The Premier League’s top four and relegation battles got shaken up this week with nine entertaining games producing 32 goals. But there’s one story that trumps them all — Arsene Wenger’s inexplicable benching of Alexis Sanchez, and Arsenal’s poor performance without their star on the pitch.
Premier League scores, Week 27: Is Arsene Wenger trying to get fired?
His management of Alexis Sanchez keeps getting worse. Plus all the other stories from round 27 in the Premier League.
Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
Saturday’s scores
Manchester United 1-1 Bournemouth
Leicester City 3-1 Hull City
Stoke City 2-0 Middlesbrough
Swansea City 3-2 Burnley
Watford 3-4 Southampton
West Bromwich Albion 0-2 Crystal Palace
Liverpool 3-1 Arsenal
Sunday’s scores
Monday’s game
Is Arsene Wenger trying to get fired on purpose?
On Saturday afternoon, everyone was shocked to learn that Alexis Sanchez would not be starting for Arsenal against Liverpool. Fans awaited news of a knock picked up in training or absence for personal reasons, but it never came. Wenger just made the tactical decision to drop Sanchez, his team’s best player and one of the best players in the Premier League.
Sanchez wasn’t any more thrilled than Arsenal fans were.
Predictably, the Gunners struggled to create much going forward at Anfield without their best attacker on the pitch. Without much of a threat to fear, Liverpool pushed forward aggressively and scored two first-half goals.
Wenger subbed on Sanchez at halftime, and he swiftly recorded an assist. But the Gunners couldn’t find a second goal, and were instead badly victimized on the counter by Adam Lallana and Giorgino Wijnaldum in the dying minutes.
Wenger was asked about his decision not to start Alexis during his postgame press conference, and confirmed that he opted for four more direct attacking options up front in order to threaten on the counter.
“The thinking was that we had to go more direct, to use players who are strong in the air. I have no regrets, except that we lost the game.”
Arsenal haven’t made much of an attempt to play this way at any point in the last 20 years, so it’s no surprise that they weren’t good at it. And even though Alexis isn’t exactly a physical and direct player, he’s spent plenty of time threatening teams on the counter for Udinese and Chile (and occasionally Barcelona and Arsenal) during his career. He can play any style, and should always be on the pitch during big games that he’s fit for, because he’s Arsenal’s best player.
That’s the micro-level problem with not playing Alexis at Anfield, but there are macro-level problems too. Notably, Arsenal and Alexis are far apart on terms for a potential new contract. The team now has a well-defined 10-year history of losing players who no longer feel they can challenge for trophies and/or make enough money at Arsenal. Recently, Alexis threw a temper tantrum after getting subbed off while up 4-0 against Swansea, so he was likely upset by not starting a huge game away to Liverpool.
Wenger’s thought processes, tactics, and man management all appear to be in shambles at the moment. He’s making elementary mistakes. At some point, the Arsenal board will have had enough ... right?
Manchester United just has no luck this year
This is almost every Expected Goals map from almost every Manchester United draw this season.
This game featured Zlatan Ibrahimovic missing a penalty, as well as a stunningly heroic performance from Artur Boruc. On top of the dropped points, United is probably going to lose Zlatan for three games.
We’re not sure exactly what the soccer gods are punishing Jose Mourinho for, but he’s clearly done something horrible.
Leroy Sane is becoming a star
Manchester City’s stable of young attackers is truly absurd. Gabriel Jesus and Kevin De Bruyne — two of the most exciting players in the Premier League — were unavailable to start their game against Sunderland and it didn’t matter. Here’s 21-year-old Leroy Sane with a brilliant finish.
In addition to that goal, Sane had the most passes to set up shots of anyone on either team, with three. He had a rough first half of the season, but he appears to have fully adapted to the Premier League, and now he’s a huge contributor.
Harry Kane is having an outrageous season
Last week, Harry Kane scored a hat trick against Stoke City. He backed it up with two more goals against Everton on Sunday, taking him to 19 goals in the Premier League — good for top scorer. Given his early-season injury, that’s one heck of an impressive feat.
And there’s a chance Kane might become historically great. He has the kind of game that should allow him to age gracefully — he’s not dependent on pace or quickness at all. Alan Shearer will be shaking in his dress shoes on the Match of the Day set, since Kane has 27 more top flight goals than Shearer had at the same age.
His form is only matched by ... Manolo Gabbiadini?
January signings don’t get much better than Gabbiadini. Ever since he arrived at Southampton from Napoli, he’s been on fire, with nine goals in seven games.
His latest was a winner in a 4-3 slugfest against Watford, and it guided the Saints up to the top half. They won’t be qualifying for Europe this season, but having a player like Gabbiadini in great form is going to help them attract the talent they need to get back into the top seven.
The relegation battle is absolutely wild
This week, we discussed the extremely tight relegation battle, and how every team has a reason to hope. This weekend saw Leicester, Palace, and Swansea pull off impressive victories, while Boro was sucked down into the bottom three.
Perhaps the most consequential of this week’s games involving relegation battlers was the Foxes’ big win over Hull City. For the second straight post-Ranieri game, Leicester looked like the team that won the Premier League, counter-attacking with incredible speed and decisiveness.
Leicester are now five points clear of the drop, while Hull have had their previous positive momentum halted by three games without a win. Hull has another relegation six-pointer on tap next week, a home game against Swansea.
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