A slightly different route for this week’s column. Given that there are plenty of intriguing games on this weekend’s Premier League docket, here’s a brief(ish) look at some of the intriguing talking points from three of them before we dive into our predictions for all 10 matches:
Newcastle vs. Arsenal: Guimaraes needs to deliver
Had this summer taken a different turn then it might well have been in the red of Arsenal that Bruno Guimaraes was lining up on Saturday. Mikel Arteta was and is among the leading admirers of the Brazilian international but Newcastle managed to plug their PSR gap elsewhere (though neither Elliott Anderson nor Yankuba Minteh look like players whose departure should be relished). This was quite the triumph for a side whose momentum had slowed in the past 12 months. This was a player who looked every inch the level of a top starter at Arsenal or Manchester City, staying put on Tyneside.
Nine games into this season, however, Guimaraes does not quite look like the player he was last season. That was a player who could dominate games from the base of midfield: dictating the rhythm of those around him, recovering possession and still making a notable contribution in the final third. Eddie Howe is not seeing quite the same player this season. The expected possession value of Guimaraes’ passing has dropped from 0.13 per 90 to 0.11 (still high but not as remarkably so), he is attempting 10 fewer passes per 90, delivering them with less accuracy and creating less for his team mates.
It might be conceivable that the 26-year-old is doing less possession work now that Sandro Tonali is back from his suspension. If that is indeed the case then Guimaraes hasn’t picked up the slack elsewhere. His non-penalty expected goals plus expected assists (npxG+xA) has cratered from last year’s 0.35 to 0.17, no wonder when the number of chances he is creating for team mates is also halved. None of this is to say Guimaraes wouldn’t still be valuable for most teams in the league. He just isn’t the possession force he was a year ago.
Guimaraes, then, is doing less with the ball but his manager would be the first to say that he is not the same player when possession doesn’t go through him. “I think Bruno Guimaraes is slightly more complex in terms of where he plays,” Howe said this week, “because I think he has natural strengths, where he gravitates to the ball and always wants to be on the ball, and that is his biggest strength. Playing him away from the ball is different for him.”
Newcastle shouldn’t yet be at the stage where they seriously consider whether Guimaraes belongs in their strongest XI. The best version of Newcastle has the best version of Guimaraes at its heart. It should not, however, go unnoticed by Howe that Wednesday’s midfield of Tonali, Sean Longstaff and Joelinton delivered the aggression that serves as their catalyst. Chelsea were blown away long before Guimaraes entered the field. If he learned the lessons from midweek and applies them on Saturday afternoon, it could be a tough afternoon for Arsenal.
Spurs vs. Aston Villa: What is going on with Emery’s defense?
If there was one statistic that might have you doubting whether Aston Villa could repeat last season’s heroics in 2024-25 it probably had something to do with their defense. Unai Emery’s side had given up 1.56 npxG per game on their way to a top four finish that came in spite of the 61 goals they conceded. There is a reason why they are so besotted with Emiliano Martinez at Villa Park and last season he had every opportunity to live up to his title of “the world’s No.1”. Only Jose Sa prevented more goals than the Argentine’s 8.42. That statistic is something of a double edged sword. Given his quality, we can be pretty confident there was no great flukery in Martinez’s numbers. Equally David Raya, Ederson and even Alisson tend not to have such a high goals prevented metric. Their defenses don’t ask them to make so many saves.
The same appears to be true of Villa this season. Martinez is being asked to make 16 percent fewer saves per 90 than he was in 2023-24 and the quality of those efforts is cratering. Through the first nine games only Liverpool have given up more npxG than Villa’s 0.83. Small sample size it may be, but that’s a better return than Manchester City have had in this season or last. Their pure defensive returns don’t look great so far — 11 conceded in nine games — but the shots Dwight McNeil of Everton and Matheus Cunha of Wolves took tend not to result in goals all that often, that they did this season is more down to a couple of wonderous efforts than Villa mistakes. The signs are there that this is the sort of side that can avoid the shellacking Spurs hit them with last season.
