Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s Premier League football.
This was the weekend when the Merseyside derby was postponed, Manchester City and Arsenal dropped points again, Brentford continued their brilliant record at home, and Nottingham Forest won at Manchester United for the first time in 30 years.
Here, we will ask whether Chelsea are genuine title challengers, what impact Dan Ashworth’s departure will have on Manchester United, and whether it’s ever a good idea for a struggling manager to pick a fight with the fans…
How realistic is Chelsea’s title challenge?
Brentford at home. Everton away. Fulham at home. Ipswich away. Crystal Palace away. Bournemouth at home. Wolves at home.
Those are Chelsea’s next seven Premier League fixtures before they travel to face Manchester City on January 25. A few tricky games for sure and you’d expect them to drop points here and there, but with limited distractions (no Carabao Cup, Morecambe in the FA Cup, and the Conference League where they’re well on the way to qualifying so can rotate heavily), it’s a pretty good run at what is usually one of the most frantic times of the season.
Chelsea are four points behind leaders Liverpool, having played a game more. At a time when the other challengers are showing real fragility — Arsenal drawing with Fulham, Manchester City dropping points at Crystal Palace this weekend — Chelsea are pretty consistent. At the very least, much more consistent than we thought they would be.
They’ve won their last four league games and have only been beaten this season by Liverpool and a pre-existential crisis City. Maybe the most encouraging thing is they’ve been winning in a variety of different ways recently: some relatively serene (Leicester), some where they’ve blown the opposition away (Southampton), some where they’ve ground it out (Newcastle) and, on Sunday, one where they’ve come from behind (Tottenham).
They have an array of attacking talent, not least the majestic Cole Palmer (side note: did anyone else laugh out loud at his Panenka against Tottenham?), Moises Caicedo is looking great, Nicolas Jackson is scoring goals, even Enzo Fernandez is playing better.
The doubts come at the back. Nobody is really convinced by Robert Sanchez. Central defence is a potential concern. Reece James can’t stay fit. Will those defensive issues stop a concerted title challenge?
Maybe. Probably, even. But for the moment, that’s almost not important. There’s a rare feeling at Chelsea of progress, that they actually might be taking steps forward without inevitable backwards ones coming soon.
What does Dan Ashworth’s departure mean for Manchester United?
It’s not ideal when you lose 3-2 to a team with much more modest resources on a Saturday evening and the weekend only gets more farcical from there.
Manchester United’s defeat to Nottingham Forest was surprising, though not nearly as surprising as it probably should be given the two sides’ respective ambitions and expectations. But the fun was only just beginning, as shortly after the game, the decision-makers at Old Trafford concluded that Dan Ashworth, the sporting director they spent six months trying to recruit and delayed their work in rebuilding the club by waiting for, was no longer the man for them, only five months after he officially started work.
This is the real issue with Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s big economy drive: if the money you save by making ordinary staff redundant, withdrawing perks from the ones you do keep and charging kids £66 for a ticket is just spent on expensive mistakes like this, then what’s the point?
But this sort of confused decision-making, going from Ratcliffe describing Ashworth as “one of the top sporting directors in the world” to being pivotal in the decision to part ways with him a few months later, only diminishes the confidence that these people know what they’re doing.
There are plenty of other questions. Is this going to set them back even further when they have a squad that needs to be retooled for a new manager? Their PSR concerns were significant before Ruben Amorim replaced Erik ten Hag and this isn’t going to help. Should a sporting director have this much power? Do United even need a sporting director? If the answer is no, then why did they spend months and £2million to £3m in compensation trying to hire this one?
And what of Ashworth? Where now? The Athletic reported on Sunday that there could be a job for him at Arsenal, but being eased out after only five months isn’t going to be a positive on anyone’s CV.
Will this diminish the importance of sporting directors across the board? Will clubs think that even the ones with good reputations are sometimes good and sometimes lucky and sometimes are more the products of their environment than individual geniuses who can assemble quality squads at will?
That’s a lot of questions. As usual, there are more of them with Manchester United than answers.
Did Pep Guardiola and Russell Martin make big mistakes in their post-match interviews?
