Arsenal dodged a comical banana skin in Spurs, Erling Haaland cooked for once, Arne Slot settled an old score and Oliver Glasner deeply hates his life.<\/p>\n
There are also words of varying degrees of kindness for Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Tony Bloom and Brentford.<\/p>\n
Refresh your minds with a look at the Premier League table<\/a>\u00a0after the weekend\u2019s fixtures, before Everton go seventh by beating Manchester United at the Hill Dicky.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Premier League winners These are generational, aspirational levels of hatred<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Arsenal<\/p>\n The narrative had they failed to win would have been uncontrollable: Arsenal are intrinsic bottlers who cannot get over the line, Manchester City are already in their heads with three months of the season left, and Mikel Arteta must be sacked.<\/p>\n Actually, that last point still stands<\/a>. And contrast the reaction to Arsenal\u2019s celebrations at winning a north London derby and Manchester City\u2019s after beating Newcastle at home<\/a> for proof of how these two teams, managers and players will always be judged differently.<\/p>\n But in overcoming a bumbling Spurs side which might as well have rocked up dressed in a massive banana skin tossed onto the pitch by a furious Igor Tudor, Arsenal again defied those outdated cliches around their mentality<\/a>.<\/p>\n They might still emerge from this campaign with nothing. It would ultimately be the funniest and most predictable outcome. But going into all four competitions as favourites as March beckons, having survived a couple of wobbles which would have caused previous Arsenal teams to collapse, is an elevated brand of failure.<\/p>\n At the very least, the doomsday scenario of Spurs being the ones to bring everything crashing down has been averted. And there is genuinely something to be said for that, especially with Chelsea at home next.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Erling Haaland<\/p>\n Nico O\u2019Reilly deciding to become the Premier League\u2019s best player<\/a> in about three different positions is handy ahead of the World Cup, but compliments to the chef: that cross from Haaland was glorious.<\/p>\n The Golden Boot leader<\/a> trails only Bruno Fernandes for assists in the Premier League this season; it feels like the debate over whether he brings enough to the team beyond his goalscoring has been finished with a great many plombs by his improved all-round play.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Rio Ngumoha<\/p>\n His name is Rio and he really should probably be starting ahead of Mo Salah and Cody Gakpo now<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Arne Slot<\/p>\n Beating Nottingham Forest 1-0 away in a relative smash-and-grab must rank highly among Slot\u2019s most satisfying personal achievements. Just imagine when Liverpool beat Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in the Champions League.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Liverpool as bad as \u2018dark days of Hodgson\u2019 against Forest<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Leeds<\/p>\n With the slight and obvious caveat that the season is unfinished and thus positions are uncertain, one of the more remarkable aspects of this relatively serene stroll to Premier League safety for Leeds is how well they have acquitted themselves against the elite.<\/p>\n It was an entirely predictable blind spot for Daniel Farke in his previous experience of the top flight. He mustered 10 points in 26 games across his one-and-not-quite-a-third seasons as Norwich manager against teams that finished the season tenth or higher.<\/p>\n Yet he has Leeds seventh and flying in a table of result against sides currently in the top half<\/a>, with a better record than Liverpool and anyone eighth or lower in the actual table in such games.<\/p>\n They are actually the only club to have accrued more points against top-half teams (17) than bottom-half ones (14), even if those sands are perennially shifting.<\/p>\n This calendar year alone Leeds have taken a point from each member of that slightly faltering pack chasing a Champions League qualification place.<\/p>\n Having the signing of the season in their ranks is helpful<\/a> but Leeds have become better than anyone at bloodying gilded noses.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Raul Jimenez<\/p>\n The only players older than Jimenez (eight) with more league goals across Europe\u2019s top five divisions this season are Robert Lewandowski (ten) and Danny Welbeck (nine).