We look back on the latest round of Premier League fixtures with five conclusions that may be made to look a little hasty in the coming weeks.
Each week on a Monday, we have a little fun by judging the vastly talented players and teams in the Premier League on just their last 90 minutes of work.
The clue is in the name: these are knee-jerk reactions that we should probably put a bit more thought into before releasing them on the internet. Particularly given we are a data-led site that always makes sure to use big data sets. Well, almost always.
Here, we summarise the action on Matchday 13 in the Premier League in 2025-26 with five hastily-made conclusions.
Foden Will Get City Back into the Title Race
There are worse problems to have than being too reliant on Erling Haaland for goals. He raced to 14 goals inside 11 games this season – the second-most by a player through their team’s opening 11 matches of a Premier League campaign, after Haaland himself in 2022-23 (17 goals).
The issue was that when he didn’t score, Manchester City slipped up. Before this weekend, he had failed to score in three league games this season – against Spurs, Aston Villa and Newcastle. City lost all three.
However, City seem to have finally found a solution to their problem. His name is Phil Foden.
Foden scored the opener against Leeds after just 59 seconds, the earliest goal for City in a Premier League game at the Etihad since September 2019 (52 seconds vs Watford, scored by David Silva). He then struck 30 seconds into second-half stoppage time to earn three points after City had looked very much like they were going to throw two away. From start to finish, Foden was a menace.
We all know how good Foden can be, and it’s been disappointing for City fans and neutrals that we haven’t seen the best of him consistently for quite a while now, but he has put in some positive performances in the last few weeks.
The best aspect of his displays – and the most encouraging in the context of City’s overreliance on Haaland – is how much he is threatening goal. His highest expected goals totals of the season have come in his last two games: 0.54 xG vs Newcastle last week, and 0.70 xG vs Leeds this weekend. Before that, he hadn’t managed more than 0.31 in any game in any competition since the Club World Cup in the summer.
City ended up (just about) beating Leeds to record their first win of the season without a Haaland goal, and they cut the gap to Arsenal at the top to five points in the process. If Foden can help his side share out the goalscoring burden, then they have a far better chance of challenging for the title.
Salah’s Liverpool Career is Over
Liverpool got back to winning ways this weekend by edging past a self-destructive West Ham to move to within three points of the top three and – potentially – breathe life into their season.
After a run of four consecutive defeats, it was their first away league win since September (vs Burnley), and their first away league win at a London club since January at Brentford, ending a run of five successive league defeats in the capital.
They weren’t at their free-flowing best, but they were better than they have been of late, and there’s no denying that they deserved their win, which isn’t something we’ve been able to say much about them in recent times.
And they did it all without Mohamed Salah.
Manager Arne Slot left the Liverpool legend on the bench, an unused and unneeded substitute. It was the first time ever that Slot hadn’t named Salah in the starting XI for a Premier League game, and he didn’t even bring him on. With Salah now 33 years old and struggling for form this season, it felt like a glimpse into the future.
In his absence, two of Liverpool’s big-money signings from the summer shone. Florian Wirtz put in arguably his best performance in a Liverpool shirt, while Alexander Isak broke his league duck with a well-taken goal. It was his first Premier League goal in eight appearances, ending his joint-longest scoring drought in the competition.
Isak’s Poor Start
Premier LeagueAlexander Isak’s Liverpool Record, and the Longest Losing Streaks to Start Off at Every Premier League Club
1 day ago Ali TweedaleIf Salah is misfiring, then Slot needs Wirtz and Isak to settle in at their new club, and this performance, while not perfect, at least suggested that might happen for these two players sooner rather than later.
But Liverpool can be far better than this, and West Ham were about as agreeable an opponent as they could have been. They might well have won with Salah on the pitch.
Slot insisted after the game that we will see plenty more of Salah, but this might just be the beginning of the end for him.
Arsenal’s Cruise to the Title Won’t Be Smooth
Arsenal were clear favourites to win the Premier League title before the weekend, and they still are, after they avoided defeat at an improving Chelsea, who are hoping to claw their way into the conversation at the top of the table.
Mikel Arteta’s side, depleted by injuries and playing for only the second time in 162 Premier League games without both first-choice centre-backs, William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães, might well have taken a point before the game, but after Moisés Caicedo’s first-half red card, this felt like an opportunity missed.
The draw extended their unbeaten run to 17 games in all competitions, but it also meant they have dropped points in two of their last three games. In that time, both Chelsea and Manchester City have gained ground on them at the top.
So, too, have Aston Villa, the only team in the league to have won their last three games, who probably won’t be fighting for the title themselves, but face Arsenal twice in December, so could play a role in opening the title race up.
Arsenal still have a five-point lead at the top, and they should win the title. The Opta supercomputer gives them a 78.7% chance of doing so.
But after three consecutive second-placed finishes when they might have won the league, there is still a nervousness that they could throw it all away. They have shown some weaknesses in draws with Sunderland and Chelsea that suggest, one way or another, that it won’t be plain sailing.
Wolves Really Are as Bad as Their Points Tally Suggests
Because Wolves started last season off terribly, too, there has almost been an expectation that they will improve this time around as well. However, the truth is, it isn’t looking very good.
After taking two points from their first nine games last season, they changed manager and recovered sensationally. They took 40 points from their remaining 29 games to finish 17 points clear of the relegation zone.
So, after taking two points from their first 11 games this season and making a managerial change, it felt like some kind of improvement was on the cards. However, they have lost two from two under Rob Edwards and are nine points adrift of safety with 13 games gone.
Those latest results have extended their losing streak to six games, while they haven’t even scored in four matches. They look lost and without hope.
Only one team have ever picked up fewer points by this stage of a Premier League season – Sheffield United in 2020-21 (one point) – and there was no recovery from them, though they did avoid becoming the worst side in Premier League history.
For this terrible Wolves team, who went down without much of a fight against Aston Villa this weekend, maybe making sure they get more than 11 points should be the aim for the season. They aren’t giving their fans much reason to believe survival is any kind of possibility.
Newcastle Are Back
It’s been a slow start to the season for Newcastle. Two matchdays ago, they had just 12 points and three wins from their first 11 league games, and sat only two points above the drop zone. They didn’t look in any way like they were in trouble, but they did appear to be struggling – not for the first time – with the extra challenge and workload that Champions League football brings.
However, after back-to-back wins – their first in the league this season – over Manchester City and Everton, they are suddenly only four points off the top five. The outlook is much, much brighter now.
This weekend’s 4-1 victory at Everton was their first on the road this season, but it was so convincing that it feels like it carries more weight than wins usually do. Given it came a week after beating City, this could, with a glass-half-full view of things, be the start of something good. Newcastle are looking back to something like their best.
It is worth noting that in between these wins came a defeat at Marseille in the Champions League. And in the league before the City game, Eddie Howe oversaw disappointing defeats at West Ham and Brentford. There have been false dawns before this one this season, and this could prove another.
They do, at least, have something to build on here, and that could mean a run of wins that sends them into the top half of the table for the first time since mid-September. Things might just be looking up.
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