We're back with our weekly dose of knee-jerk reactions to the weekend's Premier League action.
Every week on Opta Analyst, we do something we don't normally do and come to a load of conclusions based on just a single round of Premier League matches. We usually rely on large data sets to make our judgements, but in this weekly column we react quickly and maybe a little too hastily. It's all a bit of fun, and many of our five reactions for this week will swiftly prove to be nothing more than exactly what we called them: knee-jerk. But some might just hold up in the weeks to come. Read on to see which way you think these week's conclusions will eventually go.
Coming into Matchday 5, it felt like there was no stopping Arsenal. They'd won all four Premier League games, as well as three more in other competitions, and few of their opponents had caused them any real problems at all. Then, this weekend, along came Brighton.
Fabian Hürzeler's side had produced some impressive results early in the season, but nobody expected them to blow Arsenal away quite like they did on Saturday. They pressed the champions with a vicious and suffocating relentlessness that meant Arsenal just could not get any kind of grip on the game. En route to a resounding 3-0 victory, Brighton forced a colossal 15 high turnovers (winning possession within 40 metres of the opposition's goal line), which is the second most by any team in the Premier League this season, behind only Brighton against an Aston Villa side who played most of that game with just 10 men (19). They also recognised how difficult it is to carve out clear-cut chances against this Arsenal side, so shot on sight, often from distance. They scored twice from range to take Arsenal's total to a league-high three goals conceded from outside the box this season.
Was this the blueprint for how to take the champions down, or a mere and very natural day off for the best team in the world right now? We'll see if anyone else can do this to them after they've gathered their thoughts during the international break.
Some say you make your own luck, but there's no denying that Spurs have been incredibly fortunate not to be relegated in the last two utterly dismal seasons. In 2024-25, they were entirely reliant on the dreadful form of the promoted sides, who were so bad that there was never really a relegation battle of any sort. Then, last season, they escaped by the skin of their teeth after failing to address their myriad of problems in either transfer window. Now, five games into 2026-27 and after a summer of upheaval, they are bottom of the table and staring at the very real possibility of another flirtation with the drop despite spending more than £300 million.
They have a lot of talent in their squad now, and certainly appear to have more potential, particularly in attack, than they did last term. Against Aston Villa on Saturday, they created more than enough, notably when the game was still level, to take control of the game, but failed to take their chances and were punished in brutal fashion. They won on xG but remain winless in actuality, with just two points from five games and a goal difference of -6. It is now their worst ever start to a Premier League season and has left them with a lot of improving to do to avoid the possibility of another 17th-place finish or worse.
We've learned over the last two years that nothing can be taken for granted with this club, and with no other team looking anything like as hopeless so far this season, there is every chance they get themselves into yet more trouble.
Brian Brobbey isn't the most fashionable of footballers, and his physical approach to the game may mean he never gets the chance to play for a big-six club. But even if he doesn't play for a Champions League club that never lifts the ball off the floor and always has more than 60% possession, there is absolutely no denying what a handful he is. He deserves far more respect than many give him. In Sunderland's 5-3 defeat to Manchester City this weekend, he scored three times from just five shots and became only the fourth player in Premier League history to score a hat-trick against the side starting the day top of the table, after Robbie Fowler vs Aston Villa in November 1998, Dirk Kuyt vs Manchester United in March 2011, and Romelu Lukaku vs United in May 2013.
Source: theanalyst.com — Read the original article
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