Only three Premier League games kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon is utter woke nonsense, of course, but all three had their stories to tell.
Crystal Palace 2-2 Manchester City: Guardiola’s side spurn Darragh-assisted opportunity
Nobody truly believed a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest in the week had magically cured all of Manchester City’s ills, but we did think there was a chance its positive impact might last more than one game.
Instead, City once again appeared bewildered and confused for a trying 90 minutes of Barclays, and were grateful in the end to depart Selhurst Park with at least something to show for it.
With Liverpool dropping points at Newcastle in midweek and seeing their short trip to Everton postponed by the effects of Storm Darragh, City had been granted an unexpected opportunity here to really eat into that lead and put something back on the leaders in a season where that really hasn’t been happening an awful lot.
But it never really felt like it would happen here. City did at least show the gumption to twice fight back from a goal down, but twice finding yourself a goal down to a team that had managed only 12 goals in the first 14 games of the season tells its own story.
Kyle Walker appears absolutely done at this level now, sadly bearing a look of constant befuddlement at the sudden, debilitating loss of the superpower pace that enabled him to be so good for so long.
Even in their current reduced state, City are still City so Palace’s disappointment will be measured by that. But they could and should have won the game against this alarmingly generous iteration of the Guardiola Machine.
Erling Haaland did at least capitalise on Salah’s blank weekend to draw level with him in the goalscoring charts, while hats off to Rico Lewis who has now scored in three consecutive Premier League games against Palace and in no Premier League games ever at all against anyone else. That’s the sort of niche statistical achievement that absolutely deserves to be celebrated with a daft late sending off.
Brentford 4-2 Newcastle: Our League’s most reliably Barclays ground delivers again
Felt reasonable to think that today’s weather conditions might make things unpredictable. That it might be that greatest of all football disruptors: the leveller.
Not a bit of it at the Gtech, though, where the match followed a pattern now so firmly established for Brentford home games that even ChatGPT might have had a decent stab at getting a few details accurate.
The key elements upon which one can rely in any Brentford home game these days are multiple,varied, but tremendously reliable. First of all, Brentford will win. That’s a given. They’ve now done so in seven of their eight home games (and none of their seven away games). Which is already a very good bit before you even get to the way they’ve gone about it.
Which is to have their games feature all of the goals. We wouldn’t be so arrogant as to believe we could correctly identify the final score of this one in advance, but we did in discussions with a colleague bravely – some might even go so far as heroically, but that’s not for us to say – narrow it down to ‘somewhere between 3-2 and 5-4’.
You’re also going to be wanting goals for Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa in your Archetypal Brentford Home Performance, naturally, and even the obligatory and vital opposition scorers – Alexander Isak and Harvey Barnes – feel absolutely bang on here.
Since a rogue 1-1 draw with West Ham in September, Brentford’s Premier League home results now read: 5-3, 4-3, 3-2, 4-1, 4-2. That is a powerful run of very successful nonsense that deserves all the plaudits.
And there’s every chance it extends into the new year, too: Brentford have only one home game left this year, and that’s against Forest. Now Forest are quite good, but they do also feel distinctly 3-2able by a side that is turning this kind of thing into high art.
The first home game of 2025 is against Arsenal so yeah, good luck with that. But still. It’s world-class nonsense and we should definitely enjoy it while we can.
Brentford have now scored 26 home goals in the league this season. Twenty-six! Not only is nobody else anywhere near matching that – Arsenal and Spurs trail in next on 17 apiece – but only the top four and Spurs can better that total across the whole season to this point. Brentford have already matched their home points tally from the whole of 2023/24, and need only three more goals to level that up as well.
But Brentford aren’t done there with the nonsense, boasting as they do the second worst record in front of goal away from home.
As for Newcastle, theirs is a 24/25 season that just seems determined in its refusal to launch. The early promise of 10 points from the first four games and then the renewed hope of back-to-back wins over Arsenal and Forest have each proved the falsest of dawns. Others are much more firmly in the spotlight currently, but there remains hope yet for the Eddie Howe Sack Clamour somewhere down the line once we’ve got West Ham, Wolves and Tottenham sorted.
Aston Villa 1-0 Southampton: Villans still searching for form but Saints in no position to prosper
The surest signs that Villa were now a proper team to be treated as such arrived with a couple of 1-0 home wins almost exactly a year ago in early December 2023.
Man City were beaten at Villa Park on December 6, and Arsenal went the same way on December 9. This December 7 victory a year on doesn’t quite feel like it might have the same resonance or significance.
Villa are not the first team to find the extra challenge of Champions League competition a tough burden to carry, but we must confess to surprise at the extent of it.
Even six points from back-to-back home games this week has felt unconvincing, coming as they have against the away version of Brentford and a Southampton side just in absolutely no position mentally, technically or physically to pounce on a lethargic and leggy effort from Villa.
Southampton have had games this season where they have pointedly given it a red hot crack. They have vexed Arsenal, City and Liverpool this season. So perhaps we should be less harsh on Villa for finding their name in that exalted list. But in all those games it felt like Southampton actually did some stuff to make the game awkward for their below-par opponents; here it just felt more like Southampton happening to be the team on the receiving end of such a performance rather than active participators.
This felt more like the Southampton side from 3-0 and 5-1 defeats to Man United or Chelsea, or the one picked off so easily by a Wolves side enduring their own crisis. Hard to think Villa could possibly have emerged with three points from that performance against anyone else in the division.
But emerge they did, and they do now at least have some kind of foundation, however unconvincing and shaky, to go again over Christmas and into the new year. We all know they are much better than this.