Arsenal will have a five-point lead on Christmas Day. They couldn’t, could they? City are silly, Ronaldo is poison, Bentancur is priceless, Ivan Toney makes his point and several managers face some nervous weeks before Our League returns…
Winners
Gareth Southgate
With James Maddison describing the injury that forced him off at West Ham as a “small problem” and Brendan Rodgers calling the substitution precautionary, Gareth Southgate can breathe a sigh of relief as all 26 members of his England World Cup squad emerged unscathed from this high-wire final round of games.
Arsenal
Quite literally the early winners as they win Stage One of the 2022/23 Premier League season by five points from an increasingly silly and vulnerable-looking Manchester City.
The truth is that Arsenal have been the best side in this first chunk of the season by a margin at least as wide as their gap at the summit. Can they maintain it? Who knows, but it’s a question that now merits asking and has no certain answer. Which is in itself a huge leap forward for Mikel Arteta’s Gunners.
Most strikingly, they show no sign of having any real Arsenalness about them. Manchester City losing at home to Brentford on Saturday lunchtime would have been a clear invitation for Old Arsenal to make a bollocks of things at the Premier League’s bottom club on Saturday teatime.
But, though Wolves played pretty well and kept Arsenal at bay well into the second half, there was never the slightest hint of panic nor sense that Arsenal were about to let this opportunity slide. There was a serenity about their whole evening at Wolves, and it was fitting that Martin Odegaard got their two goals. He’s far from alone in excelling for this Arsenal team, of course, but his brilliance is more understated than others and appears to have a calming effect that truly elevates this young team.
If nothing else, Arsenal have also entered that rarefied City-Liverpool strata where you start measuring their season not in how many points have been won but in how few have been dropped. Even in this oddly structured campaign, dropping just five points before Christmas is absurdly elite. At present speed and course, it’s a 100-point season for Arteta and co.
Newcastle
Five straight wins in which Big Seven rivals Spurs and Chelsea have been deservedly beaten and mid-table drifters like Villa and Southampton given thorough pastings.
It is of course impossible to fully separate Newcastle’s current…
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