Premier League winners and losers: Arsenal, Spurs, Wilson, Le Bris, Newcastle… | OneFootball

Arsenal signed winners last summer for a reason, while Regis Le Bris might inexplicably beat Eddie Howe in the Tyne-Wear sack race.

Newcastle and Sunderland really are in absolute states at the moment, when both were well-placed to be a factor in the ludicrous European qualification race.

And Spurs, even while winning, are losers.

Premier League winners

Arsenal

The ‘last ever trophy won as a professional player’ gimmick is an exceptional bit, with Declan Rice a perfect poster boy.

That such tweets exist for Eberechi Eze and Piero Hincapie is mildly ridiculous; neither were signed from traditionally successful environments but it’s testament to their brilliance both technical and mental that Crystal Palace and Bayer Leverkusen are among the clubs to have lifted silverware more recently than Arsenal.

And that is what the Gunners hope to channel in these last few weeks of the season: that experience of getting over the line when something is on the line.

It is a trait most of their summer signings share. Eze, Hincapie, Viktor Gyokeres and Noni Madueke all won trophies with their former clubs last season, while Kepa has plenty of medals and Martin Zubimendi has played in and won Copa del Rey and European Championship finals.

That sort of habit could prove crucial – and helped deliver Arsenal one of their most important wins of the season.

It was far from convincing against Newcastle but victory was imperative, no matter how it was delivered. Arsenal must keep pace with Manchester City as a minimum before even considering goal difference, and Pep Guardiola’s side are in that winning mood.

A winning mood Arsenal had to restore after losing four and drawing one of their last six games.

Mikel Arteta has spoken before about how “we need those performances in the key moments” from players. Eze provided it at one end and Hincapie at the other, while the manager’s structure and gameplan otherwise continues to preserve the scoreline for good and bad.

Vitor Pereira

The elite firefighter Spurs should and really could have appointed; they went for Igor Tudor a day before Nottingham Forest brought Pereira in, and have accrued seven fewer points since.

Marco Silva

It might be an idea to stop suggesting Fulham are On The Beach.

Callum Wilson

While his last four goals have been spread across six months, they have been worth five points to West Ham.

Wilson netted twice in a 2-2 draw against Bournemouth in November, then has scored stoppage-time winners off the bench against both Spurs and Everton this year.

He boasts quite comfortably the best minutes-per-goal ratio of any West Ham player in the Premier League this season – 179 minutes per goal, with fellow hero Tomas Soucek second in the squad on 373.

With Jarrod Bowen providing more assists per 90 minutes than every player bar Bruno Fernandes, Rayan Cherki, Martin Odegaard and Jack Grealish, it does increasingly feel as though West Ham have more reliable difference-makers than most in the bottom half.

Liverpool

Virgil van Dijk said it was “always the plan” to build Liverpool’s frontline around the most expensive forward and costliest attacking midfielder in Premier League history, which does admittedly sound far more sensible and straightforward than it has appeared over the course of this season.

In the eight games Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz have started together out of the 53 Liverpool have played, Van Dijk is actually the highest scorer with three goals ahead of Isak, Mo Salah, Cody Gakpo and Andy Robertson, which neatly captures the essence of this transitional period.

This was the first time Isak and Wirtz have started three consecutive games together, and the first time they have scored in the same game; the hope is that correlation implies causation and they are finally starting to form a lethal connection.

With that said, Isak’s goal was an instinctive finish after controlling a scuffed Alexis Mac Allister shot, and Wirtz only scored once the Swede was substituted.

But Wirtz did use his public post-match debrief to emphasise the need to “feed” his team-mate “with balls”, so there is nothing wrong with the supply chain’s understanding of the relationship.

Arne Slot has pointed to the Isak injury and Wirtz’s bedding-in period as a not entirely unjust distraction from the dumpster fire that has been Liverpool’s risible title defence, so any sign that they might actually solve a great many of the club’s issues this season through their mere combined presence is welcome.

Although with Freddie Woodman in net for the next half-decade, Liverpool may rest on their laurels safe in the knowledge they can only concede morally repugnant goals now.

Premier League losers

Spurs

Even when winning their first Premier League game in 118 days, Spurs emerged worse off for it.

West Ham and Nottingham Forest both also won despite not being favourites, while Spurs won their easiest remaining fixture by some margin.

Xavi Simons will miss the rest of the season and is going to be rehabilitated by a medical team which felt that running and jumping on a torn ACL might be the best course of action. Dominic Solanke was taken off with an injury in the same game, removing the £60m creator and forward from Roberto De Zerbi’s already depleted deck.

