Arsenal face huge Liverpool setback unless Arteta removes handbrake

We must be honest and concede that it’s not quite as chunky a Big Weekend as the last couple, but it’s another where the fixture computer’s capriciousness could leave Arsenal again fearing the worst and playing catch-up at a ground with bad recent memories for Arteta and co.

Meanwhile every weekend is Big for Big Ange Postecoglou as he has another stab at getting a first win to go with all the lovely attacking football he’s got Forest playing now.

And in not unrelated news, beleaguered Wolves head to London hoping for a restorative visit to Dr Tottenham.

Game to watch: Newcastle v Arsenal

We once again find ourselves with some degree of sympathy for Arsenal and the machinations of the fixture computer. Liverpool once again have first-mover advantage on a weekend when Arsenal’s task is a difficult one.

Liverpool have no penalty kick themselves at Selhurst Park, but if they can win – via late shirt-removing methods or otherwise – then Arsenal face another Sunday afternoon when any slight slip will come with outsized consequences.

Arsenal could be eight points adrift by the time they kick off at a stadium where their recent record is not good. Arsenal lost twice at St James’ Park last season without scoring a goal, in the league and again in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, extending a record in Newcastle that now reads one win and four defeats on their last five visits.

For Newcastle, this game represents a test of what has been a few weeks of tentative promise since the cruel late defeat to Liverpool. That was a game that featured 83 per cent of all goals scored in Premier League games involving Newcastle this season. Three of their other four games have finished goalless, along with a 1-0 home win over hapless Wolves.

This is a game that should give a pretty clear indication of whether the last few weeks have represented recovery and growth, or just not playing any of the top teams for a bit. At least domestically; there was plenty of encouragement too in a narrow Champions League defeat to Barcelona.

The fact Liverpool have already won here adds another dash of intrigue and jeopardy for Arsenal; it already feels like an achievement that even at this early stage they must match. And a game where all evidence from Newcastle’s efforts outside that Liverpool defeat suggest Mikel Arteta will simply have to release that infamous handbrake of his.

Player to watch: Benjamin Sesko

We’re really not sure how much longer Viktor Gyokeres scoring the wrong kind of goals is going to keep providing a covering narrative for the fact the big-money striker Man United chose after missing out on the Swede still doesn’t have any goals, at all, against anyone up to and including Grimsby Town.

Sesko played the full 90 minutes of that match before infamously stepping up as the last outfield player to take a penalty for United in the dignity-sapping shoot-out that followed.

While he’s been more sporadically used in the Premier League, he has nevertheless now played a tick under 300 minutes of football for United without a goal or assist to his name.

It’s not Sesko’s fault that United paid what they paid for him, nor that he is the latest pawn in the wider United banter circus.

But he’s going to need to start helping himself soon, and a Saturday lunchtime trip to a hollowed-out Brentford side who have shipped seven goals in their last three Premier League games represents just about as good a chance as any at this point.

READ MORE: Why are Liverpool flop Wirtz and Manchester United failure Sesko being called ‘007’?

Manager to watch: Ange Postecoglou

If anything, has the great man’s start at Nottingham Forest perhaps been too Postecoglou? We really don’t want to complain, or indeed to appear greedy and ungrateful, but it has felt like all the key elements of Postecoglou’s football have been crammed into the last few weeks.

Forest have started playing some truly gorgeous attacking football, and some truly catastrophic defensive football. They have failed to defend leads against teams as diverse as Swansea, Burnley and Real Betis, while the hamstring injuries that plagued Big Ange’s riotously entertaining two years at Tottenham are already making an unwanted appearance in Nottingham.

Sunderland at home would have been a fixture most teams were chalking up as three points when the computer spat out the schedule back in June, but a lot has changed for both Sunderland and Forest since then.

It’s an awkwardly big game now for Postecoglou, with last weekend’s failure to put Burnley away exacerbated by the same failing in the Europa League in midweek.

There are many reasons why Postecoglou is currently a fixture in the manager to watch slot. One, it’s just pretty much always entertaining and who doesn’t enjoy that? But a second reason is the clear and certain sense that we should enjoy it while we can, because it doesn’t feel likely that Angeball is back on any kind of long-term basis.

We’re not yet in must-win territory, even for Mr Marinakis, but there is a sense of ‘if not now, when?’ about Postecoglou’s quest for a first victory with his new club. After Sunderland, it’s Midtjylland and Newcastle before the October international break and Chelsea, Porto, Bournemouth, Manchester United, Sturm Graz, Leeds, Liverpool and Malmo before the end of November.

Manchester United should provide few problems, given Postecoglou’s formline there, but with the rest of that run of games it doesn’t require a vivid imagination to picture it all spiralling rapidly out of control.

Team to watch: Wolves

Five defeats to begin the Premier League season, which extends Vitor Pereira’s side’s overall winless league run to nine vexing matches since the giddy spring days of winning six in a row.

With Wolves’ own deep woes and a squad left woefully under-powered after a difficult summer exacerbated by clear signs of life at all three promoted clubs, you already find yourself wondering how much longer the club can afford to wait before taking decisive action to arrest the slide and save their season.

It feels wild to be talking this way given just how adroitly Pereira steered Wolves out of trouble back in March and April, but the drop-off has been gargantuan and the context of that six-game winning run starting to look slightly different.

It was a run that featured all three relegated sides as well as West Ham, Manchester United and Tottenham who were very much the worst of the non-relegated teams in the second half of last season.

Six straight wins is still six straight wins, but there has to be some acknowledgement they came against the six easiest possible opponents with very little scope for hope or optimism since.

Until now. It’s Spurs again for Wolves this weekend and, while they do look a very different and less banterous beast under Thomas Frank, they are still Tottenham. The Doctor will see you now.

Football League game to watch: Coventry v Birmingham

A key midlands derby between two teams with clear Premier League ambitions, Coventry having lost out in the play-offs in two out of the last three seasons while remaining unbeaten in the Championship this season under Frank Lampard, and Birmingham’s targeting of back-to-back promotions back to the big time long since certain to be one of the EFL’s key talking points this season.

Coventry could do with turning draws into wins, while Birmingham are still yet to truly settle on their best XI in a brave new world, yet both can be reasonably content with how things are shaping up, both reaching ten points after six games to sit in and around the play-off spots at this early stage.

European game to watch: Atletico Madrid v Real Madrid

The two Madrid giants have made wildly contrasting starts in La Liga thus far, with Real Madrid currently boasting a flawless 18 points from their opening six games but Atleti managing only half that.

They needed a late Julian Alvarez-inspired comeback to see off Rayo Vallecano at home in midweek, while their Champions League campaign got off to a gut-wrenching start at Liverpool the week before.

It doesn’t quite feel like the ideal time to be facing their big noisy neighbours, where things are currently progressing so serenely they didn’t even feel the need to have a hissy fit about the Ballon d’Or this time.

Women’s Super League game to watch: Liverpool v Manchester United

There is no imaginable football where this isn’t a big game, albeit that as far as the women’s game is currently concerned the balance of power lies rather differently to the men’s. United have made a fine start to the new WSL season after a pair of handsome wins over Leicester and London City and a creditable goalless draw against Arsenal.

Liverpool, meanwhile, still await their first point after a humbling Merseyside Derby defeat to Everton and then going down at Leicester after the hosts were reduced to 10 early in the second half.

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