That was a long international break. Glad to be back!

After a rather frustrating first 70 minutes, the Gunners came away with an expected and ultimately comfortable win, more than doubling up Leeds on xG.

An extremely boring first half gave way to an entertaining second, with Leeds opening the scoring through James Justin, thanks to some uncharacteristic lazy defending from the hosts. But that woke up the Gunners, who dominated the final 30 minutes of proceedings, with Riccardo Calafiori and Bruno Guimaraes scoring the goals.

A somewhat pedestrian performance from Bukayo Saka produced some Discourse about whether or not he is already washed, to which I reply: Absolutely not.

However, it is true that Saka is not really creating anything for his teammates at the moment. His two best chances created were both off corners. His only open play chance created in the box was a chip for a fairly low xG header. Most of his shot assists are from getting into a dangerous area, then passing back to a less dangerous area.

Given Saka’s excellent dribbling and shooting output, I’m not concerned yet. But the total lack of chances created is strange.

Aston Villa will feel a bit aggrieved after they put in their best performance of the season against a decent opponent and failed to come away with all three points, but they should still take this as a sign of things trending in the right direction. Brentford, meanwhile, have 4 draws from their last 5 and are hanging on to 4th place anyway. There are a lot of big teams below them playing poorly.

Brentford will be sweating an injury to Kevin Schade, who had been their most productive attacker up until this point. On the other side, Villa fans should be excited about the performance of Johan Manzambi, who looks like an absolute steal.

Please enjoy funny graph about game states.

Chelsea scored twice in the opening 3 minutes against Bournemouth, and that influenced the way the rest of the game was played, rendering this xG race chart virtually meaningless. It was also a miserable day at the office for former Chelsea goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic, who made just 1 save and was credited with -2.7 goals prevented vs. average for the shots on target he faced.

I’m not sure we learned anything about either team from this one. Morgan Rogers’ 3rd minute deflected shross completely removed this game from any context that would be relevant to past or future matchups.

Oh dear. That’s a choke job.

I think it is now time to get extremely worried about Fulham, who sit bottom of the Premier League. Their xGD of -0.18 per 90 is not horrific, but their inability to get any points against Ipswich, Crystal Palace or Sunderland does not bode well for their future. Ipswich, meanwhile, have 9 points from 6 games and an xGD of -0.08 p90. They might just be decent? This doesn’t feel correct to me as a bit of a Gary O’Neil hater and someone who watched their game against Man United, but the evidence we have suggests they’re OK.

Last season, Sunderland were outrageously lucky to finish in the top half. This season, they are currently 16th with a positive goal differential. It’s great to see a team making a 2014 Twitter argument for why xG is fake.

Some poor defending gifted Maxim De Cuyper the opener for Brighton, but a red card for Pascal Struijk appeared to turn the tide of the match just 4 minutes later. The Black Cats were well on top from then to the end, but failed to generate top quality chances, and gave up a 2nd goal on the break as they were desperately pushing everyone forward in stoppage time.

Brighton are just good. They should be favorites for a top 5 spot right now.

This game sucked and both managers are getting fired by Christmas. Neel will have more detail on how bad they suck in a piece about this game and these teams tomorrow.

If I was Oliver Glasner they’d have to take me to an inpatient mental health facility after this one. JUST KICK THE BALL IN THE GOAL.

Palace’s goals were all infuriating if you’re a Forest fan too, each of them the result of defenders completely losing track of of an opposition attacker and gifting them a free shot.

Forest have been pretty decent to start the season and Palace have been awful, so this result is very funny.

Hull just keep figuring out how to get points, and in a way that does not feel completely fake and/or lucky? They pretty clearly will not stay in their current standing of 8th, but nothing about their performances suggests that they are one of the worst teams ever in disguise. Their -0.22 xGD p90 is not good, but it’s just barely good enough to keep you up most years. They bought an entire new squad, and it appears to have worked wonders.

Having said all that, Everton will be extremely annoyed that they weren’t able to come away with all three points against an expected relegation battler, in a game where they had more shots and took a second half lead. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Thierno Barry were once again very dangerous in attack and each scored, but a disappointing defense got smoked on a couple of occasions, with all 4 members of Everton’s back line making poor individual errors on the day.

An international break injury crisis rendered Liverpool’s attack fairly useless, and a 62nd minute red card for Ryan Gravenberch did not help matters. City got more aggressive going forward after the red, quickly piled on the misery, and that was that.

With all of Dominic Szoboszlai, Alexander Isak and Gody Gakpo missing for a few weeks, it’s pretty much impossible to evaluate the job that Andoni Iraola is doing at Liverpool and if they’re making positive steps forward. Thankfully, they haven’t dug any kind of hole yet — their gap to Champions League places is just one point.

We still have absolutely no idea if any of City’s results matter, and likely won’t for several months. Great situation to play matches in.

Before today, I hadn’t noticed just how stinky Newcastle’s underlying numbers are. Their xGD p90 is -0.72! That’s very firmly relegation stuff most years. You’d expect them to beat a very poor Coventry side, but perhaps we shouldn’t expect that at all?

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.