Back-to-front Blues
If Chelsea only counted their goals scored by defenders or wing backs they would still be second in the Premier League table, behind Liverpool. Thomas Tuchel’s team, who beat Newcastle United 3-0, would also have four points from three games in their Champions League group by that calculation. The two teams isolated at the bottom of the Premier League without a win, Newcastle and Norwich City, are also the two most isolated geographically – neither are within 100 miles of any other club in the division. Norwich have spent more time this season leading by 6-0 than 1-0: they have only led in the Carabao Cup match against Bournemouth, when they were 1-0 ahead for 14 minutes and 6-0 in front for 15 minutes plus stoppage time (the final score).
Highs after fives
In consecutive weekends Watford and Manchester United have won away by three goals having lost their previous league match 5-0 at home to Liverpool; yet before those two instances no team in the top division since Leicester City in 1965 had lost 5-0 at home to any opponents and won away by at least three goals in their next fixture. In five of this season’s ten rounds of Premier League matches Arsenal won and Tottenham did not; in the other five rounds Tottenham won and Arsenal did not.
Two by two
Liverpool’s past four league games have produced two 5-0 away wins and two 2-2 home draws. Ahead of the match against Graham Potter’s Brighton & Hove Albion a heated press conference saw Jürgen Klopp condemn reports that he had claimed Manchester United should have had five red cards against his team the previous week: it was a case of JK rowing before facing Potter. The match against Brighton was Liverpool’s first home game in any competition since April 1990 where they moved two goals ahead in the opening 25 minutes but did not win. If they avoid defeat against Atletico Madrid and West Ham United in the coming week the Kop team will be unbeaten in 26 games when Cop26 ends.
City blanked
In their respective past 17 games Manchester City have failed to score on seven occasions and Newcastle only four times. City, whose most famous fans are probably the Gallagher brothers, suffered their first ever home defeat to a team who scored through Gallagher — Crystal Palace’s Conor Gallagher. In Palace’s tenth league game of the season they beat ten-man City to move ten points from the bottom of the table, thus increasing their chances of extending their longest top-flight run to ten seasons.
Arsenal fight back
Arsenal are the first team since Wimbledon 25 seasons ago to lose their opening three games of a top-flight campaign but avoid defeat in their next seven. Gabriel’s goal for Arsenal against Leicester was among four scored in the opening six minutes of Premier League games on Saturday, the most on a day of seven matches or fewer since March 8, 1995. The League Cup quarter-final draw produced two London derbies for the first time. The total of five quarter-finalists from the capital is the most in League Cup or FA Cup history.
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Clarets’ relief
Burnley began the weekend enduring the joint longest run without a top-flight home victory by any team since 2008 (14 games) yet were the only home winners in the nine matches. Trumpets played the Last Post at Turf Moor and then Cornet scored for Burnley (Maxwel Cornet).
On a level
Rochdale and Walsall are not only exactly level in Sky Bet League Two this season – the same number of wins, draws, losses, goals scored and goals conceded as each other – but their individual records also happen to be “dead level”: W5, D5, L5, F19, A19. Forest and Wood are top of adjacent divisions: Forest Green Rovers in League Two and Boreham Wood in the National League.