<\/p>\n The greatest penalty-taker in Premier League history also has more assists and yellow cards than both. He is the game\u2019s preeminent distinguished line-leader.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tony Bloom<\/p>\n It would be worth delving deeper into Fabian Hurzeler\u2019s slight tactical change to deliver a pressure-relieving Brighton win, in which they were more direct and produced a higher volume of shots from outside the box than usual \u2013 as was evident for Diego Gomez\u2019s opportunistic opener.<\/p>\n But really it\u2019s funnier to marvel at how a two-decade feud continues to fuel games between two of the best-run clubs in the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Tony Bloom truly does offer bonuses to his players if they can beat Brentford and their owner \u2013 his nemesis \u2013 Matthew Benham, he will consider this season\u2019s double pay-out entirely worth it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Mads Hermansen<\/p>\n Only Angus Gunn (one in one appearance) and David Raya (13 in 28 appearances) have a better clean sheet ratio than Hermansen (three in seven appearances) in the Premier League this season.<\/p>\n A year to the day since he was conceding four at home to Brentford for doomed Leicester, Hermansen was helping fortify an increasingly convincing West Ham survival push. Axel Disasi and Dinos Mavropanos might be a better combination than Wout Faes and Caleb Okoli.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Aston Villa\u2019s ongoing tribute to Frank Lampard\u2019s Chelsea<\/p>\n Maybe the 2019\/20 Chelsea season imprinted particularly profoundly on Unai Emery, or his squad composition at Aston Villa six years later was always designed as specific mind games against Leeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the deployment of both Tammy Abraham and Ross Barkley from the bench while Ian Maatsen was stationed on the left must have brought a tear to Lampardian eyes.<\/p>\n No player won more duels at Villa Park than Barkley in his half-hour cameo; Abraham thighed in his first Premier League goal since Emile Smith Rowe saved Mikel Arteta\u2019s job<\/a>.<\/p>\n The pressure is on to figure out who Villa will sign in their Champions League reinforcement push this summer. Emery would definitely still get a tune out of a 38-year-old Pedro.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Burnley<\/p>\n Three consecutive draws at Stamford Bridge, under and against three different managers (Dyche v Tuchel, Kompany v Pochettino and Parker v Rosenior), is a great bit of Barclays.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n James Hill<\/p>\n Get that passport renewed just in case, fella<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Premier League losers Openly wondering which of their remaining games might get Spurs relegated<\/a>\u00a0is incredible fun; the dream of them balancing Championship and Champions League football simultaneously next season continues apace.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nottingham Forest<\/p>\n Vitor Pereira was broadly right in that it was \u201cdifficult to explain\u201d how Nottingham Forest lost that one. Having almost twice as many shots as Liverpool but ignoring the specific warning of Alexis Mac Allister scoring in stoppage time felt far more inexplicable than their previous 13 defeats.<\/p>\n Yet the general through line of profligacy was a familiar one. Forest are the lowest scorers in the Premier League bar Wolves, have drawn a blank in nearly half their games and are not close to stable enough defensively to account for such attacking waste.<\/p>\n It was different when Nuno\u2019s structures were complemented by a fit Chris Wood, as opposed to this mix of coaching ideals being backed up by whatever Morgan Gibbs-White can muster while single-handedly shouldering the club\u2019s goal burden.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we are creating, yes?\u201d was the headstrong but ultimately forlorn response from Pereira when put to him that Forest\u2019s finishing threatened to undermine any hopes of him keeping them up.<\/p>\n And they are, but it matters little without that decisive final touch. The Portuguese kept Wolves up by getting a tune out of Matheus Cunha and Jorgen Strand Larsen; who can he rely on to make a similar impact in this Forest squad?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Chelsea<\/p>\n Good luck to Liam Rosenior in addressing problems which got Mauricio Pochettino and Enzo Maresca fired<\/a>\u00a0but definitely absolutely surely won\u2019t eventually snare him.