Premier League crisis watch: Who’s being consumed by cataclysmic nothingness after Week 8?

Sad times, friends. While the Premier League is perhaps the world’s most reliable generator of CRISIS, we have to acknowledge that some weekends, like the one just gone, are pretty bland. Ordinary things happen, with ordinary consequences.

Happily, the list of people to blame for this CRISIS-light weekend is a short one: first Jose Mourinho, then everybody else. But more on that later.

Still, when the big game lets us down, there’s always Arsenal, who truly are the UPS trucks of punching themselves in the face. So much so, in fact, that their last minute loss to Watford might not even have made the top three in a more exciting week. Maybe a dodgy penalty was to blame, as Arsene Wenger felt; maybe Troy Deeney’s diagnosis of a lack of “cojones” is closer to the mark.

Either way, what could have been a decent away win and a statement of intent turned out, once again, to be a resounding and familiar statement of inadequacy. Their opponents, meanwhile, leapfrogged them in the table and are up to fourth, and Marco Silva’s managerial reputation is growing with every game.

On that note, It’s vaguely giddying to think of just how many excellent managers have gone looking for jobs over the last 20-odd years, yet never even been able to think about Arsenal. Wenger was there when Mourinho left Porto, when Guardiola left Barcelona, when Rodgers left Swansea, when Klopp left Dortmund … generation after generation, never given the chance to really get to know Gunnersaurus. Not really a CRISIS, of course. Just kind of sad.

So, with United too boring and Arsenal too tired, let’s hear it for Chelsea. Hooray! Who enlivened an otherwise shock-light weekend by contriving to concede two goals to the worst side in the division. Hooray! Who picked up another injury and appear to have already given up on defending their title. Ah. Hurroo.

Early days, of course, but it looks like all our suspicions were correct: Chelsea have an excellent first team and not much of a squad beyond it. So settle in for a season of weirdly patchy league performances, enlivened by a decent run in the cups. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except it’s not much of a CRISIS. Ah well. Maybe Antonio Conte will flip in January.

To describe Manchester United’s approach to Liverpool away as “playing for a draw” isn’t quite accurate. They would have liked to have played for a draw, but ultimately they weren’t even good enough to do so. Only Liverpool’s erratic finishing and David de Gea’s elastic legs saved them.

The irresistible comparison with Manchester City’s 7-2 skelping of Stoke is, in some respects, a little unfair, since United will be favourites to beat Stoke at home and City could well draw at Anfield. But it’s also deeply resonant. In the end, United’s performance amounted to a unvirtuous circle of cowardice and incompetence, each serving to intensify the other.

But the eventual nil-nil draw wasn’t just frustrating from an aesthetic point of view. It also represented an appalling waste of potential CRISIS energy. This was supposed to be the game of the weekend. Whatever happened, somebody would be in trouble, because surely the one thing that couldn’t happen was nothing.

We were wrong, and we played ourselves. And while there are certainly questions to be asked of both sides — about United’s appalling lack of ambition and creakiness under pressure; about Liverpool’s inability to take advantage of either — there’s nothing juicy to get into. There’s no drama. Neither sturm nor drang. No CRISIS. Just Phil Jones giving the ball away, then scrambling back into something like position, then apologising to his goalkeeper. Forever.