Premier League winners and losers: Jaissle in four-way sack race as Brighton and Chelsea impress
Crystal Palace, Sunderland, Matthias Jaissle and Nottingham Forest are circling the Premier League drain, while Brighton enjoy themselves.
Over to Spurs to make everyone feel better tonight.
Brighton supporters Their last eight Premier League wins have all been accompanied by clean sheets, at an aggregate scoreline of 27-0. Their goal difference after seven games has only been bettered by five teams in Premier League history. Their total goals scored after seven games ranks joint fourth.
Brighton have thrashed their most bitter Premier League rivals, are through in the Carabao Cup and top of the Conference League league phase as absurdly heavy favourites.
Fabian Hurzeler is right: “Enjoy a beer or something else and enjoy wearing the Seagulls’ colours”. The players certainly are. But he is oh so wrong about not looking at the table. F*** that; get it framed.
Olivier Boscagli Remarkable vision and accuracy for the assist to Diego Gomez’s tap-in.
Evanilson The next Bobby Firmino.
Alvaro Arbeloa It might well turn out to be terminal lucidity, so unrelenting was the mess Arbeloa seemed to have created at Fulham. But the praise ought to register somewhere on the same volume scale as the disrespect.
And with this first victory of the season came confirmation that Arbeloa can actually coach a solid performance before utilising his bench effectively.
Fulham have dropped seven points to goals scored in or after the 75th minute against Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Manchester United and Ipswich this season. Their supporters might well have feared the worst when Hull made their fifth change by that mark, with the Cottagers yet to introduce a single substitute at 1-0 up. But it was a calculated call based on a fair assessment of a game the hosts dominated.
“When teams change things, it’s because things aren’t going the way they planned,” Arbeloa said afterwards, damning his reign up to that point as much as Hull at the weekend, before adding “we didn’t feel the need to change things” despite the opponent’s increasingly desperate switches.
Fulham saw the game out with the midfield authority of Tom Cairney, rather than throwing on a Real Madrid academy graduate to drown in a sea of duels and second balls.
Arbeloa did manage to give Cesar Palacios some cursory late minutes but relationships are built on compromise and this one remains technically ongoing when defeat might have ended it.
Enzo Maresca The first manager in history to win his first seven Premier League games in charge of a club. Only Liverpool (eight in 2019/20) and Chelsea (nine in 2005/06) have made longer winning starts to a season.
Apropos of nothing, 38 victories translates to 114 points. At this stage it would clearly be the funniest, most existential outcome.
Noni Madueke Arsenal are obviously absolutely rubbish, but of far more importance and accompanying amusement is putting that petition entirely in the mud.
Unai Emery The only man capable of making defenders Manchester United signed ages ago competent.
Chelsea A first clean sheet since January. A first Premier League win without Joao Pedro scoring or assisting since December – also against Everton. A third goal in the opening minute of a half for Xabi Alonso’s block-bursting Blues.
The most striking aspect of Chelsea’s victory away at Everton was their control and maturity. As Xabi Alonso said: “Sometimes it is not about playing nice. It is about playing well. We needed a result like this. We needed to show that we can win in this way.”
Chelsea dug in, scrapped and stayed the course. But they were still able to toe a line they stepped all over last season.
After finishing bottom of the fair play table in two of the last three campaigns – and 19th in the other – Chelsea are in the middle of the 2026/27 pack. Only ten teams have received fewer than their 13 yellow cards; of those, six have incurred a red, too.
Just once in all of last season did Chelsea go more than seven Premier League games without having a player sent off – the final 10 matches of the campaign, after Liam Rosenior had tried to age men by openly calling out a squad-wide lack of discipline.
The message has belatedly landed, with Jordan Henderson’s presence as the designated driver perhaps no coincidence when it comes to Chelsea players making better life choices. A really quite vexed Moises Caicedo was itching to take off his gloves and throw down with Jack Grealish as early as the third minute until Henderson jogged into frame, tapped him on the chest and beckoned him away.
Any iteration 10of Chelsea over the last few seasons might have won, lost or drawn that game; the only guarantee is that they would have done so with men at most.
Jeremy Jacquet There were a couple of magnificent defensive interventions from the impressive Jacquet, but his most telling contribution against Brentford secured a crucial win for Liverpool.
It was difficult to see how the visitors would find their way back at the Gtech after conceding on the stroke of half-time. Yehor Yarmoliuk walking into a fairly rudimentary Jacquet trap granted Liverpool an opening which Rio Ngumoha and friends eventually exploited.
