If you have been listening to the podcast or my social media, you know that this is one of the latest-moving English transfer windows in memory. Nearly every team has needs, half the league’s head coaches only have three months in the job, and some of “contenders” barely have squads due to all of the turnover.

All of this seemed immediately apparent in the week 1 matches. United lost to extreme relegation candidates Hull, Liverpool needed a very late penalty to get a point in Newcastle, and Spurs were taken to absolute poundtown at the G-Tech. The only truly competent top teams this weekend were Arsenal and itstooearlyitstooearlyitstooearly Brighton.

Some of this is likely to continue, and some of it isn’t. You can get to know all of these teams a lot better in our Premier League season previews, where we broke down every single team in depth. The best writers and analysts in the industry put a ton of time and research into these, and we’d really appreciate your support on them.

As is the norm around here on Mondays, I’ll go through all the matches, the stats, and the goals, plus link to the YouTube highlights in an effort to sift some signal from the noise.

I usually order the matches here by most excitement, or kind of stack rank them based on the power teams, but today we’re going to do them in Levels of Overreaction order.

Villa, you’re up…

I don’t know how to tell all of you this, but Aston Villa are getting relegated. A 4-0 loss on opening day is alarming, but the state of the squad is more so, even just compared to last week. Unai Emery was asked why Ollie Watkins wasn’t in the squad today and he told the reporter he should call Ollie and ask him!

It wouldn’t be the first time in recent seasons a PL team in the Champions League struggled against relegation *camera pans to Spurs*. It’s also not the first time recently Villa have struggled to start the season under Emery. In fact, just last season they were horrific for the opening stretch of matches before finding their feet and somehow storming up the table into those Champions League spots.

I think the real point here is you should never expect the football under Emery to make any sense. The results come in random order, and at the end of the season, his team is higher in the table than the expected goals say they should be. At this point I wouldn’t want Emery to be head coach of my team, but I do respect the hell out of him.

Meanwhile, Brighton looked good. The press was finding meat on the bone, and a commitment to bodies in the box on transition served them well. Their squad has had some fluctuations and maybe isn’t quite settled in attack, but they are mostly consistent, and that’s plenty to give them stability compared to everyone else.

Yep, Spurs are getting relegated. They looked levels of incompetent beneath even last season, which takes some doing. Some people 🙄 on social media suggested I settle down because "only 3-4 of the players that played today are actual starters.” My brothers in Christ, I don’t know if you’ve been following Spurs last two near-relegation campaigns, but THAT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR. It’s even weirder when it’s the case during the season opener.

Meanwhile, Brentford have to be stoked about once again beating a team “bigger” than they are, but also about their coup for midfielder Mamadou Sangare. The former Lens player looked perfectly at home in his debut, causing Spurs all sort of problems and creating a goal for Keane Lewis-Potter to open the scoring for the Bees.

This was one of the most comprehensive beatdowns I have ever seen by a Brentford team. It’s early, but things look very bright at the GTech.

It goes without saying that Man United are getting relegated. If you lose to 100%-nailed-on-relegation candidates Hull, you are definitely going to get relegated. That’s just the rule. I don’t make the rules, I just uh… okay, okay, I make the rules and this is one of them.

One of the best parts about this league is that if you aren’t ready to rip it out of the gates, your opponents will be and they will punch you in the face repeatedly. Yes, Hull scored two set piece goals to open the season, but United were bad and should feel bad.

Meanwhile, Hull fans getting another chance to take the piss out of United is an early season source of joy.

These teams are both strongly likely to end up in midtable. Palace had a great opening half, but could not put anything away and paid for it. They nearly took the lead in the 17th minute, but a great save from Pickford turned Nketiah’s shot off the post instead of into the back of the net. Mateta also had a fantastic chance that came back off the post in the 38th, and it felt like Palace were very comfortable under new head coach Pierre Sage.

However, in classic Premier League style, the team that dominated but did not put away their chances came to rue those missed opportunities. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall managed to find a yard or two of space in the box off a high press regain for Everton, and pegged it into the side netting to put Everton up 1-0 just before the break.

