If and when Manchester City go down the rest of the Premier League will wave them off from the top of their moral high ground with good reason. But at some stage, our other big clubs will maybe look at themselves and wonder why they can’t do it a little bit better – why they can’t do it a little bit like them.
Not the cheating bit. We know what that looks like and what we think of it. But the value for money bit. The buying the right players bit. City have been doing that better than anybody for a long time.
It takes more than pots of money – wherever it comes from – to do that and we saw the benefits at Anfield yesterday.
They gave the man of the match award to Elliot Anderson and we know about him. £100million+ from Nottingham Forest. We all could have done that one, had we had the money.
But what about goalscorers two and three? What about Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki? Those two cost £55m and £30m respectively and nobody saw them coming.
Doku had made just eight starts for Belgium when he arrived in 2023 while Cherki had been selected only once for France, the day before he signed in June 2025.
Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku (right) were exceptional in City’s win at Liverpool
Doku was brilliant as a substitute at Anfield and changed the game. Wayne Rooney on Match of the Day called him ‘awkward, quick and powerful’. Cherki scored a quite beautiful goal and is the closest City now have to Kevin de Bruyne.
Any of the traditionally big teams in the Premier League could afford to buy those players so this one isn’t about money and where it came from. It’s about judgment and value and having the courage and confidence to take calculated risks on promising players from abroad.
Doku, for example, cost the same as Mohammed Kudus cost Tottenham from West Ham. Cherki carried the same price tag as Youri Tielemans does at Manchester United following his switch from Aston Villa.
I saw both of those two at Old Trafford on Saturday evening and it’s perhaps best not to dwell.
We can and indeed should talk about why players choose City and the sand on which the club’s foundations have been shown to be built. That’s a conversation that should not stop.
But if they do get expelled from the league, what kind of competition do they leave behind? Who is ready to properly provide some kind of challenge to Arsenal? And whose fault is this and what does it say about their own fecklessness?
We are only six games into this season but after all that money spent by English clubs in the summer – the final estimate was about £3.5billion – nobody apart from Brighton and Brentford seem to have taken significant steps forward.
Premier League clubs can take all the pleasure they want from City’s demise but should also ask themselves if anyone is really fit and ready to fill the gap left behind?
That’s a question that may hang in the air for a while.
Youri Tielemans cost the same as Cherki and the comparison is not flattering for him
Haaland’s overlooked quality
One thing money cannot buy is fitness. With this in mind, step forward Erling Haaland.
As Liverpool laboured at Anfield without Alexander Isak – again – Hugo Ekitike and Cody Gakpo, City’s game-changing opening goal came from the thunderous left boot of Haaland.
This is the 26-year-old’s fifth season at City and one of the Norwegian’s most-overlooked qualities is that he is simply always there.
Indeed records compiled by the reliable Transfermarkt website show that Haaland has only once missed more than a month through injury at City and only once has he missed more than six consecutive games.
The great Scandinavian is as strong as he looks.
Iraola should look at himself
Liverpool were a match for City and were arguably the more likely scorers before the dismissal of their midfield player Ryan Gravenberch. The final scoreline didn’t reflect the way the game had gone for an hour.
But as Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola lamented referee Chris Kavanagh’s decision to send his player off, he should perhaps have been asking himself why he hasn’t been picking the Dutch international this season.
This was only Gravenberch’s third start of the league campaign and the Dutch international was arguably only in the team because Dominik Szoboszlai wasn’t fit.
Gravenberch is Liverpool’s most reliable midfielder and the sooner Iraola recognises it the better.
Ryan Gravenberch picked up a second yellow for this challenge on Doku
Why Carrick will limp on… for now
The recurring and baffling lack of real quality at the top of the Premier League may serve to keep Michael Carrick in a job a little longer.
Carrick’s United were extraordinarily bad in the first half against Tottenham on Saturday. Their passive, error-strewn display was as bad as anything served up by Carrick’s predecessor Ruben Amorim and the fact his players didn’t seem to want to run around should worry him hugely.
But what matters to the United hierarchy this season is Champions League money. With a defensive rebuild on the cards for next summer, United will struggle to spend properly without the £100m or so guaranteed by a top-five Premier League finish.
United may be 13th after just one win in six but they are also just four points behind a top five featuring Everton, Brentford and Brighton – who we can expect to trend backwards at some stage – and City, who may have disappeared into a unique void of their own by next May.
Carrick’s team may be bad but as it stands they are ahead of Tottenham and Villa, only a point behind Liverpool and four behind Chelsea.
Leeds at Elland Road on Sunday feels enormous for Carrick.
If United start to properly lose touch ahead of the November international break he will be in trouble. Until that happens, he will limp on.
Michael Carrick will limp on until Manchester United lose touch with the top five
Tottenham’s weak link
Tottenham have the look of a team who can expect to improve on last season, despite their own dismal start.
At Old Trafford on Saturday, they looked properly coached and in the superb Conor Gallagher may have a player finally about to be reborn. Still, though, Roberto de Zerbi’s team looked short up front.
