I am going to write an EPL follow up next week with a lot more notes , but we can kick things off today.

 

Manchester United look to have recovered from that frightful hammering at Anfield, but their underlying defensive numbers are poor apart from that and they were outplayed by Fulham at Old Trafford over the weekend , trailed and might easily have been 2-3 down before the Cottagers pressed the self destruct button , whilst also shooting themselves in the foot whilst doing so, just to be on the safe side! The Fulham numbers have tailed off sharply which makes that performance all the more alarming and despite the obvious improvement under Erik ten Hag I would urge caution and good teams do not concede 7 goals too often and heads dropped in that game and did so several times last season and just maybe that soft underbelly remains and is still to be addressed.

 

Brighton feel they are on a similar level to United, whom they meet in the FA Cup semi final a month today and xP for the season sees them as better and by a handful of points, with a game in hand. I have spoken often of the Seagulls being one of the two best run clubs in world football multiple times and their last six game numbers are little short of sensational and on both sides of the ball, performing on a par with Arsenal and Manchester City who are duking it out for the EPL title.

 

Crystal Palace made the decision to sack Patrick Vieira in a move that has seen the return of 75yo Roy Hodgson as head coach, 18 months after he was replaced by Vieira. The move doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, or indeed many outsiders, but we can never really know what has gone on inside any club and it is true that in addition to results being dire, winless with just 5 points and 5 goals from 12 starts in 2023, offensive performances might have been even worse and they are creating next to nothing ( see above). However, all 12 of those starts came versus teams above them in the table, the next six are against opponents below them and it feels like an ideal time for any new manager to come in, win 2-3 games and you are the man who saved them, fail and the damage was done before you arrived! Vieira's remit was to make Palace more pleasing on the eye, whilst reducing the age of a veteran squad and he did so last season, his first in charge, when they had scored 17 more goals at this stage of the campaign and were also awaiting an FA Cup semi final, but old habits have returned. Not all the blame and maybe not even most of it can be laid at Vieira's feet, there has been a chronic lack of investment in offensive players this season, no attempt to replace POTY Conor Gallagher and Wilfried Zaha's contract has been allowed to run out and all is not right at Selhurst Park. No signs that they are better off as a club right now than they were when "Woy" left and he will get them organised (that was not an issue anyway!), but hardly playing total football and they need some goals. Only Zaha has scored more than four goals ,he is a free agent in the summer and all his eight goal contributions ( including two assists) came before the end of the first week in November and his ambitions lie outside of SE25!

 

 

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