Following Arsenal’s narrow win over Nottingham Forest that placed them two points behind the Premier League leaders, Liverpool, Chelsea visited Anfield in good form and we hoped to see a fight from Mauricio Pochettino’s side. What we witnessed was a shambolic showing from Chelsea, with Liverpool running them ragged.
Diogo Jota opened the scoring after some comical defending from Beniot Badiashile and Thiago Silva. High flying youngster, Connor Bradley, waltzed in with a neatly taken finish, Dominic Szoboszlai made it 3-0 with a strong header before Chris Nkunku pulled one back for Chelsea. Darwin Nunez created an assist for Luis Diaz to put the game beyond doubt, but Nunez made a new record for hitting the woodwork four times in a game which included a penalty miss.
Elsewhere, Manchester City had a routine win over Burnley with birthday boy, Julian Alvarez, scoring a brace, which placed Manchester City above Arsenal on the table. Spurs put up a nervy show against Brentford but got all three points, leapfrogging Aston Villa to fourth place based on goals scored.
Right now, the top five are Liverpool 51, Man City 46, Arsenal 46, Tottenham 43 and Aston Villa 43. The implication of yesterday’s results mean that Arsenal’s match against Liverpool will have a major impact on the destination of this season’s Premier League title. Manchester City will be playing Brentford this weekend and will be the main beneficiaries of whatever goes on at the Emirates on Sunday.
Elsewhere, today is transfer deadline day and Arsenal has no plans to sign a new player, as confirmed by Mikel Arteta in his pre-Nottingham Forest presser,
“We didn’t have the capacity to improve the team in the way that we think we want to improve it, so we decided not to do something yet”
In the course of the transfer window, Cedric Soares, was linked with moves to Turkiye but it never materialised. He’s like Arsenal’s own version of Phil Jones, but his contract is up this summer, so we have to make do with still seeing him in training pictures.
There are two confirmed departures though, 19-year-old left back, Lino Sousa, set for a move to Aston Villa and Charles Sagoe Jr. moving to Swansea to join Charlie Patino. These youngsters are unlikely to break to the first team and I wish them the very best in their loan endeavors.
Sayonara.
