Premier League: Five things we learnt from Gameweek 3 | OneFootball

The Premier League extended its entertaining start with five matches involving 3+ goals heading into the international break. Manchester United survived a scare at home against Burnley, while Newcastle let go of their star forward for a record-breaking fee. Here are five things you can take away from all the action.

Villa set to continue their miserable start?

There are four top flight teams still without a win. Newcastle were without Alexander Isak in the lead up to his £125m transfer to Liverpool; Fulham’s opened their season with tricky matches; Wolves have struggled to recruit reinforcements in more than one position. Few would have predicted Unai Emery’s Aston Villa to be among them.

Last season, Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio proved to be key players during their loan spells but the pair didn’t return on long-term deals and their absence has been visible in a lack of attacking cohesion. With that, a very quiet start from the likes of Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers, who managed a combined 33 goal involvements last season, won’t go without criticism.

Not only will the Europa League likely force rotations within the squad to conserve players’ fitness, Villa next visit Everton at the Hill Dickinson Stadium. With four assists in two games for a rejuvenated Jack Grealish and Iliman Ndiaye scoring again, the Toffees look a dangerous side once again. Aston Villa won eight of their 19 away matches last season and might have to wait even longer for a first win of the new campaign.

Chelsea understaffed up front

Chelsea’s transfer deadline day had many moving parts. The weekend prior to Monday, Liam Delap limped off in the match against Fulham and looks set for a spell of between six to eight weeks on the sideline. Tyrique George was given a chance up front, only to have a quiet debut. Then, Nicolas Jackson confirmed his loan move to Bayern Munich.

Seemingly short of options, Chelsea exercised their right to recall Marc Guiu from his remarkably short loan spell at Sunderland. Despite the financial muscle that the Club World Cup champions have put on show during the summer window, they now appear to lack the quality in depth up front needed for a title win. New additions Alejandro Garnacho, Estevão, Jamie Gittens, and Facundo Buonanotte are not like-for-like swaps for Delap, and the talented – yet inexperienced – David Datro Fofana.

This leaves João Pedro. Despite being an accredited talent up front, there appears to be a lack of his kind of quality and experience behind him. Will this affect Chelsea’s numbers up front? They’ll be hoping João Pedro can stay fit too.

Szoboszlai was a right-back all along

Liverpool have also been facing injury problems. Jeremie Frimpong impressed in the Community Shield only to suffer a hamstring injury against Bournemouth. Connor Bradley was the obvious choice for Slot in terms of a replacement, yet he is only just finishing his recovery ready for his duty with Northern Ireland.

Enter Dominik Szoboszlai. One of the best box to box midfielders in world football at the moment, who knew he would be the one to step up at right back? Yet he has surprised everyone, winning 100% of his tackles and aerial duels against Arsenal. However, his pièce de resistance was undoubtedly the magnificent Trent-like free kick to win the match.

Connor Bradley, renowned for ‘that slide tackle on Mbappé’ in the Champions League, may be fearing that an opportunity to impress further will be postponed.

Nuno will struggle to keep his job

Nottingham Forest have shown flashes of their quality on the break this season, particularly in their smash-and-grab win 2-1 away to Crystal Palace. However, conceding three late goals to slump to defeat against strugglers West Ham will not help Nuno’s current predicament.

He admitted in a recent press conference that his relationship with chairman Evangelos Marinakis has degraded, sending fans reporters into a spin.

Forest’s season will need to pick up speed if he has a chance of surviving the sack.

Another slow start for City

The last time Manchester City started the season slowly, they ended up with a single trophy – the Community Shield – which is a rarity under Guardiola. Although they begun with an emphatic 4-0 away win to Wolves, their start has misfired with back to back defeats.

Unless City pick up points right after the international break, could they end up with space left over in the trophy cabinet come the end of the season? With strength all over the pitch and new versatile additions in Ait-Nouri, among others, it could be a season to remember or the complete opposite.

You can keep up with all the news from the Premier League with a new ‘five things we learnt’ every single week on FromTheSpot.