In a Match of the Day interview, centre-forward Dominic Solanke talked about Tottenham’s need to ‘put something on top’ and he may well have been talking about himself.
Solanke was the one ‘oven-ready’ Premier League player Spurs bought when they were in their ‘buying for the future’ stage in the summer of 2024 but at no point has that £55m felt like money judiciously spent.
Indeed Solanke’s season by season league goal totals – from 2017-18 onwards – read: 1,0,3,6,19,9,3,1.
It’s not the outlier season for Bournemouth in 2023-24 that tells the story – it’s all the others.
Cherries should ripen
Solanke’s old club Bournemouth, meanwhile, have struggled for points but still feel as though they will be OK under new coach Marco Rose.
Indeed, the Cherries’ defeat at Chelsea on Saturday looked and felt a little freakish. They lost 5-1 on a day when their own XG (expected goals) was higher than Chelsea’s.
Evanilson scored for Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge and despite losing 5-1 their xG was 1.46, higher than Chelsea’s 1.08
Angry Henderson is perfect for Chelsea
Jordan Henderson’s two goals for Chelsea were both spectacular. He has always had that in his locker – check his Liverpool back catalogue – but this was the first time he has scored twice in a league game for 12 years.
Always one of football’s more laconic and big picture characters, Henderson is now clearly driven by something a little more visceral as he enjoys a late career revival.
His leaving of Liverpool for Saudi (and the criticism that prompted from an LGBTQ+ community he had previously supported) has stayed with him, as perhaps has the stick he later took from the Dutch media for seemingly trying to engineer a move from Ajax to Monaco.
He isn’t hugely popular at Brentford (not many people can say that) after leaving for Stamford Bridge in the summer while his England selections by Thomas Tuchel tend to be accompanied by suggestions he’s been in the squad for the vibes.
Clue: He has.
Put all this together and you have a footballer who – at the age of 36 – is probably as driven as he ever has been. Hence the strange ‘hand to the ear’ celebration after his first goal on Saturday and hence a throwback performance of real quality.
If Henderson is a bit p****d off these days, then Chelsea are the winners.
Jordan Henderson has embraced a new challenge
Rice a worry but Gunners have depth
At the Emirates, Henderson’s old England team-mate Declan Rice came into the game when it mattered with a fabulous back-heel lay-off for Bruno Guimaraes’ winning goal against Leeds.
But having had three weeks off after withdrawing from England duty, the Arsenal midfielder still doesn’t look at the peak of his physical powers.
Rice, for example, allowed Gabriel Gudmundsson to run off him as Leeds took the lead and that moment would have received an awful lot more focus had Arsenal gone on to lose the game.
It feels like a problem that is yet to be solved by rest.
Meanwhile, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta’s hardline treatment of Guimaraes – left on the bench at kick-off – was interesting.
‘This is the level for Arsenal and he wasn’t at that level when we lost at Brighton,’ Arteta said.
It’s an admirable approach by the Arsenal boss but one made possible by the sheer depth of quality in his squad.
Of the eight outfield players on the bench on Saturday, six played for their countries during the international break. Piero Hincapie was injured for Ecuador’s fixtures while young Max Dowman was with England U19s.
Declan Rice is not at the peak of his physical powers despite missing international duty
Sing when you’re winning
There were different approaches on the respective benches before kick-off at Arsenal.
Daniel Farke’s Leeds coaches stared intently at iPads mounted on tripods while Arteta’s right-hand man Albert Stuivenberg sat back and joined in with the crowd’s rendition of the new Arsenal anthem ‘North London Forever’.
Maybe things do feel different when you have finally won a title.
Sunderland paying a price for success
It has taken a while but the first real test of Regis Le Bris’s time at Sunderland has arrived with his team booed off after home defeat to Brighton on Saturday.
Even a red card harshly handed out after VAR review to Brighton’s Pascal Struijk – where was the high bar for intervention? – wasn’t enough to save Sunderland, who have now lost three straight games in the Premier League.
There was always likely to be a levelling out at Sunderland after the over-achievement of last season and the demands of European competition will take a toll over the course of this campaign.
Sunderland’s defeat to AZ Alkmaar in their first European game since 1974 was a momentous occasion last month but none of this will help Le Bris as he tries to keep his team moving back where it really matters in the Premier League.
Pascal Struijk’s red card did no stop Brighton claiming a 2-0 win at struggling Sunderland
Nor perhaps – in the short-term at least – will the club’s decision to spend money on two 20-year-olds and a 21-year-old in the summer.
So far, Malick Fofana, Dayann Methalie and Jules Ahoka have just one league start between them.
Ainsley’s double trouble
Reality has come crashing in for Ainsley Maitland-Niles at Everton.
We all remember his scorching 20-yard equaliser for his new club against Manchester United on debut. What a moment that was.
But now he has two errors in the bank leading to Hull goals on Sunday. One point gained as opposed to two lost. He’s in the red unfortunately.
