Premier League winners and losers: Brighton, Arsenal, Brentford, Alonso, Coventry, De Zerbi

Xabi Alonso, Roberto De Zerbi, Arsenal and Manchester United had bruising weekends, but the Premier League’s B teams are thriving.

Brighton A ridiculous, system-shattering club whose structures and habits can be imitated but never duplicated.

Brighton have beaten the reigning Premier League champions in three consecutive seasons, and that was as comprehensive a battering as any title holder has ever endured.

Brentford Somehow ended the weekend as the least brilliant never-relegated-from-the-Premier-League B team celebrating a stunning 3-0 thrashing of a Spaniard-led, London-based supposed title challenger, with Matthew Benham and Tony Bloom’s betting beef now reaching absurd levels of granular one-upmanship.

Brentford will be used to their own achievements being slightly overlooked or overshadowed, but their dismantling of Chelsea was typically breathtaking in its efficiency.

Keith Andrews was missing his captain, so Jannik Schuster slotted in at centre-half seamlessly again. The prematurely crowned signing of the season in Mamadou Sangare was benched, in part because Yehor Yarmolyuk can be trusted to step up.

Brentford agreed to a mutual termination of Jordan Henderson’s contract in the summer, foregoing a cursory fee from free-spending Chelsea, safe in the knowledge they would humiliate him and them soon enough.

And the Bees continue to break new ground: this was their first Premier League win over Chelsea at the Gtech, meaning they have beaten 25 of the 26 teams they have faced at home since their promotion in 2022. The only side to avoid such a fate promptly sacked their manager for being so contrarian.

Manchester City ‘This freewheeling, chaotic 5-3 win over Sunderland had all the hallmarks of yer classic ‘why they could win it, but also why they won’t’ kind of performance.’

Not too much point reaching for many judgements based on the most final-day-of-the-season September fixture in Premier League history.

Sunderland’s cult hero Would pay good money to hear Peter Serafinowicz say ‘Ballon d’Or Barclaysman Brian Brobbey’.

Coventry

A timely statement from chairman Doug King brought clarity, transparency and accountability on a number of issues; a professional performance overseen by Frank Lampard delivered Coventry’s first goal, win and points of the season soon after.

After conceding 10 nanswered goals on their Premier League return, belief in that process was tested to its core. The Brighton humiliation was particularly crushing. But Coventry were organised, committed and excellent against Forest to inspire belated hope in their season.

The international break could interrupt that momentum but October’s schedule – Newcastle (h), Spurs (a), Fulham (h) and Sunderland (h) – could build it once more after facing four of the nascent campaign’s better teams.

Aston Villa As one knee jerked a month ago: ‘It is far easier to envisage Unai Emery turning that opening-day mess around than De Zerbi with Spurs.’

Villa were always going to be fine under Emery, whose post-retirement paediatric dental surgery will thrive with his experience of managing early teething problems.

His adeptness in terms of blooding new signings into an established team structure should be studied by some of his contemporaries. But then Emery benefits from the sort of overdraft in terms of patience and credit that few coaches have ever earned.

Emiliano Buendia Since last October, Buendia has scored as many Premier League winners at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as Spurs.

David Moyes Everton unbeaten and in European contention under Moyes after an actively harmful summer is proof the world is healing. As will be their subsequent inexorable slide into the mid-table once safety is secured and whatever players are left realise they’re knackered.

It is not particularly inspiring stuff – only Nottingham Forest have had as few goals (nine) in their games so far – but it is undeniably effective, which is the ceiling the owners placed above the manager after that risible transfer window.

Moyes has kept more clean sheets as a Premier League manager (215) than all but one of the other 18 coaches (ffs, Mikel Arteta) have managed Premier League games. Everton will have to at least pretend to want to ever achieve something tangible again at some point, but it’s hard to look past Moyes as their perfect manager in these specific, safety-first circumstances.

Newcastle When Newcastle lost in the Premier League last season, they were statistically more likely to draw or be beaten in their next game as they were to win it. Eddie Howe’s side followed defeats with a victory seven times, another loss as often and a stalemate twice.

They also dropped points from winning positions habitually, and struggled to break down low blocks.

Newcastle compartmentalising their Leeds thrashing by stunning unbeaten Hull and their five-man defence twice within the opening ten minutes, and weathering a late onslaught to successfully defend that hard-earned lead, further underlines the steps made under Matthias Jaissle.

Pierre Sage It had been reported in some circles on the eve of their visit to unbeaten, Newcastle-hammering Leeds that Crystal Palace were considering the future of Sage.

While the source of those claims was hardly airtight, it did create an uncomfortable atmosphere around a club which had shown abundant patience in Oliver Glasner, even if they were handsomely rewarded for it.

Sage navigated the situation typically unflinchingly. Palace recorded their first Premier League clean sheet since the dawn of time/April 20 as that first awkward Thursday-Sunday hurdle was navigated adroitly.

Palace lost seven of their 16 post-Conference games in the Premier League last season. The most bruising was perhaps the 4-1 reverse at Elland Road in December, when Glasner admitted “we couldn’t match their physicality” in an “embarrassing” defeat.

A goalless draw against Leeds nine months later left obvious room for improvement but after their defensive start to the season in particular, and with only two changes made to the side which dispatched Lech Poznan so methodically three days prior, it made a mockery of the idea that those who appointed Sage might already be losing faith.

The Hodge Signal need not be sent out for now.

