The Premier League is dragged kicking and screaming into another international break with Chelsea v Arsenal and Liverpool hoping to stay on top before we all spend two weeks pondering the sheer mind-numbing futility of Lee Carsley’s Final England Squad.

Game to watch: Chelsea v Arsenal
Always looked a significant pre-international break game that would offer a stern test of a London club’s title credentials, and sure enough, just like we all predicted, we really are set to learn an awful lot here about whether Chelsea truly have what it takes to stick around on the coattails of the real major contenders like Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

Funny season this one, isn’t it? Lord knows Arsenal and their fraying manager Mikel Arteta could have done with an easier task than this heading into two weeks of much-needed rest and recuperation.

They come into this game with an identical record to their London rivals of five wins, three draws and a pair of defeats, but it’s hard to argue that Arsenal’s route to that record has been the more compelling or convincing.

They appear to be in the process of second-guessing everything as their manager tries desperately to find a way past Manchester City, who are themselves stuttering a bit as both allow Liverpool to sneak through. It’s all a bit like that 1500m final at the Olympics, isn’t it? But the 1500m final at the Olympics if one of the big two had just gone on the pitch and handled the ball for absolutely no reason other than his head entirely overheating under the pressure of his situation and the sheer stifling weight of all that unnecessarily dense hair.

It’s tempting to think that Arsenal could be happy enough to just emerge from Stamford Bridge with a solidly-won point and move on. That it would stem the bleeding and quiet the noise over a two-week period where somebody needs to be the crisis club and there won’t be the usual cover provided for the last year-and-a-half by Erik ten Hag and Man United.

Depending how the rest of the weekend has panned out, Arsenal really do need to win this game. They could very well start it 10 points behind Liverpool and eight behind Man City. Alternatively, they may start this game within something closer to striking range of both those teams in terms of points but somehow eighth in the table below Aston Villa and Brighton and even Spurs if they manage to avoid any Dr Tottenham behaviour against Ipswich.

The Gunners really could have done with something far, far kinder from that relentlessly mischievous fixture computer after a run of one point in three games and ahead of the year’s final international break.

Team to watch: Liverpool
For final, compelling proof that it is to Arne Slot’s Liverpool that the mantle of Man City’s Primary Challenger has officially passed, it is now their fans to once again be heard with the refrain of Arsenal’s over the last two years:

“We’re not favourites! Don’t say we’re favourites! That’s an absurd idea! Nobody is favourites against City! 115 charges!”

They really kind of do look like the best team around at the moment, though, and if they can take down Aston Villa on Saturday evening it’s going to be desperately hard to keep the noise down over the international break given the vulnerability on display in North London and East Manchester.

This noise-dampening attempt is in large part due to the same motivation that drove Arsenal supporters, of course: the simple dread fear of being accused of bottling it if they don’t win. There is no greater disgrace in all of sport than bottling it, and denying even the requisite conditions for a bottling are in place for as long as possible is the most powerful if occasionally desperate-sounding defence against such a charge.

But there’s something else specifically Liverpool at play here as well. Because we’re very sure they would be a lot giddier were Jurgen Klopp still in charge and delivering Slot’s results.

It’s not that they’re unhappy with what they’re seeing from Slot – very obviously – it’s just that there’s still such a deep affection for the former boss and all he achieved that a slightly subdued air remains around what is by any measure an outrageously good start to the season, one thrown into even greater contrast by the relative struggles occurring elsewhere.

It almost – almost – seems like some part of some Liverpool fans might almost not quite be comfortable with the idea of Slot rocking up and casually winning the Premier League in his first season – something that is now at the very, very least an extremely live possibility – lest it somehow be seen to detract from the achievements of their beloved Klopp.

Viktor Gyokeres scored 43 goals for Sporting last season and is well on his way to another massive haul this term after 23 in his first 17 games.

That includes a hat-trick against arguably the best team in Europe in his penultimate game under a manager he could join at Manchester United come the end of the season.

Whether the leading goalscorer in 2024 follows Ruben Amorim to Old Trafford or not, he looks destined for bigger and better things, which often means the Premier League. But fair warning to Gyokeres and his suitors: scoring a bucketload of goals in the season before moving to the English top flight is far from a guarantee of success once you get there.

These ten players all scored 30+ goals in the campaign before moving to the Premier League and flopped.

Timo Werner (RB Leipzig to Chelsea)
One of five players signed under Frank Lampard in the summer of 2020 that led an overly optimistic Chelsea-supporting journalist to claim the Blues legend had a ‘foolproof squad’ to work with and must mount a Premier League challenge.

Thiago Silva was an excellent buy and Ben Chilwell has had his moments but none of Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz or Timo Werner proved to be anywhere near as successful as we thought they would be at Stamford Bridge, with Werner in particular a source of huge frustration.

He’s not really got going again since, with Tottenham fans now ruing him being the man on the end of chance, preparing themselves for inevitable fluffed shots in good positions or terrible decision-making from a striker for whom finding the back of the net was second nature before he arrived in the Premier League.

