We’ve got bad defending and goalkeeping galore, a title race that now looks a bit more open, and a relegation battle that looks truly wide open. Some big teams turned in stinkers this week, while relegation favorites looked OK. The Premier League will probably settle into some kind of discernable order over the coming months, but we sure aren’t there yet.

This week featured a lot of funny results with funny numbers, many of which did not line up with what actually happened in the game. In the case of Brentford and Chelsea, the scoreboard is pretty straightforward, and tells most of the story. The Blues conceded 3 absolutely enormous chances, Brentford tapped them in, and the result was deserved.

Jaidon Anthony capitalized on some very poor set piece defending for the opener. Igor Thiago tapped in a rebound off a Kevin Schade shot after the pair of Bees got through the Chelsea defense for a two-on-effectively-zero. And Fabio Carvalho added the exclamation point in stoppage time when no one tracked his run to the back post to get on the end of a square ball that made it all the way across the face of goal.

It was a game where Chelsea generated very little of substance, and showed off some truly amateur defending. Xabi Alonso will have come away from this one absolutely pissed, but probably welcoming the international break to work on some things. This was really poor.

Nobody wants to hear “Tottenham were actually alright, and a bit unlucky” anymore. At some point, you’re just a bunch of losing losers. We’re now on year 3 of Spurs drastically underperforming their talent level, struggling to finish their big chances, and letting in softies.

But for the first 45 minutes of this game, Tottenham were decent, and just failed to finish their chances. They ended this game with more shots, more xG, more box touches, more possession, and 10 more corners than their opponents.

But some poor defending just before the break saw Johan Manzambi lose his marker on the top of the 6 yard box to score an easy chance, all of Spurs’ momentum evaporated, and they came out for the 2nd half looking much less convincing. Two more Villa goals followed. A pair of consolation goals in the closing minutes made the score look better than it should.

Spurs keep showing signs of improvement, but in the end, they’re still Spurs.

This one is Fun With Game State! If you just take a glance at the xG, you’d say this was an even game and Brighton were lucky. And yes, they probably were a bit lucky to score all three of the chances they did. They weren’t mega high quality looks and required top class finishes. But Arsenal’s attack created nothing in the first half besides one huge chance on 45’, and missing it opened them up for the counter on Brighton’s second.

Pascal Groß and Charalampos Kostoulas scored a pair of absolute bangers, but Brighton’s 3rd was a bit shocking: Chema Andrés wasn’t well marked on a set piece and won the ball in the air. It was an extremely uncharacteristic goal for Arsenal to concede, and might account for 10% of the spxG they concede all season on its own.

One bad performance on its own is not concerning for the Gunners, and I still think they’re the best team in the league. But I think it is fair to call this a bad performance.

For all of the big chances that both teams generated in this game, the only one to find the back of the net was Thierno Barry scoring a deflection with his hip. It was quite fortunate, but he definitely made a real effort to turn his body and deflect it, so it’s his goal. Fantasy owners rejoice.

Otherwise, the quality of defending and finishing in this game was poor, with both teams missing some huge close-range chances. Ipswich’s Abdul Fatawu got sent off when he picked up a second yellow for a dive so egregious, he barely protested the decision. This was a fun match, but not a good one.

The hosts took advantage of an extremely poor start from Hull, scoring twice in the opening 7 minutes. They also won a penalty just before halftime, which Yoane Wissa missed. Following this, Newcastle mostly opted to sit on their lead. This was probably not an optimal strategy — the Tigers pulled one back in the 67th minute through Mohamed-Ali Cho, and finished the game with 22 shots and finished the game with 1.47 xG.

At this point, I think we all need to reassess our priors when it comes to Hull being a nailed-on relegation favorite. They were probably the worst team to get promoted from the Championship in the era that we have any kind of stats for, but they seemed to know it, and replaced about 75% of their team. This is almost an entirely new squad.

And through 5 Premier League games, Hull have an xGD of -0.15 p90. There are 7 teams worse than that. I still think Hull are more likely than not to finish in the bottom three, but it’s very clear that they’re good enough to avoid being the clear worst team in the division. They look like they’re up for a fight to stay up.

Speaking of “clear worst team in the division,” it probably is Coventry, but they found a way to snag 3 massive points away to Forest this weekend. Jay Dasilva was the goal-scorer in the 55th minute, making a great run onto a long ball by goalkeeper Carl Rushworth.

There’s not much to say about this one. Forest probably should have scored, but 1.57 xG at home to Coventry isn’t terribly impressive, and they really properly switched off mentally for the goal they conceded. Oliver Glasner’s got some work to do.

While I’m sure Liverpool fans are concerned that their attack isn’t really firing yet under Andoni Iraola, you can’t be unhappy with taking all 3 points away to a quality Bournemouth team, under any circumstances. They only generated one really big chance, but Alexander Isak finished it. The central defense partnership of Jeremy Jacquet and Virgil van Dijk had a good game. There’s plenty to be optimistic about.

And if you said “a quality Bournemouth team? They’re 17th,” the Cherries are actually rocking a positive xGD at the moment despite having to play Man City and Liverpool in their first 5 games. I think they’ll be fine.

This certainly was one of the football matches of all time. 22 players kicked a ball around. Good footballing, lads.

Both teams had a couple of big chances and will have come away from this game thinking “we should have won, we just had to finish one of those.” But both teams came in under 1 xG, with not a ton happening between the handful of quality chances. Tyrick Mitchell had a goal disallowed for a razor thin offside, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin had a huge late chance denied by a sensational save, but a 0-0 draw was a fair result here.

Brother, what the hell is this?

The defending from both sides in this game was some of the worst you’re going to see at Premier League level all year. But City don’t score 5 from 2.41 xG without something going wrong in goal.

It’s a tiny sample, but Robin Roefs has been the worst shot stopper in the Premier League through the first 5 games of the season. He was one of the big reasons Sunderland overperformed expectations last year and was loosely linked to a big move, but he’s struggling at the moment.

The Enzo Fernandez free kick sticks out like a sore thumb, but he’d still comfortably be a negative shot stopper with that taken out. The Cherki and Semenyo goals weren’t exactly unsaveable, super high psxG shots either.

I think Roefs is at least an average shot stopper and should trend upwards from here, but oof.

Given how poor Fulham have been to start the season, this is quite a disappointing result for Manchester United. The goal they conceded was a calamity — Senne Lammens gave up a fat rebound that he shouldn’t have, but Lisandro Martinez was still in position to make a simple clearance. Instead, he put the ball into his own goal.

United did eventually score an equalizer, but it wasn’t the prettiest. Matheus Cunha got it with a long-range shot that took a massive deflection. United had 29 shots in this game, but they weren’t good ones: the Red Devils managed just 0.06 xG per shot.

By the way, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur play in the first round after the international break. If that game has a loser, the losing manager probably shoots to the top of the sack race odds.

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.