Fulham Two points from games against Liverpool and Manchester United would have been an exceptional return when Alvaro Arbeloa was last in the Premier League, in all fairness. Fulham’s blanket might just always be short.

Premier League losers

Arsenal “Invincible is linked with a mental resilience,” Arsene Wenger once said. “It is something deeper, a refusal of defeat at any cost. Don’t give in, ever.”

There is never any shame attached when a team inevitably falls well short of failing to emulate the ludicrous but also largely ornamental achievement of the Invincibles. Lifting the Premier League trophy will feel no less fulfilling if it is silver instead of gold, and done with a few defeats along the way rather than going unbeaten.

But against Brighton, Arsenal absolutely did give in. They showed no resilience. They accepted defeat. And between Declan Rice’s frustrated trip of Malick Yalcouye, Gabriel’s laughable dive by the touchline and Kai Havertz’s aimless finish when clean through, they did so petulantly and pathetically.

It underlined the absurd consistency and durability required and demanded each week from the 2003/04 vintage, but also the preposterous levels of the current Premier League; it is not a feasible modern target to aspire to when basically every game is against the equivalent of Sam Allardyce’s Bolton.

That does not mean Arsenal can fold so farcically and fundamentally as they did when pressed high and hard on the coast. Arteta credited Brighton and damned his players for eschewing the “basics” and “standards”.

How they react to their worst performance in years will dictate what this team can accomplish far more than the loss itself, even if the nature of it was so bleak.

Roberto De Zerbi It is officially the longest goalless start ever made by a single manager to a Premier League season. And in characteristic fashion, Spurs ended that drought in defeat to a winless side immediately before an international break.

Two things are worth reiterating: Aston Villa used more summer signings than Spurs at the weekend; and Unai Emery was forced into the sort of sharp squad churn De Zerbi actively demanded.

Again, Villa had their spine ripped out in the summer and still showed more backbone than a Spurs side at home, backed by the most expensive transfer spree in their entire history.

Spurs absolutely needed to tear up a rotten template after consecutive 17th-placed finishes, but the way Emery has managed that transition should embarrass De Zerbi.

While two new Villa players scored, the worst Spurs performers all joined in the summer at the specific behest of De Zerbi. The Van Hecke-Vuskovic swap alone must be a breach of contract on the grounds of gross incompetence.

Xabi Alonso A man with 143 career appearances in the competition as a player shouldn’t need a cliched Welcome To The Premier League in his fifth game as a manager, but those 90 minutes were the equivalent of an early reducer for Alonso on the touchline.

Some lessons: Brentford away on a Friday evening is not a make-five-changes-to-your-starting-line-up sort of occasion. Nor is it the time or place for 36-year-old Jordan Henderson’s first match in well over 100 days, especially not with 5ft 7ins Valentin Barco as his midfield partner.

Danny Welbeck is also not Joao Pedro, and it might be worth having their set-piece coach and ‘most important summer signing’ actually work on set-pieces.

Levi Colwill admitted Chelsea have been “bullied in the box” this season, and that isn’t restricted to a defence which has now conceded at least two goals in seven of their last eight games. Chelsea attempted 28 crosses against Brentford and only two were accurate.

They have injuries to contend with – even if their preposterous levels of investment should theoretically insulate their squad against such pitfalls – but if Chelsea so elementally underestimate and misunderstand what Brentford (a) means, they are in for another seasonal slog.

Nottingham Forest Those are some considerable home discomforts Forest and Oliver Glasner are experiencing – both separately and as a unit.

Forest have won one home league game in 2026, and that was against a Burnley side now bottom of the Championship. Glasner can double that calendar year tally, but one of his Selhurst Park victories came in the last minute against ten-man, relegated Wolves, and the other was through a stoppage-time penalty against Newcastle.

Glasner noted after the game how he “could see the players getting nervous, the entire City Ground getting nervous” after Coventry’s goal. It takes quite some effort to form a greater looming spectre over the club than Mr. Marinakis, but Forest’s home form has managed it.

Manchester United It is not an inherent flaw that Manchester United rank 16th for collective distance covered in the Premier League this season. Two of the teams below them in that table are above them in the slightly more significant actual table: Manchester City and Liverpool.

But it is precisely the sort of factor that will be ultimately contribute to Michael Carrick’s undoing.

There is plenty to be admired in his calm, controlled reaction to the more emotional, hyperbolic criticism of Gary Neville and Manchester United’s “walking”.

Carrick bristled at the suggestion his players lacked “passion” on the opening day against Hull, and rejected the idea they were “passive” at Fulham.

Yet Manchester United rank 20th in the Premier League this season for too many running metrics – distance at high intensity, time spent at high intensity, sprints and total time sprinting – to ignore, especially for a team which has spent less time leading than Nottingham Forest.

Leeds Daniel Farke did say afterwards that “it’s not 38 game days of magic nights under the floodlights, champagne football, you overrun the opponent and you score goals for fun,” but it is worth noting that emerging parallel to the brilliance of Elland Road Evening Game Leeds.

As the excellent Jonny Cooper pointed out on Sunday, Leeds have now failed to win their last 19 Premier League games with a kick-off before 3pm. That is a period so sustained that Jesse Marsch outthought Thomas Tuchel the last time it happened.

Leeds return from the international break against Arsenal (12:30pm) and then Manchester United (2pm). Stick the floodlights on, get everyone in their pyjamas, get Horlicks on tap in the dressing room and see what happens.

Ipswich The only team yet to keep a first-half clean sheet in the Premier League this season, which does make it quite difficult to establish any sort of momentum.