Everton’s second came on the other side of half time, as wanted man Iliman Ndiaye crossed it directly onto the head of man mountain Thierno Barry, who headed it down and home between two Palace central defenders. Palace mustered almost nothing in the second half and that was that.

Keep it tight, maybe snatch a goal on a set piece, walk out with three points. The plan worked a lot for both of these teams in recent seasons and it worked this weekend for Leeds.

Normally during the roundup I link to the winning team’s highlights because that’s more fun for everyone. HOWEVER, to start the season, and commemorate an opening day win in the Premier League, Ipswich’s Youtube page appears to only have Extended Highlights from this match available. Which is weird. Because I value both your time and my own, I ain’t linking all that shit. So Black Cats YT it is.

The shots tally was 10 to 10 here, but Ipswich had 1.9 xG to Sunderland’s .88. Do we now believe in Gary O’Neil? No, not really. But Sunderland need to show some signs of their form to start last season soon, or our worry they could get relegated this season will seem very real to everyone, very quickly.

Kim and I came away from this one wanting to watch a lot more Julio Enciso, who had a great age 19 season at Brighton before bouncing around a bit, ending up at Strasbourg last season, and landing once again in Ipswich to start this one. He almost single-handedly created Ipswich’s opening goal, intercepting a pass, beating two men in a run from beyond the halfway line, and then squaring to Emersonn (spellcheck hates this one) to finish into an open goal.

Sunderland’s goal came in the 39th from a fabulous direct free kick by Nilson Angulo.

Unfortunately for Sunderland fans, they lost this one via more dumb in possession stuff. The ball goes from the GK to Alderete and then straight to Ipswich jumping the pass in the middle of the pitch. One quick pass later and Jack Clarke put it in the corner, and Ipswich take all three points.

Seeing out a lead in the Premier League is hard. Sitting on and protecting a lead, away from home, is nearly impossible. But coaches keep trying to do it and it keeps biting them in the ass. Welcome to England, Marco Rose.

I actually thought City were pretty good in this one, even if they trailed for most of the match. They had structure and some bad fluffs on shots, including one Haaland tried to chest while in the clear and got nothing on it. This was maybe better than I was expecting against an opponent that could have been tricky.

Another early warning sign that I mentioned in their preview was that Bournemouth’s set piece defending was bad again. I’d sound some big alarm klaxons there, because that WILL get them killed across the league.

That said, I still think the most notable thing about this match is Erling Haaland’s new hair, but ymmv.

This was a great game to watch as a neutral. Newcastle took the lead in minute five and it took Liverpool until the 99th minute to tie this up via a penalty, but the entire thing was a fantastic match of football.

Newcastle opened things up by making two passes from their own final third to cut open the visitors, just like Eddie Howe would have assuredly drawn it up. Eddie has left the building, but there are elements that remain. (Okay, most of those elements are the remnants of his terrible recruitment when he won his power struggles and was put in charge of everything, but those will come off the books eventually.)

Anyway… Liverpool looked really dangerous in possession in this one, while Newcastle looked amazing on the break. Both of their goals were meep meep, zoom zoom, ball in net from deep-lying positions into instantly dangerous transitions. I mention this because it’s going to be an important element of their season if they can keep it up.

Absolutely none of my questions about Liverpool were answered this match. Unless they get a bunch of deals done real quick — and my projection for the season was based on those happening — they’ll be fun to watch, but also on the cusp of the CL.

Neither of these teams is getting relegated.

Arsenal are *going to win the league. Coventry are going to be relegated *.

But you knew that already.

*probably

—TK

Hello, Kim here with a brief bit on the Monday night game. I’m really interested in new Fulham striker Gonzalo Garcia, who has sharply divided opinion. His shot volume is low, but a full 20% of his shots are insanely high value ones where he scored goals from through balls. The FPL models love him, Ted doesn’t.

I actually disagree with both of them — I think his constant unpredictable movement will open up a lot of space for other guys like Oscar Bobb and Alex Iwobi to increase their goal totals. He’ll be a good player for Fulham in real football, but won’t be an FPL monster.

Here is a funny radar. Enjoy the game.

—KM

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