Premier League scores, Week 13: Manchester United is better than they look

After 13 rounds of play, the Premier League appears to have an established order. Things went according to the script this week, with the top four of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Arsenal all earning unimpressive but hard-fought victories. Tottenham Hotspur played fine, but looks a clear tier below those top four after losing at Stamford Bridge. And, per usual, Manchester United outplayed their opponents while failing to win.

Jose Mourinho and United fans should be unconcerned about their team’s play. Eventually, their ability to create twice as many good shots as their opponents will result in them winning lots of games. The problem is that whole established order thing -- they’re already well behind the top four, and will need more than an end to their run of bad luck to move up the table. They’ll need dominance, plus some help.

Saturday’s scores

Sunday’s scores

This is a typical Expected Goals map for Manchester United this season. Even in their draws and losses, they usually perform well.

That said, a couple of these big chances came when Henrik Mkhitaryan entered the game, which is going to spark an argument from the non-stats believers: this team appears discouraged. Mourinho might have had a good reason for exiling Mkhitaryan for the first few months of his tenure, but from the information available to us, it looks like a bad decision. Exiling players for no reason can damage team chemistry and confidence, which can damage focus and confidence in front of goal.

Or maybe United is just really unlucky.

Whatever the Red Devils’ problem is, they’re running out of time to fix it. This week’s results leave them eight points out of fourth place, currently held by Arsenal. None of the teams in the top four spots of the table have lost in their last six matches. It’s a long season, but none of the top four are badly overperforming. There’s no reason to expect any of them to collapse. United will have to play well and get a lot of lucky breaks to get back into the top four.

Bob Bradley earned his first win of the Premier League season in unbelievable fashion. His Swans went from 1-0 down, to 3-1 up, to 4-3 down, to defeating Crystal Palace 4-3. Fernando Llorente was the hero, scoring twice in stoppage time.

Here’s more on the game and what it meant for both Swansea and Palace manager Alan Pardew.

Following this week’s Champions League game, Pep Guardiola rotated his team heavily. They didn’t perform well, and depended on Sergio Aguero to bail them out.

Bitter and Blue expanded on their frustration in their recap.

“I think Pep Guardiola may have a stroke watching this game. So many long balls and so very little creativity that he’ll hate these 90 minutes for the rest of his life.”

City’s best XI might play the best soccer in the league, but everyone else in the team is still getting up to speed.

17-year-old Liverpool youth product Ben Woodburn made his senior debut this week, calling his substitute appearance against Sunderland a dream come true. It was just a short run-out, but it was a special moment for him and the supporters, who have been eagerly following Woodburn’s youth team performances and hoping for him to get first-team opportunities. He’s expected to get more minutes against Leeds United midweek, so tune into that EFL Cup game if you want to get a glimpse of the next great homegrown Liverpool star.

If you’re wondering how a striker of Negredo’s quality lands on a team like Boro ... yeah, so are we. He had a couple of quiet seasons at Valencia, but on the evidence of their current season, they’re a poison club in a tailspin, sucking the talent out of their players. A change of scenery was all Negredo needed to do stuff like this.

Boro is hardly flying away from the bottom three, but this was a great road point against Leicester. Their minus-3 goal differential also suggests that they’re better than some of the teams around them -- eighth-place Watford is at minus-4, while the entire bottom four is minus-10 or worse.

Tottenham started quickly at Stamford Bridge, scoring the opener and outplaying Chelsea for most of the first half. But as We Ain’t Got No History noted in their recap of the game, it was clear Spurs couldn’t maintain their play all game. Chelsea didn’t freak out when they went behind, and started the second half strongly.

“Spurs’ inhuman effort at the high-press was never going to last; Chelsea took advantage of tired legs in second half by switching play very effectively. Costa could’ve had two assists within the first ten minutes of the second half alone, but Alonso blazed over from 6 yards out and all alone. Fortunately, that mess did not come back to haunt us.”

Once Spurs wore down a bit, Chelsea doubled their efforts. “He told us to press high and concentrate between the lines,” Pedro said of Antonio Conte’s halftime team talk. “He told us to mark more aggressively and that was the most important thing. It was a good game for us and the supporters.”

Both teams had spells of the game where they gave maximum effort and were well on top. Chelsea was just much more clinical in theirs.

While Charlie Adam is famous for his great set pieces and a goal from behind the half-way line, he’s equally famous for ruthlessly going in studs up on opponents, then complaining about his well-deserved bookings. But on Sunday, Charlie Adam admitted that Stoke’s winner against Watford shouldn’t have stood.

“I think it was a foul really,” Adam said. “I think I pushed [Valon Behrami], but we’ll take it, it’s a great win.” Add Charlie Adam being a morally upstanding gentleman to the list of signs that 2016 will usher in the apocalypse.

Stoke has now won four of their last six, lifting them out of the drop zone that they occupied for a couple of months and all the way up to 10th place.

Last season Özil topped the Premier League’s assist chart with 19 and set a record for chances created, setting up the most shots for teammates in a season where that data was available. He only has one assist so far this campaign, but he might be playing even better than last. As evidence, his moves and hockey assist on Theo Walcott’s go-ahead goal against Bournemouth:

He had the pass before the assist on the Gunners’ third goal too, something that’s become more common for him this season.

Teams know that Özil is Arsenal’s most capable assister by a mile, so they’re doing everything they can to make sure he doesn’t have opportunities to record them. That’s opened up space for himself and his teammates, leading him to pick up more goals and more passes before the assist. Özil isn’t racking up huge stats, but the way teams have adjusted to him has made him a more complete player, and one even more crucial to Arsenal’s success.

There is no question that Hull City is a bad team. They are much worse than the teams below them, Swansea and Sunderland, who are also bad teams. And yet, they look like they might be able to hang in the race to avoid relegation for a while. Michael Dawson poked in a set piece goal to steal a point this week, just a couple of weeks after the Tigers figured out how to snatch a 2-1 win against Southampton. Hull has won 11 points so far this season and sits 18th, just goal differential away from safety.

They, like Man United on the other end of the table, should regress to the mean. Their extreme badness should start resulting in more losses, and they really should not be able to get to 30 points. But they have not accepted their fate yet, and it would be cool if they could keep the relegation race interesting against all odds.

Everton stunk in a loss to Southampton.

Everton sits seventh with a positive goal differential.