What We've Learned About The Premier League So Far

We're 11 games into the new season and heading for yet another international break.

As always, these breaks are a chance to take a breather and think about how the season has been going and where it could go from here. There has been a lot of drama in the league so far. We've had injuries, shock defeats, underdogs overperforming, title contenders struggling, underrated players having the season of their lives and so on. Before the international break is over and the league returns, we want to take some time and recap everything that has happened and what we've learnt so far.

But first, a rant about injuries.

Honestly, I don't think that we have learnt that much about the league at its best thanks to the injury fest we seem to be having at the moment. Now, granted, the injuries are more severe with a few top clubs, Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle, and Brighton being the most unlucky teams so far. But even teams at the bottom of the table have been affected too: Wolves look so different now that Matheus Cunha is back. Even teams that have only one or two players out injured are suffering: Tottenham has had repeat injuries to Van de Ven, Aston Villa is having to make do without Boubacar Kamara, and so on. Whatever we have learnt so far, it is about a Premier League with a lot of clubs far off their best. So keep that in mind.

Personally, I think the blame for these injuries comes down heavily to the never-ending schedule of professional football players these days. The fact of the matter is that we have too many competitions, players are playing too many games, and therefore they are getting injured more just so the powers that be can make a few extra bucks. I hate it and I hope the players strike soon.

That being said, I think there are some takeaways from the season already that we can glean now that we are almost a third of the way through the season.

I'm having a two-day-old, ongoing back-and-forth with Fab on the Football channel over on Farcaster about the extent to which Arteta is to blame for the way the season is going. Arsenal started this season looking like they'd taken one step closer to having a squad to compete with Manchester City for the title.

They had added a new, exciting fullback in Riccardo Calafiori, a long-needed Left Central Midfielder in the form of Mikel Merino, and what seemed like a decent albeit temporary backup for Bukayo Saka in Raheem Sterling. Jurrien Timber returned from a year-long injury to play first-team football consistently for the first time since signing from Ajax. Of course, they also signed Neto from Wolves as a backup for Raya. Things were looking good.

But they've been anything but good.

With only 11 games gone, Arsenal have had to play games without Mikel Merino, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Ben White, Jurrien Timber, and Riccardo Calafiori for varying lengths of time due to injuries. And that's just from the starting eleven. They've also had the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus missing a lot of action. That makes for a very very sparse team to compete in four competitions at once. Five players in the starting eleven for Arsenal at Chelsea on Sunday were playing while carrying an injury or having just returned from treatment.

Fab is arguing that the problem is mostly Arteta's fault, that his training methods and refusal to rest his best players are the main cause of the injuries. While I think that Arteta can be blamed for not rotating his squad well enough and running his best players into the ground (whatever happens to Saka is his fault), I do think that most of these injuries are beyond his control. How could he know that Gabriel would bump into Merino on his first day of training and dislocate his shoulder? Sometimes it's just bad luck.

For more evidence of this just look at City. They've lost four games in a row now (for the first time in Guardiola's career), and they're battling an injury crisis of their own. Are the injuries down to Pep's training regimen? I doubt it. Nobody could have foreseen Rodri doing his ACL. Grealish, Savinho, Doku, KDB, Ruben Dias, John Stones, and Oscar Bobb are all out injured to varying degrees. Again, sometimes it's just bad luck.

Liverpool are top of the table in the Champions League and the Premier League. They have conceded the least amount of goals in each competition, and they seem to be able to find a goal when they need one. Salah is having another incredible season, Luis Diaz is in some form, and Nunez still misses sitters but scores worldies, and everything is going well on Merseyside right now.

What I find so interesting about this team is that Slot knows when to let them do their thing.

Slot has come in and brought a calmer, less chaotic, more defensively solid style of football than Klopp, which is why they are less vulnerable on transitions and conceding so few goals. But Slot also knows when to let them go full metal and play like they did under Klopp. In their recent 4-0 demolition of Bayer Leverkusen, you would be forgiven for thinking that Klopp is still in charge if you watched that game after waking up from a coma. Most of the attacking threat came from Liverpool breaking on the counter with pace and finding Salah or Diaz (or Gakpo) on the wings, and two of the goals came that way. Very Klopp-esque.

Slot may be bringing some control to the chaos on Merseyside, but he knows that sometimes chaos is more important than control, and for that, he has my respect. Should they continue to be lucky with injuries (and perhaps strengthen the squad in January), Liverpool may well be favourites to win it all this season.

Wolves finally picked up their first win of the season against Southampton on Saturday.

They've lost seven games, drawn three, and won one of the first eleven games of the season. They currently sit 19th in the table, firmly in the relegation region. Their opening games saw them play some of the most in-form teams at the time like Chelsea, Newcastle, and Aston Villa while missing key personnel like Matheus Cunha and Hwang Hee-chan.

To make matters worse, this period also saw Gary O'Neill experimenting with making the team play a more expansive, possession-based style of football. Their defeat against Liverpool was emblematic of this, a goal down and chasing the game, they spent most of the time on the ball passing it around at the back. There was no sense of urgency and you could tell that the players were still trying to adjust to the new style.

Thankfully, Cunha is back, and O'Neill seems to have binned the possession-based football idea for now, and things are looking up ever so slightly. They've lost none of their last three games, drawing to Brighton and Crystal Palace before beating Southampton. And they came very close to snatching a draw against Manchester City just before that. It does look like Wolves will be okay eventually.

I'm a big fan of Marco Silva. I've been keeping tabs on his career since his Everton days and I've been very impressed to see him grow and evolve. His Everton team was so frustrating to watch for me, they were an attacking-oriented, front-foot side. At Everton, he used many of the tactics that he now employs at Fulham like playing two athletic fullbacks and tasking them with supporting their wingers for ninety minutes. However, the side was always vulnerable on transitions. They played expansively and when they lost the ball high up the pitch they were so disorganised and they struggled to get back into a decent defensive shape.

Thankfully, many of the flaws in his Everton team no longer exist in his Fulham team, and I am delighted for the man. If there is one thing that is a promising sign for any manager, it's their ability to identify flaws in their game and change their plans to nullify those flaws. These promising signs notwithstanding, I wondered how Marco and Fulham would cope when they sold Palhinha. Especially given that Fulham didn't exactly sign a direct Palhinha replacement in the summer.

Fulham have not coped in Palhinha's absence, they've thrived despite it. After eleven games, Fulham sit in 7th place with 18 points, one point behind Chelsea in 3rd place. Instead of trying to play the way they did when Palhinha was around, Marco Silva has tinkered with his tactics ever so slightly. By dropping Perreira deeper and asking more from him defensively while bringing Sander Berge into the team, and using Iwobi's endless energy to press from the front, they've transitioned quite nicely to life without Palhinha. Raul Jimenez is also finding his feet again, and Emile Smith-Rowe is looking like a very shrewd purchase.

Maybe the biggest sign of Fulham's progress so far is that but for Adama Traore's inability to finish his chances, they would have probably beaten Manchester City. Their recent late comeback with two Harry Wilson goals to snatch victory against an in-form Brentford side will have done wonders for their confidence as a team. Life under Marco Silva is looking rosy, and like I've been saying all season, I fully expect Fulham to be in Europe next season.