The last couple of rounds in the Premier League have offered a touch more clarity over how the rest of the season will pan out. We saw a classic played out between Newcastle United and Chelsea, with more coded messages from Blues boss Enzo Maresca regarding his disgruntlement at the club. Then at the top of the tree, Arsenal, Manchester City and Aston Villa all won: is it now a three-horse race for the title?
Further down, Leeds smashed Crystal Palace, while Wolves fell further adrift at the foot of the table. Nick Woltemade added another couple of goals for the season, while Hugo Ekitike helped Liverpool to a key win at Tottenham, a game in which Alexander Isak scored and sustained a serious injury.
There are plenty of takes around after the weekend, and ahead of the next batch of fixtures — like we’ve done with NFL and rugby union — we look at some snap judgements before weighing up whether they are overreactions or legit takes.
Let’s start with events at Villa Park on Sunday.
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Aston Villa are in title race?
Woltemade has been best summer FW signing
Is Maresca’s mouth threatening to undo Chelsea’s season?
Wolves destined to be worst ever PL team?
Aston Villa deserve to be mentioned as title contenders
After their win over Manchester United on Sunday, Aston Villa are on a 10-match winning run across all competitions and sit just three points off Arsenal. They are in the Premier League title race.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Villa’s victory over Manchester United was the type you see from teams who win league titles. They weren’t at their best, riding their luck at times — see Matheus Cunha‘s missed header from a couple of yards out — but they found two moments of magic from the outstanding Morgan Rogers to win the match. Job done: that’s 16 wins in their last 18 matches, and three points off top place.
Opta has them at just a 5.27% chance of winning the title, and has them finishing third, but you feel there’s a lot of momentum shifts and narratives left in this season. It’s been a strange, unpredictable league: how many of you had Liverpool going back-to-back?
So, for now, Villa deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the others around them, and all this with Ollie Watkins yet to find his scoring boots this season. He will come good at some stage, adding to Villa’s already potent attack.
However, any such talk must be weighed up against the other threats: Erling Haaland is the best player in the league, and no team knows how to win a title like Man City. Arsenal’s depth is the envy of any. But Villa are in the type of form which can deliver unlikely league titles.
The next two matches are crucial for Unai Emery’s side, as they face Chelsea and Arsenal away. This can decide the fate of their season. And all that after going the first four matches without a goal, and the first five without a victory.
Nick Woltemade has ended up being the best summer striker signing
It was a summer of striker movement. In the Premier League, Hugo Ekitke, Nick Woltemade, João Pedro, Liam Delap, Benjamin Sesko, Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyökeres and Thierno Barry all moved to the tune of a collective £520m or so for that group alone. Right now though, after his two-goal haul against Chelsea at the weekend, Woltemade looks to be the best buy.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
First up: some caveats. I’m not including Bryan Mbuemo in this group, nor Eberechi Eze, Mohammed Kudus, Noni Madueke or Florian Wirtz. Of the group listed above: Isak has clearly had a shaky start, and the serious injury he sustained in their win at Spurs is just awful luck. Sesko is still finding his feet at Manchester United and has had an injury-disrupted start. It’s been the same story for Delap at Chelsea, while Pedro started well in blue, only to tail off in recent weeks.
Barry has worked his socks off and finally got his first goal in Everton‘s win over Nottingham Forest: he should yet prove to be a shrewd purchase. And then there’s Gyokeres. ESPN’s James Olley wrote about him last week and why that move hasn’t yet clicked, with Mikel Arteta preferring makeshift forward Mikel Merino there for the bigger matches.
So that leaves Woltemade and Ekitike. Woltemade was outstanding in Newcastle’s 2-2 draw with Chelsea on Saturday and is an astute acquisition for the Magpies. He brings presence up front, has wonderful feet and should comfortably hit 15 or more goals a season. He currently sits on seven from 14 games in the league. But for me, Ekitike is just ahead of the chasing pack, with eight in 16 in the top flight. Amid Liverpool’s turbulent season, he’s impressed up front and can play anywhere across the front three. They spent in the region of £69m to bring him from the German Bundesliga and so far, he’s just ahead of Woltemade in the summer striker stakes.
Maresca’s coded messages could undo Chelsea’s season
Enzo Maresca is clearly disgruntled with something behind the scenes at Chelsea. But what, exactly? Well, seemingly, only he knows. But his coded messages could undermine Chelsea’s season.