<\/p>\n The bloke can\u2019t even go for a pint after a difficult day of being held responsible for modern Chelsea\u2019s ridiculousness without having his aura levels questioned.<\/p>\n Ultimately, if a manager is going to be judged because supposedly elite footballers ignore their homework<\/a>\u00a0and are incapable of identifying the issues in failing to mark a 6ft 1in centre-forward from a James Ward-Prowse corner, we\u2019re all f**ked.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Brentford<\/p>\n They will probably have taken bottling European qualification<\/a>\u00a0if offered at the start of the season, so there is a need for perspective when evaluating a result which still leaves Brentford in seventh with 11 games remaining.<\/p>\n But the Premier League\u2019s form team over the previous ten games losing so meekly to a side with one win in 13 matches feels like an infuriatingly avoidable if wonderfully Arsenal-angering mishap<\/a>.<\/p>\n This Brentford losing to that Brighton must go down as one of the weirder results of the season. And there is a growing frustration in the fanbase at Keith Andrews, as exceptional a job as he has done, struggling to change games when the Bees are losing.<\/p>\n It is an imperfect measure of a manager\u2019s effectiveness when altering the course of a match but only David Moyes and Pep Guardiola of ever-present coaches this season have made fewer goalscoring substitutions in the Premier League. And Andrews\u2019 three all came in September and October.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Oliver Glasner<\/p>\n Quite foolishly beat Wolves \u2013 in the least convincing way possible so fair play \u2013 to elongate the most unnecessary hate-hate relationship in modern football history.<\/p>\n The openness of the sham nature of Crystal Palace marriage<\/a>\u00a0has reached absurd levels. Glasner echoing Roy Hodgson\u2019s call<\/a> for fans to \u201cbe humble\u201d completes a bizarre full circle in which the Eagles have won the actual FA Cup and qualified for sodding Europe, but are still being told by the club\u2019s chief mouthpiece to remember where they\u2019ve come from.<\/p>\n In reality, all supporters are really asking for is to not be so publicly and frequently \u2018disrespected\u2019 by an obviously brilliant manager who decided months ago he no longer wanted to be there.<\/p>\n All they can do from the stands is watch this staring contest between an outgoing coach and a board which refuses to incur the small cost of dispensing with him early, even if it might rescue a modicum of goodwill heading into the sort of summer uncertainty Palace seemed to have grown out of.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sunderland<\/p>\n Game states do need to be taken into account but Sunderland winning two of the ten Premier League games in which they have had 49 per cent possession or more, while winning four and losing just one of the matches in which they have had 41 per cent of the ball or less, points to understandable struggles in adjusting their game plan.<\/p>\n Fulham ceded territory, worked specifically on transitions and exposed Sunderland\u2019s inherent limitations when asked to dictate the play.<\/p>\n Their form from August to December has them clear enough of danger already, even if they do not pick up another point. But everything from January onwards<\/a> has been a timely reminder that Sunderland start from zero again next season and are in a precarious spot.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Newcastle<\/p>\n Damned by the faint praise of being called an \u201cincredible, complete team\u201d and \u201cnightmare\u201d to play against by Pep Guardiola, Newcastle can take heart from the defeat at Manchester City in isolation.<\/p>\n It was a relatively solid defensive performance given the opposition and venue, with Lewis Hall providing a flash of their latent attacking qualities in a narrow defeat.<\/p>\n But that is four losses in five Premier League games, a meagre two wins in 11 and another lesson in how wide that gulf to the elite is: Newcastle are 15th, level on points with Spurs in a table versus top-half teams<\/a>, and Eddie Howe\u2019s personal record at the Etihad is now P12 W0 D0 L12 F5 A37.<\/p>\n Those are Steve Bruce and Sam Allardyce levels of deference; at least Sir Alex Ferguson never publicly patted them on the head like Guardiola loves to.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Wolves<\/p>\n
\nEberechi Eze<\/p>\n
\nSpurs<\/p>\n