Why? In part Villa have dialled down some of their more aggressive off ball tendencies. No team caught their opponents offside as frequently as Emery’s last season, and the traps laid by Pau Torres et al were generally extremely effective. Breach that high line, however, and opponents found themselves with prime shooting chances. No wonder that Villa gave up an xG per shot of 0.136 one of the Premier League’s highest in 2023-24. That has dropped notably alongside the frequency with which Villa catch opponents offside, from 4.4 per game to 2.6, still high for Europe’s top five leagues but not remarkably so.
Is this because Villa’s midfield personnel has changed? Certainly you could see why a team with Douglas Luiz and Boubacar Kamara might be inclined to push up, trusting their engine room to overpower the opposition. If Youri Tielemans is beaten up high, he isn’t getting back in time. The intensity of the schedule will also go some way to explaining this. Villa’s squad is not the deepest, they can’t afford to run themselves ragged in the Premier League, Champions League and EFL Cup. That much was apparent when they simply sat back on Manchester United’s visit to Villa Park. Go girl, give us nothing, they might as well have said.
Game state enters the equation too. When Villa have needed to chase an equaliser the defensive line has crept up, catching Wolves five times when they came from a goal down to win 3-1. One would suspect, however, that the 4-0 drubbing they took from Tottenham did not leave Emery’s mind in the preseason. His side can’t afford to be blown by in the same fashion that Pape Matar Sarr did to them last season. With the adjustments they’ve made over the summer, perhaps they won’t be.
Manchester United vs. Chelsea: Does Van Nistelrooy copy Amorim?
Is there going to be much to learn with Ruud van Nistelrooy’s four game dalliance with the Manchester United dugout? Probably not. Ruben Amorim will doubtless have a close eye on events at Old Trafford this weekend but he will already have his own ideas for how he knits this team into a system and style that he likes to coach. The question, then, is to what extent the man tasked with minding the shop for the next three games tries to implement that approach.
After all, the football executive’s decision over the summer to keep hold of Erik ten Hag robbed Amorim of a preseason to implement his ideas. It likely also lowered the ceiling of what Manchester United could have achieved this season. With a fair wind and 38 games of top coaching perhaps sneaking into the top four might have been a possibility. By the time the new head coach does take the job nearly a third of the season will be in the can. Nothing of what has gone so far suggests United have the sort of big run in them that would be required to make up a seven point gap to fourth.
This season, then, might be little more than a long preseason, sifting through the squad, seeing who fits the system and who needs to be cleared out. Why not start that early? Could Van Nistelrooy roll out a back three in the fashion that Amorim is expected to implement? It might well suit a few of his center backs: let Matthijs De Ligt step up with possession, trust Lisandro Martinez to be the sort of hybrid defender on the left side that he profiles to be anyway. How exactly does a system that puts a lot of pressure on a dynamic holding midfielder — often Manuel Ugarte before he left Sporting — hold up against high grade attacks like Chelsea’s? There’s no harm in finding out.
Ultimately you suspect this won’t be the case. United looked so impressive in Van Nistelrooy first match as interim manager, a 5-2 EFL drubbing of Leicester City, precisely because they kept things simple. That might be what all parties want from someone who won’t be around for long, taking some of the pressure out of things, putting players where they’re comfortable and trusting them to just work it out. Might that spectacularly backfire against a team who are starting to settle into Enzo Maresca’s system? Yes. But that’s not really Van Nistelrooy’s problem for much longer, is it?
Scroll down for our predicted score in this and every other one of today’s Premier League games:
Saturday, November 2
Newcastle 1, Arsenal 2
Bournemouth 0, Manchester City 1
Ipswich 2, Leicester 2
Liverpool 3, Brighton 0
Nottingham Forest 1, West Ham 0
Southampton 0, Everton 0
Wolves 0, Crystal Palace 1
Sunday, November 3
Tottenham 0, Aston Villa 1
Manchester United 1, Chelsea 3
Monday, November 4
Fulham 2, Brentford 2