Romelu Lukaku (Inter Milan to Chelsea)
On the back of Champions League glory under a manager who knew what he was doing, Lukaku was deemed the final piece of Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea puzzle.

Four seasons after Diego Costa’s departure, having messed around with Alvaro Morata, Gonzalo Higuain, Tammy Abraham, Havertz and Werner, Chelsea signed A Proper Centre-Forward; a bully, essentially.

Lukaka scored in his first game on his return to Chelsea against Arsenal when we all thought the Blues were onto something, but scored just three more before his bombshell Sky Italia interview in December which took aim at Tuchel’s tactics, and that was that.

Eduardo (Dinamo Zagreb to Arsenal)
Not so much Eduardo that flopped but his left foot. Sometimes we can still see it hanging limply from the rest of his leg, joined by mere sinew, when we close our eyes at night.

He suffered arguably the worst injury in Premier League history when Birmingham’s Martin Taylor broke both his tibia and fibula and who knows how his career may have progressed without that harrowing moment.

Darwin Nunez (Benfica to Liverpool)
Depends on your definition of a flop etc etc. but after a goal off the bench in his first appearance for Liverpool in the Community Shield win over Manchester City, after which more than a few Liverpool fans suggested they may have signed their own Erling Haaland, perhaps even a more rounded version, we can safely say that Nunez has not lived up to expectations at Anfield.

Djibril Cisse (Auxerre to Liverpool)
Cisse faced an uphill battle from the moment he walked through the door on Merseyside with the manager who had been so desperate to sign him, Gerard Houllier, already dismissed in favour of Rafa Benitez, whom it’s fair to say wasn’t quite so keen on the Frenchman.

“I keep a fantastic memory of England, even if I still hold a grudge on the coach,” Cisse told L’Equipe Magazine. “I have still not swallowed it. Maybe I will never swallow it. I am still very upset. I scored 19 goals and I never played! The coach and myself were not compatible.”

Roberto Soldado (Valencia to Tottenham)
“He’s a £26million footballer, our record signing, don’t you think it will affect him? I don’t care – Harry’s starting.” A story Tim Sherwood will tell anyone who brushes past him in the street as he takes credit for Harry Kane, who would not be England’s greatest ever goalscorer had his genius manager not put him in the team over six-goal Soldado in April 2014.

Nine One-Season Wonder seasons at Tottenham followed for Kane as Soldado presumably regrets moving to a club that was in the process of brewing a goal machine.

Vincent Janssen (AZ Alkmaar to Tottenham)
We would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in what we’re assuming were talks between Daniel Levy and Janssen beset with confusion, with neither party anywhere close to being convinced a switch to Spurs was a good move.

Kane had just scored 25 Premier League goals having managed 21 the season before, and yet with uncertainty over goalscoring longevity all but removed Spurs decided to spend £20m on a striker for the bench and Janssen either had far too much faith in his own ability or was perfectly happy to watch from the sidelines. He started seven Premier League games.

Alvaro Negredo (Sevilla to Manchester City)
Signed in the same summer as Stevan Jovetic in that period before Pep Guardiola when Manchester City were throwing money willy nilly at problems that they didn’t really have, with Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko doing perfectly well without supposed added firepower that failed to make a mark at the Etihad.

Mateja Kezman (PSV Eindhoven to Chelsea)
Batman to [Arjen] Robben and they arrived at Chelsea together from PSV Eindhoven, with many more excited by Kezman’s arrival than his sidekick on the back of not one but two 30+ goal seasons for the Dutch side.

Their careers took rather different trajectories with Robben earning a move to Real Madrid through his Chelsea performances and then to Bayern Munich, where he won 14 major trophies. Kezman meanwhile scored fewer goals across the nine seasons after leaving PSV than in the two standout campaigns that got him the move to Chelsea.

Memphis Depay (PSV to Manchester United)
OK, so he only got 28 goals for PSV, but we’ll be damned if we’re making a list of nine. He’s been linked with a return on more than one occasion having recorded excellent numbers for Lyon and then also impressing at Barcelona, but two goals and no assists in 1,427 Premier League minutes for Manchester United really is a rotten record.

Football365.com

Manchester United have sacked manager Erik ten Hag following the club’s poor start to the season.

Ten Hag’s final game was Sunday’s 2-1 defeat by West Ham that left the club 14th in the Premier League with just three wins from their opening nine matches.

United are also 21st of 36 teams in the Europa League table, having drawn their three opening fixtures.

Ruud van Nistelrooy, who joined the club as Ten Hag’s assistant last summer, has been named as interim manager.

The Dutchman was informed of the decision by the club’s board on Monday morning, fewer than 24 hours after the club’s defeat by West Ham at the London Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

The club triggered a one-year extension in Ten Hag’s contract following May’s FA Cup final victory over Manchester City but just three months later he has been dismissed after overseeing United’s second worst start to a Premier League campaign.

More to follow.