A rogue but always welcome round of midweek Premier League action appears to have scrambled some brains, because we’ve somehow now accidentally ended up with Super Sunday’s games on Saturday and Saturday’s game on Super Sunday.
It’s caught us all by surprise to see Aston Villa v Arsenal turn into a vital clash in what passes for a title fight this season, but, with all due respect, it was surely always more Super Sunday than Fulham v Crystal Palace?
That’s a Saturday 12.30 kick-off if ever we saw one. Still, those scheduling grumbles aside, what we assuredly do have – as we always do – is another Big Weekend.
Game to watch: Aston Villa v Arsenal
Aston Villa, mischievous scamps that they are, have suddenly turned this into a title clash without really telling anyone.
A team that won none of its first five games suddenly has the chance to move within three points of the unstoppable Arsenal title-cruising juggernaut, which doesn’t really seem to make any sense but we’ve looked and looked at the league table and there’s no way round it. That’s what can happen.
Really might happen too. Villa’s record at Villa Park is formidable, with 20 wins from their last 25 home games across all competitions, while this really does look like the closest thing anyone’s going to get to a good time to face Arsenal this season.
They’ve fumbled points slightly carelessly in their last two away games, conceding in injury time at Sunderland and then failing to sort out 10-man Chelsea last weekend, while finding them now in the midst of an injury crisis that has Mikel Arteta so rattled he’s undermining his own otherwise reasonable recovery-time complaints by pretending this game takes place ‘Saturday morning’.
Villa, meanwhile, are now on a hot streak of eight wins in their last nine Premier League games and all is going so nicely that the very idea of Unai Emery pretending not to understand clocks for performative effect is just absurd.
Team to watch: Leeds United
Suddenly, these are unexpectedly exciting and optimistic times at Elland Road. It’s probably unfair to say they’ve ‘stumbled upon’ something because there will definitely be more to it than that; but the scale of the improvement since the half-time switch to a 3-5-2 against Manchester City last week is nevertheless startling.
Leeds still lost that game to leave themselves on a run of three points from seven games and, with Chelsea and then Liverpool to come next, at half-time at the Etihad they and Daniel Farke had the whiff of condemned men.
The second-half comeback that rattled City so was in vain in the end, but its impact carried over to the midweek clash with a much-changed Chelsea. Leeds swarmed all over them from the start and overpowered a team that had just held Arsenal at bay despite playing an hour of the game down to 10 men.
With Liverpool once again looking so vulnerable against any team willing to have a go at them, as Sunderland did in the week, Leeds can suddenly feel confident of doing the sort of thing to Liverpool at Elland Road that West Ham just couldn’t at the London Stadium last weekend.
It’s all a far cry from how things felt just a week ago.
Manager to watch: Marco Silva
Interesting times for a manager who had seemed more serenely settled in his current job than just about any other in the land. By Premier League standards he’s been at Fulham for a lifetime, but by the last international break he’d been backed into clear favourite in the Sack Race and it did actually look like something might be broken.
But it still always felt like any parting of the ways here would be something both club and manager would live to regret. That immediate danger appears to have now passed after a solid win over Sunderland and the victory generously donated to the Cottagers by the increasingly hospitable hosts that are Tottenham.
The wild 5-4 defeat to Man City was one that inevitably highlighted both the best and worst of Fulham, but they and Silva could still do with something slightly more sensible – slightly more Sunderland – in another big home game against Palace.
Fulham’s season feels like one teetering between two worlds; in one direction lies another campaign of largely carefree and entertaining mid-tabling, in the other a relegation dogfight. Fulham currently exist in their own hinterland, isolated by a couple of points in each direction between the mid-table mass where fourth and 14th are separated by just five points, and the bottom five where 16th and 19th are also five points apart.
Player to watch: Lucas Paqueta
Was probably fortunate to avoid an extended suspension for the sheer witless stupidity of the way he went about collecting two yellow cards for dissent in the space of a minute against Liverpool last weekend. He missed West Ham’s 1-1 draw at Manchester United on Thursday night, but returns to contention to face Brighton.
And much like Homer Simpson preparing a fondue at his workstation, it would appear wise to just keep watching a man who across West Ham’s last four matches has picked up his fifth booking in seven games to miss a game through suspension, then picked up those two spectacularly unnecessary bookings in his first game to miss another game through suspension.
What’s he got in store for us next? There might even be a twist. It might even be ‘playing somewhere close to the level we know he is capable of’.
Football League game to watch: Cardiff v Huddersfield
Into League One we go for this week’s pick as two teams with relatively recent Premier League pedigree continue their attempts to at least claw their way back out of the third tier.
Cardiff currently making the more compelling attempt, sitting atop a typically tight table and with the chance to ramp up the pressure on the rest by taking advantage of a Saturday lunchtime kick-off against the maddeningly inconsistent Terriers.
A win for Huddersfield would lift them back into the top six, though, and tighten things up some more.
European game to watch: Napoli v Juventus
Every weekend seems to bring a crucial top-of-the-table clash in Serie A at the moment, and that’s largely because about a third of the league are currently in top-of-the-table territory.
You’ve got two contenders this week, with third-placed Inter facing surprise packages Como, currently fifth under Cesc Fabregas, but we’ll go with the glamour of Napoli v Juventus.
Napoli, defending champions, are up to second and level on points with leaders Milan after beating Roma – now down to fourth – last weekend. And while Juventus are only seventh heading into the weekend, the gap between themselves and the summit is only five points. Which is the same as the distance between first and second in the Premier League.
Women’s Super League game to watch: Arsenal v Liverpool
Misery loves company in this one. The good news for Liverpool is that they’re on a two-game unbeaten WSL run. The bad news is that those are the only two points they have all season.
Arsenal have also drawn their last two games, including being frustrated by Tottenham in the NLD, to slip ever further off the pace being set by Man City at the top of the table. The fact Chelsea are showing tiny hints of vulnerability for the first time in years and have also drawn their last two games really only adds to the frustration that Arsenal have been unable thus far to capitalise at all.
Based on all that, the only possible prediction can be another draw that does nothing much for anyone, leaving Arsenal still off the title pace and Liverpool still without a win.
