Potter sacked and Arsenal trophy delivered in Big Six revival as kneejerk reactions made

Graham Potter is doomed at West Ham, much like Scott Parker and Burnley. But Sunderland and Leeds are staying up and the Big Six is officially back, baby.

10) Liverpool will break the goal record

Arne Slot basically telling Jamie Carragher to support a different team if he was “worried” about Liverpool committing too many players forward in a 4-2 win was enjoyable.

“We are a team that likes to attack. We are a team that wants to score goals,” he said, as if adding a £69m striker and £100m playmaker to a group of options also including the third-highest scorer in the club’s history had not already underlined, italicised and emboldened the point.

It did make the £150m record pursuit of another forward seem like a bit of a luxury but Liverpool are blessed with quality rather than quantity across their frontline. Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Ben Doak have been sold for almost as much as Alexander Isak would cost.

Another ingredient might well be added to the mix before the deadline but even without it, the 106-goal platter Manchester City delivered the first Pep Guardiola title on should be a tentative target.

9) At least one of the four out-of-contract managers announce their exit before the end of the season

Bournemouth and Wolves were beaten by Premier League title challengers, while Crystal Palace and Fulham emerged from difficult away assignments with creditable draws.

That only reinforced the frustration felt by three of those four desirable Premier League coaches in the final year of their deals.

Andoni Iraola has since been endowed with an overdue centre-half and attacking depth in Bafode Diakite and Ben Gannon-Doak. But Oliver Glasner, Marco Silva and Vitor Pereira have all reiterated the need for new and ready-made signings.

Perhaps the clubs involved would prefer a more long-term show of commitment from those who expect to be supplied expensive new toys, but each of those managers could feasibly punch a little higher in their relationships.

8) Parker and Potter are sacked

It is a point worth repeating from the first Winners and Losers of the season: bemoaning an inability to do “the basics” against a newly-promoted side or blaming “fine margins” as a newly-promoted side, both in 3-0 defeats, does not augur well on the opening weekend.

Burnley might have expected to be in for a long season and Scott Parker deserves credit for taking a different approach to his latest bid for survival. But this one looked roughly as doomed as his previous attempts even before a ball was kicked.

Graham Potter was an early sack race frontrunner after the general misery with which last season ended at West Ham, and such a chastening defeat to Sunderland meant the wait for any semblance of an identity to emerge under his tutelage has reached 20 games and a pre-season.

The recruitment has not been nearly good enough for either club to achieve their objectives, but ultimately two managers who have suffered their fair share of sackings know where the buck stops for fidgety owners. The race to appoint Sean Dyche will be unseemly.

7) Leeds and Sunderland will stay up

For the first time since 2021/22, and only the third time ever in Premier League history, as many as two newly-promoted teams won on the opening weekend.

The scorelines were slightly different for Sunderland and Leeds, the first Championship winners to start in the top flight with a win since the Black Cats in 2007. But both overcame established members of what has proven a particularly closed shop in the past couple of seasons.

There has been a slight overegging of the pudding in terms of fretting about the gulf between the Premier League and Football League based on six laughably underprepared and low-quality sides coming up to go straight down – especially as the four most recent sides to survive that jump seamlessly became part of the apparently unmovable furniture.

But in sinking those early six-pointers, leaving a mark on teams they can feasibly usurp and building momentum in front of raucous home crowds after solid to spectacular summer recruitment drives, Sunderland and Leeds have already shown enough to suggest they can hold their own.

6) Brentford will go down

That does require the demise of two supposedly protected and untouchable teams, but Brentford always felt unsuited to that elite casting and the vultures have done a number on them.

Dango Ouattara has signed, Mikkel Damsgaard will return and Jordan Henderson should bring experience and nous to a team suddenly lacking in both, but it is difficult to envisage Keith Andrews making much sense of the hand he has been dealt.

But ultimately the biggest count against Brentford might be that there is no obvious firefighter appointment for when the panic sets in. They are not tempting the Sam Allardyces, Alan Pardews or Tony Pulises of this world off the after-dinner circuit, but absolutely could do the sort of absurd thing data-led clubs do when the wheels come off a little and make a damning call to someone like Jesse Marsch in February.

5) Erling Haaland will break his own goal record

There is definitely a shout for Tijanji Reijnders to win the PFA Player of the Year award after proving that the tough First Guardiola Year is not actually a prerequisite for any new Manchester City signing.

But a safer bet might be Haaland recovering from the shame of 38 and 34-goal seasons to start testing the structural integrity of Dixie Dean’s legacy again.

A ludicrous level of attacking quality, depth and variety is contained within that Manchester City squad, spearheaded by a striker whose brilliance has been normalised. The goal record he set in his debut season is going to fall.

4) Arsenal will win a trophy

It is difficult to recall another manager or team at the start of any Premier League season whose success or failure was so specifically dependent on the procurement of trophies.

Mikel Arteta promised to “give my life” to deliver silverware at the end of last season and a great many critics appear to have taken that literally, stating that this phase must be his last if he cannot drag Arsenal over the line.

Oliver Glasner matching his trophy haul in a fraction of the time and on a fragment of the budget at Crystal Palace has not helped but Arsenal do feel set up to book that open-top bus tour soon.

Say what you want about their entire attacking ethos centering around set-pieces, or everyone at the club being willing to sacrifice friends and family members for the mere chance at keeping a clean sheet. But this is surely a side designed to excel in knockout football once Viktor Gyokeres gets up to speed – if indeed the pub striker ever will.

3) Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace will reign in Europe

UEFA would be obliged to change the Super Cup regulations – presumably without sending any correspondence to Selhurst Park – so that the Europa League and Conference League winners would compete in a blood feud as the Champions League winners step aside.

But after watching Premier League sides go deep or even win either competition in recent years, there is a sense that things might work out in the end for both teams.

If Spurs can win the Europa League then Forest are absolutely capable out of sheer Morgan Gibbs-White-based spite, while Glasner has already delivered continental glory to Eintracht Frankfurt so can help continue the proud Premier League tradition of bullying teams they have a laughable financial advantage over.

2) There will be an England bolter

Take your pick from the expensive uncapped Englishmen capable of snatching the spotlight who have been signed this summer alone: Jamie Gittens, Jacob Ramsey, Omari Hutchinson, Jarell Quansah, Liam Delap, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, James Trafford.

Then there is Elliot Anderson and Archie Gray, who could easily time their pushes perfectly to catch the eye of Thomas Tuchel.

It wouldn’t be an international tournament season without an England bolter and the options this time around are plentiful.

1) The Big Six is the top six

It is a common misconception and refrain that the branding of the Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Spurs cabal is not reflective of the actual league table.

The fact is it was never meant to be: those are simply the richest Premier League teams in a football sense. Their owners are not necessarily the most wealthy but the clubs themselves are more marketable than the rest in the country by an absurd margin and so can pay the highest transfer fees and wages with less pressure on sales.

It is why talk of there being a Big Eight with Newcastle or Aston Villa included is nonsense, similar to suggestions that the Big Six are no longer a thing when one or even multiple members endure historically poor seasons. Manchester United and Spurs responded by just signing everyone else’s best players because they could.

And they looked better for it. Manchester United leapt over a hilariously low bar against Arsenal, granted, and Spurs passed the test of playing a promoted Scott Parker side at home. But the improvements were clear and fuelled at least in part by weakening many of their rivals this summer.

The so-called Big Six has been the top six in some order or other on precisely six occasions: 2010/11, 2014/15, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2021/22. This will be lucky number seven.

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