After another dramatic weekend of Premier League football, we return with another round of snap judgements that might just be based on too little data.
Here at Opta Analyst, we like to take our time over things. We like to use a lot of data to back up our findings. Most of the time, anyway.
In this weekly column of knee-jerk reactions, however, we don’t do things in our usual way. Instead, we look over the weekend’s results and make some, erm, knee-jerk reactions based on this week alone.
The thing is, a deeper look into the data often shows that there might in fact be good reason to come to these hastily made judgements. Sometimes, though, they are exactly what they claim to be: knee-jerk.
Here are five conclusions we’ve come to about the Premier League after a quick scan of the data from Matchday 8.
This is the Turning Point for Amorim
Positive results have been few and far between for Manchester United under Ruben Amorim. There was the 2-1 win at Manchester City last December. There was a 2-0 victory over Aston Villa on the final day of last season. There was a 2-1 win over Chelsea last month. There was a bit of fun on the way to the Europa League final last season, too.
Other than that, there hasn’t been much to cheer about at all, so you could forgive any United fans for making sure they enjoyed Sunday’s 2-1 win over Liverpool, their first league victory at Anfield since January 2016, ending a run of nine winless games there.
But arguably more important than this sole result is the context that it comes in. Under Amorim, there has been almost no consistency, but the Liverpool win meant United had back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time in his reign. Before the weekend, United had been the only one of the 17 ever-present Premier League sides since the start of last season to fail to win two games in a row.
They rode their luck at times, and Liverpool may feel aggrieved not to have at least got a draw from the game given they had the better chances, winning the xG battle 2.75 to 1.34, and also hitting the woodwork three times.
But United’s game plan worked, as it had done at City a year ago. Amorim is now the only manager to win at both Anfield and the Etihad in the last five years.
2 – Rúben Amorim is the only manager to win away from home at both Anfield and the Etihad across the last five Premier League seasons. Plan. pic.twitter.com/JIbTHM91bl
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) October 20, 2025What comes next is really important, though. This win will mean much less if United can’t back it up with, at the very least, a good performance against Brighton next week.
After winning at City last year, United lost 3-0 at home to Bournemouth. They need to prove this time around, an eye-catching win can be the turning point they’ve been waiting for.
Sunderland Can Make Promoted-Club History
Newly promoted teams have not done brilliantly in the last two seasons, so we, like most, have half been waiting for the Sunderland bubble to burst.
It might yet happen, but after another three points this weekend, they have four wins already, which is as many as Ipswich managed in the whole of last season and twice as many as Southampton. With 14 points, they are well on their way to doing something no promoted team has done since 2022-23, secure survival. Only six promoted teams have got more points from their first eight games of a season in Premier League history.
They’ve got an awfully long way to go, and for now staying up presumably remains the main goal for the season. But given how well they’re doing, Sunderland might soon start thinking about even bigger things.
Currently going at a rate of 1.75 points per game, they are on course to break the 38-game Premier League record for the highest points tally for a promoted side. That record is held by Ipswich, who got 66 points in their first season back in the top flight in 2000-01.
To beat that total, Sunderland would have to keep going at this hugely impressive rate for the next 30 games, and it would be understandable if that was to prove beyond them given how tough life is in the Premier League. But even if they don’t manage that, they look strong enough to challenge Leeds’ 2020-21 total of 59 points, which is the second highest tally by a promoted side in a 38-game season. Leeds finished ninth that season.
Having seen off Wolves this weekend, keeping a fourth clean sheet in just eight games, Regis Le Bris’ side are looking very strong indeed.
The real challenge will start in their next eight, however, with games against Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle all imminent. This could be where we find out just what they are made of.
Liverpool are Broken
It was only a few months ago that Liverpool won the Premier League. Their squad is packed with a ludicrous amount of attacking talent. Most of us have been waiting for their recent blip to end.
But this weekend, any doubts as to how serious it was evaporated. It turned into a full-blown crisis.
Defeat to Manchester United meant they have lost three Premier League games in a row for the first time since February 2021. In all competitions, it is four consecutive defeats for the first time since November 2014, which was 11 months before Jürgen Klopp was appointed as manager.
Most teams don’t lose three league games in a row in a whole season, let alone the reigning champions inside their first eight games. It looks like it’s time to start worrying.
There was a lot of change at Anfield over the summer, and it appears now as though it might have been too much change. Bringing in two £100m+ attacking players in Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz hasn’t, for now, worked.
So, what does this mean for their title defence? Only two teams have won the title after losing three consecutive games in a Premier League season, and the Opta supercomputer now rates them as third favourites behind Arsenal and Man City, given a 17.2% chance. They aren’t out of the title race, but there’s a long, long way back from here.
It wasn’t all bad. They had more than enough chances to beat United and on another day, the result would have better reflected the expected goals each team produced.
But this was a third game in a row that Liverpool have gone behind, pulled it back to 1-1 and then lost it late on. There are problems in attack, but perhaps most concerningly, they don’t appear to have solid backbone of champions any longer.
Fulham Have Stagnated Under Silva
One of just three other teams to have lost three consecutive Premier League games this season is Fulham, who put up a stubborn but ultimately fruitless defence against Arsenal on Saturday.
There’s absolutely no shame in losing 1-0 – thanks to a set-piece goal of all things – to the team who look most likely to win the title. They came closer to getting a result against Arsenal than many other teams have this season.
They didn’t give up much in open play, and Mikel Arteta’s side found clear-cut chances hard to come by. It was a typically solid defensive display from a team managed by Marco Silva.
But as Fulham embark on a fifth campaign under Silva, perhaps it’s reasonable to expect slightly more from them. Playing for a point is perfectly reasonable against a very good side, but doing so would require them to find an equaliser after going behind. At 0-0, there was next to no attacking ambition from the hosts, and at 1-0 down, there was so little cohesion it almost looked as though they were happy to settle for a narrow defeat.
They managed nine shots, which is more than quite a few teams have had against Arsenal this season, but those chances were worth just 0.44 xG, and they didn’t hit the target once. At no stage did they actually look like troubling Arsenal.
Silva has done very well to establish Fulham in the Premier League, but is it time they offered a tad more?
Palace and Bournemouth Can Make the Premier League Fun Again
The game of the weekend was undoubtedly Crystal Palace’s dramatic 3-3 draw at home to Bournemouth on Saturday. In a low-scoring season defined by defending, set-pieces and long balls, these two teams carry the torch for entertaining football.
It was the joint highest-scoring Premier League game of the season, and featured an 89th-minute goal that looked like the winner, a 97th-minute equaliser and an even later glaring miss that would have been one of the latest match-winning goals in Premier League history.
It was an incredible game contested between two of the most impressive teams in the top flight, and two who can make the Premier League well worth watching. The encounter produced more xG than any other match this season (6.48), and even if you take out Jean-Philippe Mateta’s late penalty to complete the first hat-trick by anyone this season, the game still had a higher xG value than any other match (5.69).
Anyone who endured Fulham 0-1 Arsenal or Tottenham 1-2 Aston Villa this weekend could be forgiven for wondering if their time could be better spent doing something entirely different, but Palace and Bournemouth provided a feast of entertainment and genuine value for money.
With Arsenal grinding out result after result, City way off their best, Liverpool flailing and goals down across the board, the Premier League needs teams like Palace and Bournemouth to keep performing like this.
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Five Knee-Jerk Reactions to Premier League Matchday 8 Opta Analyst.
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