In terms of points gathered, the Premier League title winner this season will be either Arsenal or Manchester City.
It’s a two-horse race in which one of the horses has a bullet with its name on it sitting somewhere in a locked cabinet at Premier League headquarters.
We can presume, then, that Arsenal will win the title for the second season running.
Some are entertaining the idea that Brighton can have a go on our behalf. They have beaten Arsenal already at the Amex Stadium and now, after another brilliantly brave display at the Etihad on Saturday, they have beaten City too.
Fabian Hurzeler’s team will not win the Premier League, though. Injuries, fluctuations in form and the fact they are playing in Europe will see to that.
Brighton have just played back-to-back games at City – the first in the Carabao Cup last week – and are off to Getafe in the Conference League on Thursday before facing Brentford back in Sussex on Sunday.
Liverpool are not ready to challenge for the Premier League title – and that is OK
It’s exciting and it’s fun but it’s also a schedule that will get them in the end.
As for Liverpool, they are simply not ready. Not yet.
That was apparent before yesterday’s home defeat to Arsenal, in which they played well.
Andoni Iraola’s team also played nicely at home to City last month but lost that one too.
In fact, Liverpool have lost at home to both their rivals without scoring a goal. They don’t score many against anybody, as it happens. Just 11 in the league which is three fewer than Ipswich and only one more than Manchester United.
So, no, Liverpool will not challenge for the title and that should be viewed as perfectly OK on Merseyside.
Liverpool have spent a lot of money since lifting the trophy under Arne Slot in 2025 but some of it has not been spent awfully well and last season was so very bad that they are coming from a long way back under their new manager.
There has been progress. Liverpool have recruited two sound defenders in Jeremy Jacquet and Ronaldo Araujo and are starting to see a return on Alexander Isak and, to a lesser degree, on Florian Wirtz, who has been nowhere near as bad this season as some people seem so keen to claim.
But Liverpool remain a puzzle in the final third. They play with nowhere near the structure and balance of Arsenal or the imagination and pace of City. Yesterday at Anfield was rather typical of how they can be. Possession, promise and power but a lack of calm intelligence and threat just when it really matters.
It may yet come. It is possible to see Iraola’s influence. They would appear to have hired the right man to succeed Slot and that is half the battle.
But a third-placed finish, a journey to the last eight of the Champions League and a tilt at a domestic cup would represent progress for Liverpool.
As such – unless City escape their Premier League charges via appeal – this is Arsenal’s title already and if that feels rather ho-hum and disappointing, it’s for the rest of the competition to ask themselves how it has come to be this way.
Let the players play!
Liverpool deserved to get something from the game at Anfield but warrant little sympathy for the manner in which they fell behind.
The home team’s problems began when Virgil van Dijk took a goal kick and passed the ball a yard to his right to his goalkeeper Alisson Becker, who proceeded to give it away.
This is a common modern trend but no less confusing for it.
How have we reached a point where so many Premier League clubs seem happier for a goalkeeper to have the ball at his feet than they do an outfield player?
Van Dijk can pass the ball perfectly well. Let him do it!
Brighton still rock
Brighton are the league’s top scorers with 24 and have had 11 different players on target so far.
That’s more scorers than half the 20 Premier League clubs have scored goals.
Brighton celebrate a brilliant victory away at Man City – but they won’t win the league
Forest must change now
Nottingham Forest have to break free from their boom and bust cycle if they are ever to make serious Premier League progress and it feels as though that time is now.
Forest and their owner Evangelos Marinakis are on their fifth manager in the last 14 months. If normal rules apply, Oliver Glasner is in serious trouble after starting the season with just one win in nine games.
But Glasner was the manager Marinakis had wanted for quite some time. He first asked him to join in early 2024 at a time when Nuno Espirito Santo was struggling for results.
So now is the time for the Forest owner to look back at the churn of managers, players and indeed recruitment executives that has characterised his time at the City Ground and realise that something must change.
Glasner was unsparing in his criticism of the Forest players after Saturday’s defeat at Brentford. In the same breath, he almost invited Marinakis to sack him.
But Forest’s players could be forgiven for being confused and a little demotivated after so much change. Every time they lose back-to-back games, they must expect the manager to be sacked.
So it’s time to shift that culture of uncertainty at Forest. Time to behave like a grown-up football club.
Glasner is extremely well paid by Marinakis. His annual salary is north of £10million a season and puts him up near the top of the list.
If Marinakis believes he has a manager of that standing, he should take his hands off the wheel and let him get on with it.