The last two sides to finish 18th in the Premier League have also suffered consecutive relegations, so even The Omens are looking particularly bad.

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Regis Le Bris

In the first 32 games of a Premier League season in which Sunderland ostensibly achieved their primary objective of survival long ago, the Black Cats boasted a defensive record only Arsenal and Manchester City could beat, and they never once conceded more than three times.

A 4-3 defeat to Aston Villa and 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Nottingham Forest is quite the departure from that strong base, with reports of an uncertain future for Le Bris further rocking a previously steady and serene ship.

There is an element of the Nunos around Sunderland apparently sounding out potential replacements for Le Bris if they do not qualify for European competition. One should never go full Marinakis, but such ruthlessness has served Europa League semi-finalists Forest well enough – and the Black Cats too, for that matter.

Since promotion they have changed their captain, most of their team and their sporting director, with their head of recruitment leaving in October and their chief brand officer exiting in the summer.

Le Bris has done a phenomenal job in stabilising Sunderland as a top-flight force but there is no reason to believe his role as an upgradeable cog in the machine will be any different. And this is a sub-optimal time to have any weaknesses exposed so thoroughly.

Newcastle

It felt like a pointed comment from Eddie Howe, that “it was much better from us as a group of men”.

Perhaps it was just the phrasing, but considering Howe had named the youngest starting XI of his tenure for the prior defeat to Bournemouth before bringing Nick Pope, Dan Burn and Jacob Murphy back in against Arsenal, it could easily have been deliberate.

And in any event, suggesting that the performance proved Newcastle have “turned the corner” seems a deeply fanciful description of a defeat in which they were trailing for 81 minutes.

It was better, but it was against a nervous Arsenal whose anxious home support and circumstances were working against them, and who lost two of their most technically proficient players to injury.

There is an impulse to cling to any positive in the wake of a fifth consecutive defeat and eighth loss in 12, but the desperation in doing so is painfully clear.

How deep into the relegation mire will Newcastle have to be dragged before Howe gives Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa more than 15 minutes together while Will Osula gets a full hour?

Everton

While there are four games remaining and thus ample time for Mark Travers to grant Jordan Pickford a rest or David Moyes to belatedly remember he signed Adam Aznou from actual Bayern Munich in the summer, it seems likely that Everton will end the season having used just 22 players in the Premier League.

The last teams to deploy as few in a Premier League campaign were Wolves (21) and Burnley (22) in 2019/20. They finished seventh and 10th respectively; Everton are currently 11th and at the lower end of that Europe-chasing mid-table muddle, sliding from a position of strength after thrashing Chelsea and holding Brentford.

And their number includes 11 minutes of Seamus Coleman, the barely-bit-part Tyrique George and Nathan Patterson, who last featured in a one-minute cameo in January.

It does lend itself to the idea that Everton might be suffering a general burnout as the season enters the final stretch, the Toffees losing their last two games to winners scored in the 100th and 92nd minutes.

Mateus Fernandes being permitted to play basketball when defending in the opposition area doesn’t help, but then neither has another year of largely poor recruitment which has compelled Moyes to run a core group of trusted lieutenants into the ground.

Wolves

Only seven clubs have ever scored fewer goals at this stage of a Premier League season than Wolves, who have cleared one obvious Derby bar but might stumble into another.

The Rams’ 2007/08 record for most goalless games in a Premier League season (22) can still be equalled by a side which has fittingly incinerated any semblance of forward momentum heading into next season.

“I suppose we just lacked at the top end of the pitch and that’s obviously an important part of it,” said the deeply perceptive Rob Edwards.

His pre-match assertion about Wolves needing to “finish strongly” and “respond” to the overdue confirmation of their relegation was followed up by an insipid defeat at home to a similarly broken club played out to boos and chants against the owners.

It remains difficult to envisage Wolves bouncing straight back – and even tougher to imagine Edwards leading any successful promotion charge next season with this standing uphill start.

Aston Villa

The cushion should be substantial enough, with Villa eight to 12 points clear of the teams over whom a theoretical blanket could be thrown from sixth to 12th.

But that was a lethargic defeat which completely undermined Unai Emery’s pre-match message.

The Spaniard was burned in similar circumstances the last time he reached the semi-final of his beloved Europa League with a Premier League club. Arsenal lost their next three games immediately after reaching the last four, drawing one more and missing out on Champions League qualification to Spurs by a single point.

They did make the Europa League final, but lost it as Emery’s plate-spinning exploits resulted only in a shattered mess.

Villa remain on course to finish in the top five – leeway which did not exist for him in north London – and win the Europa, but Emery has shared his eggs between those baskets before and ended up with nothing.

Ismaila Sarr