Long shots are so in right now: A Premier League recap

If the ball is juiced, please keep it juiced.

Author

Ted Knutson
February 09, 2026

Two friends of mine have started a company called Curious Lynx, and their purpose in life is now to make board games. One of them (Nat James) helped make all of the beautiful visualisations from the very start at StatsBomb. And the other (Paul Smith) worked at a company that helped build Magic the Gathering Online.

I LOVE board games, and given you read this column, I suspect a large subset of you do too. They have started a newsletter where they deliver weekly insights on games and game design. This week’s topic was the Top 5 Boardgames for Beginners.

Controversially, I kinda hate Flamecraft, but Harmonies is fantastic and gorgeous.

People talk about Pep outthinking himself with regard to tactics, but it felt like Slot was the one that did it here. Teams have gotten to City consistently this season by attacking and going after them, and Liverpool uh… did not.

The first half from City was about as dominant a performance as I have seen from them in the last two seasons, and it came at Anfield. Again, not something that makes a lot of sense, but maybe Liverpool’s coaching staff had seen City’s start strong, fade hard pattern and wanted to rope-a-dope into exactly that pattern?

The home side’s first shot came from Salah in the 26th minute, so maybe they leaned a little too hard into the idea?

Anyway, Szoboszlai hit probably the free kick of the season to open the scoring in the 74th. Yes, even better than his Arsenal goal, it was a magnificent thunderbastard with power, precision, and schwerve.

The next shot in the match was Bernardo Silva’s equalizer ten minutes later, off a gorgeous, cushioned headed assist from Erling Haaland. This was big man, little man at its finest.

For the purposes of mental health, we’re going to ignore the rest of the talking head chatter about the reffing you can surely find elsewhere, but the City win keeps the title race on life support, and it felt like Liverpool only had themselves to blame.

Every season Arsenal seem to buy a midfielder that ends up scoring vital goals for them, sometimes in volume. Last season, that was Mikel Merino, partly because they decided to play him up front. This season that player is Martin Zubimendi, their nominal defensive midfielder who not only has the ability to ping the ball across the pitch, but also has the skills to ping the ball into the net from just outside the box.

We’ve discussed this a bit on the pod, but like the balls, various theories are flying around to try and explain why the league has become weirdly banger-friendly this season. Are the balls juiced? (Ahem.) Is it tactical adjustments from teams dropping too deep to protect the box? Are players becoming better at the skill of Hitting the Ball Real Hard On Target™️?

I won’t comment on the balls bit, but I think the other elements definitely have merit. Individual development of goal-scoring traits is the next wave of advantages after teams get smart in the transfer market, and start leaning heavily on set pieces. Here’s a talk I delivered at FC Barcelona in 2018 incorporating BOTH of these topics (long range shooters is at 32:58).

Gyökeres had two goals in this match from relatively close range. He was bought to farm goals and eat minutes against the weaker teams and that is exactly what he did. (Sorry Sunderland.)

A 29th minute red card for Spurs and 23 shots for United. Not much to say about this one.

Manchester United with continually fresh legs might just be the third best team in the league right now.

Is it bad to give up two braindead penalties at home when facing superior teams?

Thank you to Wolves for not only costing me my bet, but also for making it impossible to learn more about Chelsea under the new tactical regime.

No bangers for Villa this match. Disappointing. Their opening goal was a nifty vertical pass into the edge of the box for Morgan Rogers who ROOFED it over the goalkeeper instead of taking the more standard cutback choice. Gotta keep these GKs on their toes.

Speaking of, someone said there seem to be few great goalkeepers in the PL right now, and man that is NOT what I see every week. The balls are being hit harder than ever before and we’re not seeing crazy scoring rates, so clearly the GKs are doing good work, even if no one wants to give them credit.

There was also a gorgeous goal from Bournemouth’s new signing Rayan, combined with one awful piece of defending by Lucas Digne. Points for not trying, I suppose.

I don’t know how to tell everyone this, but after a horrible start during a head coach transition, the Bees are in likely European places. They’ve done it off the back of exceptional home form, which is why pipping a full three points at St James’ Park came as a bit of a surprise.

Brentford probably feel they should have had a penalty early on from a Tripper tug on Lewis Keane-Potter in the box that somehow wasn’t given. (Or is it Potter Lewis-Keane?) Then Newcastle opened the scoring on the slightest of glancing headers off a corner from Sven Botman and the home side look to have stabilised.

Brentford’s first goal came from a wide cross to Vitaly Janelt, who headed home during open play (noted because Brentford typically score either set pieces or transitions and, well, I guess this was kind of transitiony so nevermind), while the second was off a penalty earned during a great transition, resulting in a handball by Jacob Murphy. Igor Thiago converted his sixth pen in the league this season, and the visitors were 1-2 up.

Newcastle got a transition penalty of their own to let Bruno G make it 2-2, and I genuinely expected Newcastle to ride that momentum (not a real thing, but ignore that) to three home points.

But no! It was Dango Ouattara that caught Trippier napping/creeping too high up the pitch late in the game at age 35, as the Bees scampered out 2-3 winners maybe a little unjustly.

Transition.

A new season of Bridgerton coinciding with an uptick in form for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall? You can’t say we didn’t warn you!

I know he’s not a fresh new name, but every time Samuel Chukwueze is on the pitch, he is noticeable. To the extent that I would tune in to a Fulham match to watch more of him.

Fulham’s goal was delightful chaos leading to an open shot for Raul Jimenez that eventually found its way into the back of the net after bouncing off GK to defender and back over the GK’s head into the goal. A bit lucky maybe, but you have to wonder where the rest of Everton’s defense was.

Fulham had a ton of great chances in the first half (watch the highlights!), yet this was somehow not a Fulham win! Possibly because they only started taking shots in the second half after Everton equalised.

Bad strategy yields bad results.

Dewsbury-Hall got the equaliser from a relatively simple left-footed shot after a nice bit of work from Vitali Mykolenko out wide. And then the winner came via a Bernd Leno own goal from a punch, where he tried and failed to go around the Man Mountain that is Jake O’Brien on a corner. I’m not sure I’ve seen one like that before.

So yeah, a surprising weird and wonderful match at Craven Cottage.

Is there a relegation race now? Maaaaaybe.

Are Leeds involved in it? Probably not, but Forest fans certainly feel some sphincter tightening.

If nothing else, watch Calvert-Lewin for Leeds’ third goal. That is a very common technique for a centre forward to use… but not when it comes to scoring goals! 🧑‍🍳 💋 

West Ham fans want to know how much hope they should feel right now, especially after the scorching run they are on since adding Paco Jemez to the coaching staff.

And uh… I got nuthin’.

But what I can say is that not letting in endless goals off set pieces like at the start of the season certainly makes it easier to add points to the table. So they got that going for them.

This match had seven shots a piece. It does not meet the threshold for further analysis.

—TK

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