You wonder if it might be a good idea to give managers an hour or so before they do their post-match interviews. It’s not going to happen because a) the media want instant reaction and b) generally the managers want to get it over and done with as soon as possible. But with a delay, they would have time to allow the adrenaline to dissipate, their head to calm down a bit, and the angels of their better nature to drown out the devils.
It might have been a good idea for Pep Guardiola and Russell Martin this weekend.
This was Pep Guardiola’s reaction to Rico Lewis’ red card.#CRYMCI #BBCFootball pic.twitter.com/YTpZuTgk4j
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) December 7, 2024
Firstly, Guardiola and a truly surreal interview with the BBC when he was asked about Rico Lewis’ dismissal for two yellow cards against Crystal Palace.
“It’s because it’s Rico,” Guardiola said, with a sort of half smile on his face, as if this was the most obvious point in the world. When the understandably baffled interviewer asked for a clarification, he repeated: “It’s Rico.”
What was he trying to say here? That officials around the country have it in for the tidy, broadly inoffensive Rico Lewis? Or that, inevitably, the tidy, broadly inoffensive Rico Lewis will do something silly to get booked?
Either way, it was a bit odd. Not nearly as odd as Russell Martin’s post-match interview with BBC Radio, when he said of the goal his Southampton side conceded against Aston Villa: “We played out and got pressed just before that, which then makes Joe (Lumley) kick and it gets a cheer from the supporters, and we concede within about 10 seconds, so it is what it is.
“They (the fans) have a right to criticise everything else, but it’s really important to understand why we do things. We kick it to our two smallest players and it comes back.”
The reaction from some was to suggest that Martin was blaming the fans for the goal, which might be slightly unfair. But at best, he was rather condescendingly lecturing his own supporters about a way of playing that has them at the bottom of the table with only one win from 15 games.
Yes, Martin might be right that there’s a reason Southampton don’t hoof the ball up to a couple of relatively diminutive strikers, but his way of doing things isn’t going brilliantly either. Southampton have conceded 26 shots and 10 directly from errors this season: both of those figures are the most in the division. They almost conceded another goal in this game because of an errant short pass from goalkeeper Lumley.
You might argue that a way of playing that indirectly led to conceding one goal, over another that has directly led to 10, might be worth considering. Martin’s commitment to his style is well-established and he’ll be sacked before he changes it, but acting like it is the only way to play and patronising those who travelled a long way, spent a lot of money and greeted a clearance with a bit of joy is, at best, a bad look.
Those Southampton fans have watched 12 defeats this season and are staring relegation in the face: it’s best not to compound the misery by treating them like idiots.
Coming up this week…
- It’s big. It’s huge. It’s large. We hear about ‘El Sackico’ games quite a lot, but there can rarely have been a clearer example of a game where the loser is likely to suddenly be a lot more available at Christmas. It’s Wolves vs West Ham, Gary O’Neil vs Julen Lopetegui, Graham Potter watching with his phone fully charged.
- And then, the Champions League. Tuesday’s games actually aren’t amazing: Bayer Leverkusen vs Inter is probably the pick, while Liverpool away at Girona and RB Leipzig vs Aston Villa should also be fun.
- Wednesday is a bit juicier: big early 90s vibes with Milan vs Crvena zvezda, but for something a little more contemporary, there’s Borussia Dortmund vs Barcelona and Juventus vs Manchester City.
- That’s the men: the Women’s Champions League is also in town and it’s bringing Valerenga vs Arsenal, Manchester City vs St Polten, Bayern Munich vs Juventus and Chelsea vs Twente.
- Thursday. Europa League. The jumble of fixtures we’ve come to expect of this competition throws up Viktoria Plzen vs Manchester United, Rangers vs Tottenham and Ajax vs Lazio. Good fun.
- Also Thursday: Conference League. Chelsea celebrate that win over Tottenham by travelling to Kazakhstan to play Astana, accompanied by a small band of hardy fans. Second place Legia Warsaw face Swiss side Lugano and Fiorentina play LASK.
- There’s also a full slate of Championship games, which are often good fun: leaders Sheffield United are away to Millwall, Burnley host Derby, but the pick is probably second place Leeds against Middlesbrough.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
