lose four Premier League games in a row.

Manchester City did it last season. Liverpool themselves did it in 2020-21. Leicester City lost five on the spin the season after their miracle title win.

The bad news is that none of those teams came close to defending their title. As mentioned before, it’s pretty early to be making bold statements, but not only have Liverpool lost four league games in a row, but they have done so showing such a range of problems that it’s hard to see how they fix them before Arsenal are completely out of sight, if they aren’t already.

Slot’s reaction to these defeats has been curious. On Saturday, he told Match of the Day that “every game it’s a different problem”, and then later to the general media said: “Teams have a certain playing style against us, which is a very good strategy to play. We haven’t found an answer yet, and every time going 1-0 down doesn’t really help either.

“They’re a very good team in winning duels and second balls and you have to give them credit for that. It’s also difficult to win a game of football if the set-piece balance is in their favour.”

Maybe we shouldn’t be complaining about this level of honesty from a manager. It’s instructive, from a perspective of gaining a greater insight into the game, to hear someone in Slot’s position explain exactly how opposition teams are beating Liverpool.

Perhaps he thinks that any manager worth their salt will know this already, so there’s no real harm in talking about it.

But is this helpful for him? Is telling their next opponents that they’re weak on set pieces, long balls, throw-ins, and whatever else has been causing them problems, a good idea?

Liverpool have enough problems at the moment. Their manager’s excessive honesty is one they could do without.

Are Wolves doomed already?

As sickeners go, conceding a 94th-minute winner to a promoted team, in a game when you’ve already grappled back from 2-0 down, is pretty emphatic.

Wolverhampton Wanderers could have taken encouragement from a draw against Burnley, even if playing them at home should theoretically be the sort of game any team with any chance of surviving needs three points from, rather than one.

With two points from nine games, that chance is already dwindling. To the point that Wolves fans might no longer be worrying about relegation from the Premier League this season, but being more concerned that their decline is so terminal that a second relegation, from the Championship next season, is on the cards.

Perhaps the scale of their dreadfulness is a surprise, but them being dreadful is not, because this has been coming for a few seasons. There was a time when Wolves aspired to something greater than merely existing: they finished in the top 10 in three of their first four seasons after winning promotion in 2018, and got to the FA Cup semi-final and Europa League quarter-final in that time too.

But results have been in gradual decline, as the club’s owners have seemingly decided that just staying in the Premier League is fine, that selling their best players and replacing them on the cheap would be enough.

And for the past few seasons, it has been: they have been able to rely on the three promoted teams being dreadful, plus things like Tottenham punting the league in favour of Europe last season and other rivals getting points deductions. All of that has kept their heads above water, and crucially that Premier League place has been retained by way of the most basic competence.

They don’t have any of that this season. All three promoted sides won this weekend, something that didn’t happen at all last season. Between them Burnley, Sunderland and Leeds have 38 points before the end of October, which is already 64.4 per cent of the total that Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton managed in the whole of last term.

The new trio, Sunderland in particular, are more organised and purposeful than their predecessors, who by about this stage a year ago were already circling the drain. Everyone else could pretty much relax, knowing that they didn’t have to do much in order to survive.

Not this time. Vitor Pereira, who was mystifyingly given a new contract in September, is a long way from the biggest problem at the club, but they were essentially banking on him being able to replicate the bounce in results he achieved last season. He hasn’t been able to, and as such they are almost certainly heading for relegation.

Coming up

It’s the sharp end of the Women’s Nations League this week, with the semi-finals on Tuesday: the first should be a fairly straightforward affair with Spain defending a 4-0 lead from their first leg against Sweden, but the other should be a spicier affair, with Germany just 1-0 up over France. The final will be in November.

If you want some English action, Sarina Wiegman’s side face Australia in a friendly in Derby on Tuesday.

As for the men, there’s some Carabao Cup to enjoy. Tuesday sees Manchester United-slayers Grimsby host Brentford, Wycombe play Fulham and there’s an all-Welsh affair as Wrexham host Cardiff.

Most of the big-ticket teams play on Wednesday: specifically Arsenal vs Brighton, Liverpool vs Crystal Palace, Newcastle vs Spurs, Wolves vs Chelsea and the Wilfried Bony Clasico as Swansea City host Manchester City.

The FA Cup proper gets underway on Friday, starting with Jack Wilshere’s Luton at home to Robbie Savage’s Forest Green Rovers. The two never faced each other as players: is that surprising? I was quite surprised.

What else happened

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