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Newcastle draw leaves Maresca’s future in doubt
James Olley analyzes Enzo Maresca’s future with Chelsea after drawing 2-2 with Newcastle.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
It all started after the Everton game when he said he’d just endured his worst “48 hours” since taking the job. Then a couple of days later, after the Carabao Cup win over Cardiff, Maresca sidestepped questions of clarifying why he’d had such a bad 48 hours. On Thursday, his name was being mentioned as being on the list as a possible successor to Pep Guardiola if this is indeed the Catalan’s final season at the Manchester City.
In Maresca’s pre-match news conference before the Newcastle match, he said the links were “speculation, 100%” and that he was “happy” with his contract through to 2029. Then after the game on Saturday, a match in which Chelsea came back from two goals down to draw 2-2, he alluded to being unsettled with the experience in his squad.
“When you have 20 and 21-year-olds and a player who is 30 or 31, and he starts to say something to them, it’s invaluable,” he said. “But it’s the strategy of the club.” So all in all, a slightly curious week.
Managers speaking in code and alluding to disgruntlement with the board seldom end well for the coaches involved. Take Antonio Conte in March 2023 and his criticism of Spurs, where he said the club “can change the manager but the situation cannot change.” Conte departed just over a week later. Earlier this year, Nuno Espirito Santo said his relationship with owner Evangelos Marinakis had broken down. He was sacked 18 days later. So Maresca is not the first — nor will he be the last — to use the public space to get his views across, however shrouded in mystery.
Whether it was lack of support after the Atalanta match or disgruntlement at Chelsea’s transfer policy that prompted these comments, only he knows. His sentiments were more obfuscated than Conte and Nuno’s barbs, so it’s unlikely to cause short-term ramifications. But while it shouldn’t have much of an impact on their season in the here and now, it will surely be remembered at his end of year review.
Wolves destined to be worst ever Premier League team
Wolves’ record is grim reading: they have lost 10 on the bounce and have 15 defeats in 17 matches. At the moment, with just two points, you can’t see them picking up enough through the remainder of the 2025-26 campaign to surpass Derby’s record low total of 11 in the 2007-08 season.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Wolves showed signs of shoring themselves up against Arsenal, restricting the league leaders to just two shots on goal, but still came away with a defeat. So at the weekend, they welcomed Brentford looking for their first win of the season, only for defensive lapses to undo them in a 2-0 defeat.
Brentford’s first goal was a simple ball across the box that looped over two Wolves defenders and left Keane Lewis-Potter to put away a smart finish. The second saw Lewis-Potter find oceans of space between Wolves’ back three and the midfielder in the middle of the box to slide their second home. Then Jorgen Strand-Larsen fluffed a poorly taken penalty to chip away at the deficit. The whole match was a neat snapshot of Wolves’ season to date.
The team being mentioned now alongside Wolves is Derby and the 11 points they collected in 2007-08, making them the worst Premier League team to date. The question is whether Wolves can surpass that target, with relegation already an inevitability.
So let’s review. Manager Rob Edwards has helped bring a bit more structure to the team, but with January looming, you expect it to be a turbulent time rather than a space for consolidation as rival clubs look to poach whatever talent they can from Wolves’ roster. The recruitment has let them down and while they’ve managed to pluck a couple of gems like 18-year-old Mateus Mane, they just haven’t replaced the likes of Morgan Gibbs-White, Pedro Neto, Matheus Cunha and Rayan Aït-Nouri and Max Kilman, all of whom have left in recent seasons. With supporters correctly up in arms at the ownership, it’s a grim atmosphere hanging over Molineux.
“This is the worst I’ve felt in a long time. You can see the stadium is nearly empty at the end,” said defender and longtime Wolves player Matt Doherty after the Brentford defeat. “It’s not full at the start. We are just lacking the belief that we can win the game. We’re scared to win the game almost. We’re nervous about going ahead in the game and trying to hold on.”
The hope is that right now, this is the nadir. Edwards has made Wolves a harder team to beat, and you feel they may find a win here or there. Supporters will see the departure of executive chairman Jeff Shi as progress, and they should have enough to beat that 11-point total, especially as cup runs sap some momentum for other teams near them. But they’re facing an inevitable slide into the abyss of the Championship no matter how many points they collect: heading into the festive period, Wolves are 16 points behind 17th-place Nottingham Forest.
