Everyone's on fraud watch: A Premier League recap

Trying to reign in the reactionary hot takes a bit

Author

Kim McCauley
August 18, 2025

Hello friends, and welcome to your first Premier League recap of the season. Everyone who won this weekend is the title favorite and everyone who lost is getting relegated.

This game was an absolute treat, and made the rest of the weekend feel a bit boring by comparison. Liverpool came out firing, almost threw the game away by trying to sit on their lead, and then finished things off in convincing fashion because they’re just better I guess.

My biggest takeaway from this match is that Liverpool’s outstanding attack has been made even better by the additions of Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike, but they have some issues with defensive depth.

Ryan Gravenberch’s absence was felt in midfield, with Dominik Szoboszlai not really looking the part of a ball-winner, as good as he was on the ball in this match. Arne Slot’s decision to substitute track star fullbacks Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong for the much slower Andy Robertson and Wataru Endo was exposed immediately, with both of those players getting absolutely done for pace on the two Antoine Semenyo goals.

I’ll wait until they play some non-top 4 teams to come to any big conclusions, but Bournemouth appear worse than last year, while not nearly bad enough to be in a relegation race.

I did not enjoy watching this game. Villa had no wide threat and Newcastle no striker, so both attacks looked extremely disjoined. It was extremely fast with lots of back-and-forth action, but no one appeared to know how to pass or control the ball. It was essentially an athletics meet.

Newcastle dominated after Ezri Konsa’s red card and probably should have scored, but didn’t look like they knew how without the big guy who wears the shooting boots.

A Brighton classic. The Seagulls were the better team, but couldn’t put the game away, missing several decent chances from inside the box over the final 15 minutes. In stoppage time, Fulham capitalized off a poorly defended set piece, and there’s your draw.

In a pretty blah center back market, I still can’t believe we haven’t seen a rich club go for Jan Paul van Hecke.

The overarching take that you will see online after a result like this is, very understandably, “Sunderland good, West Ham bad.” And while I certainly understand the sentiment after a 3-0 win, I would maybe cool it just a little bit on the optimism for the Black Cats. Holy xG overperformance, Batman.

I’m all in on the West Ham part of the take, though. Putting up 0.61 xG against a newly promoted side is alarming, and Graham Potter has rocketed to pole position in the sack race.

Also, shoutout to the Sunderland supporters for the absolutely unreal noise at the Stadium of Light for this fixture. You’d have thought it was a derby against Newcastle or a European semifinal.

Burnley were predicted bottom in our Premier League previews, and I saw nothing in this game to change how I feel. For that same reason, it’s too early to draw any conclusions about Thomas Frank’s Tottenham, though they looked much improved in defensive transition and on set pieces.

I am pretty willing to say that Spurs have a good starting center forward in Richarlison if he stays fit, though. Generally 28-year-olds don’t magically stop having injury problems after a couple of bad years, but this is what he was able to do last season in limited minutes. Those goals weren’t flukes.

Pep Guardiola clearly came away from last season thinking that Manchester City lacked the kind of match winners that could make something out of nothing. His team went and got two of the most extreme, zero out-of-possession contribution guys of that ilk in Tijjani Reinders and Rayan Cherki, who showed up with crazy highlights on their Man City debuts.

I continue to be skeptical that these guys will be positive players for City in the really hard games against the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, and top European sides. But City’s going to play something like 50 games against teams worse than that this year, and maybe 10 really hard ones. So in 80-85% of games, Reijnders and Cherki are going to help the team.

Wolves simply weren’t good enough to punish City’s occasionally lazy play in midfield, and that might be a trend for them this season. They’re pretty light on attacking quality.

Bad. Stinky. Did not like.

Eberechi Eze had 7 shots with a scintillating 0.03 xG per shot. Cole Palmer, who hasn’t scored from open play since January, was taking similar hopeful rips at 0.05 xG per shot. Joao Pedro didn’t have the best Premier League debut, posting a very unflattering -0.56 on StatsBomb’s OBV model.

If we’re being charitable to both of these teams: Credit to Palace for playing solid defense and getting a point away. Chelsea were mildly unlucky to not score from 1.53 xG. But this looked very week 1, with neither team really able to execute on their ideas in the final third.

On the Eze free kick, I think the officials got it right. I wish it would have stood just because Rule Of Cool, but Guehi pretty obviously interfered with the wall.

You’ve seen this movie before, Forest score in the first 15 minutes and outperform xG. Chris Wood is inevitable.

It was interesting to see Brenford come out under a completely different setup than what we grew used to seeing under Thomas Frank. New manager Keith Andrews started with a 4-2-3-1 shape and a pretty low defensive block, even after conceding early. Perhaps they thought Forest weren’t used to having the ball and wouldn’t be comfortable with it? In any event, the Bees looked terrible in all phases of play. Antoni Milambo, their "number 10,” ended the game with 8 completed passes, 0.01 xGA, and 0 shots.

I think things will change a lot for Brentford between now and the end of the transfer window, but this was an extremely poor performance.

This might have been the best game that Manchester United have played under Ruben Amorim, and yet they leave it with zero points. Mason Mount started the game as a bit of a false 9, and Benjamin Šeško finished it as a regular 9, but a bad one. Their lack of a striker-like substance prevented them from turning a pretty good performance in defensive and transitional phases into one with any goals.

Yes, United finished with 1.41 xG, but it was from a high volume of crappy shots. There isn’t a single top quality chance in the bunch here.

Arsenal, meanwhile, scored the best way they know how: Off a set piece where rival fans complained that they committed a foul. Welcome to the new Premier League season, same as the old one.

Viktor Gyökeres was bad on his debut. While it is obviously way too early to make any kind of judgment on him or Šeško — and it will be for months — it will be hilarious if the great Arsenal fanbase debate of 2025 ends up being over two guys who both turn out to be frauds.

Monday night: Leeds vs. Everton

I’m excited for this one. I love what Everton are cooking in the transfer window, and I have no idea how much Leeds will change their attacking style in the Prem. I have invested my life savings into Jack Grealish call options and I’m sure this has no chance of backfiring on me.

—KM

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