Manchester United It is funny that what “felt like a bit of a fresh start today” for Michael Carrick still resulted in the most obvious of 1-1 draws for Manchester United at Elland Road.
There were improvements, although it should be pointed out that could have been achieved by blindfolding the players and tying their laces together when using the Spurs performance as a barometer.
For Manchester United, the real lesson learned from the past week of post-match outbursts and introspection was the friends they made along the way. And that Noussair Mazraoui can play basically anywhere when you’re under pressure.
Premier League losers
Crystal Palace It might be a slight oversimplification of the situation, but Pierre Sage, Jaydee Canvot, Chris Richards and Matt Hobbs are not Oliver Glasner, Marc Guehi, Maxence Lacroix and Dougie Freedman.
Away at Brighton, the reigning champions of thinking five steps ahead to seamlessly transition from seemingly unimprovable cogs in a machine designed to punch well above its weight, that was most harshly proven.
Palace have, if not a worse coach, then certainly one handed a far less appealing hand and in more adverse conditions. Combined with an ill-equipped squad and a sporting director in enough above his head to apparently believe Rob Edwards is the solution to these problems, and Palace are realising the cost of not building better foundations when given an unexpected chance.
They could have used the FA Cup and European glory as a launching pad into a sustained period of something, anything more meaningful than sliding back into the Premier League’s lower-to-mid-table, if not out of the division altogether.
That chance might never come again. For that to be underlined, italicised and emboldened by Brighton’s elite-level succession planning is particularly painful.
Sunderland Nordi Mukiele decided against laying into the recruitment team and sparking a week’s worth of tiresome narrative, but his post-match declaration that Sunderland perhaps “became arrogant” on the back of last season was eye-opening.
Regis Le Bris was little more tempered in saying they “were not Sunderland” against Bournemouth, but the reality is that no team has lost more Premier League games in 2026, and Spurs are the only ever-presents in that time to score fewer goals.
This is Sunderland. And if they truly “became arrogant” on the basis of those two wins to end last season, Le Bris might not be alone in counting the considerable cost of such haughtiness.
The relegation battle is yet to take shape and perhaps only Villa from eighth down can confidently declare themselves good enough to pull clear. If anyone at Sunderland believes themselves to be above that scrap, they are in for a shock.
Matthias Jaissle Newcastle have faced the second-most shots this season, conceded the second-most Premier League goals in 2026, and ought to be more grateful to Crystal Palace for ensuring neither of those stats are any worse.
At the other end, no player has scored more than two goals across the club’s last 10 Premier League fixtures, and Dan Burn was just sent on to try and salvage a home point for a team which has spent £170m on centre-forwards over the last two summers.
It is starting to feel like Jaissle is not long for Newcastle’s world.
Nottingham Forest Is it possible to be quietly shit when governed by Mr. Marinakis? That Ipswich game on Friday is absolutely ripe for a 1am sacking announcement.
Everton It honestly feels like going into the season with a £4m first-choice right-back who never wanted to play there, and a single senior centre-forward who has missed more big chances (11) than Liverpool have created (10), might have been a mistake. It’s weird that no-one mentioned it at the time.
When deploying the smallest squad in Premier League history, it also doesn’t help if your manager makes his selections to combat one specific opposition player who then does not play.
The tactical revelation of the season so far, however, came from James Garner: “We got into half-time at 0-0 and our plan was obviously to just stay in the game and chances will come.”
That five-word, Nike and EA Sports mangling of a David Moyes motto will never not infuriate a fanbase on such an afternoon. The prospect of Everton Just Staying In The Game before an ultimately limp defeat at the Emirates next weekend is positively titillating.
Brentford As one of only two teams, along with Manchester City, who have led in every Premier League game so far this season, Brentford can take pride in their start.
But one moment of idiocy has turned no defeats in six into a single victory in six.
Brentford have not quite yet proven that they can do anything other than either comfortably dispatch London teams 3-0 at home, or drop points from winning positions in eminently avoidable ways. Any sort of middle ground would be nice.
Hull “That was the worst performance since I’ve been here. We were so far off from everything. I can say 1-0 is a good result for us. It was a very tough game for us at every moment. They ate us alive.”
Anyone stupid enough to argue with 6ft 4ins Bosnian Sergej Jakirovic may do so on their own time.
Brenden Aaronson Yep, this is a thing now. He’s not been on the pitch for the last 14 Premier League goals Leeds have scored.
Aaronson might point to the fact he at least didn’t actually play any part of this game, but still. It’s ridiculous.