Oliver Glasner invited the sack from Nottingham Forest – but they should stick with him
Martinez should be careful what he asks for
Michael Carrick will do well to get much more time at Manchester United and there was a certain irony in Lisandro Martinez being the latest player to let him down as his team lost 2-0 at Chelsea.
Martinez – sent off after conceding a ludicrous penalty at Stamford Bridged – moaned publicly last month that United’s recruitment hasn’t been good enough in recent times.
Had it been any better, a seriously limited and unreliable central defender would have lost his place in the United first team a long time ago.
Carrick knows how this ends but what changes?
United actually played very well in the first half on Saturday and could easily have been two or three goals up by half-time, none of which will be of any comfort to their manager.
We have seen this movie before at Old Trafford.
Carrick will go, United’s bunch of semi-serious footballers will raise their levels for a new manager and the club will start telling everyone they have cracked the code – again.
All of which goes to prove what we have known for a long time. Until the quality and indeed the mentality of the players changes at United then nothing else does.
Lisandro Martinez was the latest player to let Michael Carrick down away at Chelsea
Time for Villa to grow up
Jamie Carragher believes Unai Emery is ready for a step up from Aston Villa to manage a club like United but has upset the Midlands club by saying so.
A Villa statement threatening to sue Carragher for his comments was simply embarrassing.
Carragher’s language on the Stick to Football podcast was coarse and he may regret that but it was hard to take issue with his view that Villa sit below United in terms of profile and status.
Villa have made fabulous progress under Emery but part of becoming a really big club is learning how to behave like one.
It seems Villa have a little way to go.
Can Cole really succeed at Chelsea?
Cole Palmer now has 50 Premier League goals in 105 games for Chelsea. Only Diego Costa and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink reached that milestone more quickly.
Time will tell, however, whether Chelsea really will provide him with the platform for success his elite level of talent really deserves.
For all that they seem to be moving in the right direction under Xabi Alonso, Saturday’s performance against a team waiting to be beaten was still some way below the level a team needs if it is to launch a credible title challenge.
Can Chelsea provide the platform for Cole Palmer that his talent really deserves?
Trent and Real still don’t fit
Palmer will be lucky to find his way into Thomas Tuchel’s England squad that will be announced on Friday.
His form perhaps warrants it but Tuchel was unimpressed by his withdrawal from the last international gathering and is unlikely to have forgotten.
What, meanwhile, of Trent Alexander-Arnold?
With Reece James and Tino Livramento still injured, the return to fitness of Ben White and Djed Spence has nevertheless given Tuchel some options at right-back for big Nations League games at home to Croatia and away in Spain.
Jarell Quansah can expect to start in Madrid for the game that matters leaving Alexander-Arnold to yet again consider the wisdom of his switch from Liverpool to Real in the summer of 2025.
Alexander-Arnold actually started for Jose Mourinho as Real won 3-0 at Racing yesterday but it was only the fourth time he has done so this season.
At some stage, Alexander-Arnold is going to have to make a decision regarding his future.
He is 28 now.
Spurs uplift has roots in last season
Anyone who has seen Tottenham play this season could or should have told you that the improvement on last term was obvious, even when early results were poor.
The London club may well have paid top-heavy prices for new players such as Sandro Tonali and the Manchester City duo of Savio and Omar Marmoush and the value of those deals will become apparent over time.
But Roberto de Zerbi’s squad has more depth and balance to it and is benefitting in particular from the improvement in players he inherited from Thomas Frank.
We all remember Antonin Kinsky’s Champions League horror show as Spurs collapsed at Atletico Madrid last March but the 23-year-old goalkeeper has been excellent this term.
So, meanwhile, has former England international Conor Gallagher who looked like he had forgotten how to play on arrival last season but was impressive once again in Saturday’s win over Crystal Palace, this time as a second-half substitute for Dominic Solanke.
Why the empty seats at Coventry?
The fuss made about some clubs failing to sell out every single home game is ridiculous given the financial strains currently being placed on families across the country.
Still, it’s strange to note pockets of empty blue seats at Coventry matches given how long the club have waited for a top-flight return.
Home games are listed as sold out yet rarely seem to be. Fans say it’s because it’s too difficult to pass a season ticket on to a friend on days they can’t make it.
It’s not a good look for Coventry and feels like a problem that needs solving.
There have been regular pockets of empty blue seats at Coventry matches at home this season
Captain must step up
Sunderland captain Granit Xhaka called on his players to show courage and play as they train after their defeat at Coventry pinned them to the foot of the table.
But the uncomfortable truth is that nobody in Regis le Bris’s team has struggled for form more than the experienced midfielder in recent weeks.
Xhaka was a success story last season as Sunderland stunned the Premier League but needs to find some of that Player of the Year form quickly.
