Weekly update: Monday 4th November

Which teams are in form right now in the Premier League?

Liverpool remain dominant with five wins in the last six games and are growing from strength to strength, and with three wins in the Champions League, sitting in second place behind the leaders Aston Villa. They look like a team that has a slower style of play than Klopp’s heavy metal approach, with a focus on ball control, space exploitation, and tactical flexibility, win the ball, create space in the middle and switch the play fast to the wingers, and breaking the opposition’s high line press, and use of double pivots and 4-2-3-1 formation, and total football where Diaz moves in the middle and McAllister takes the wing position.

Liverpool edged it slightly against Brighton winning 2-1 at Anfield. Gakpo igniting the fire in the 70th minute with a beautiful cross into the danger zone, then Salah taking advantage of tired legs with a trademark run and left footer on the counter and a bullet finish into to the top left corner of the net.

Title contenders, possibly but a lot to prove yet. Interesting, considering they hardly spent in the summer and players are adapting well. The players are improving through good coaching and key players like Trent instead of fixating on his defensive failures, Slot has pinpointed small tweaks to up (help) his defensive game, and their attackers are all contributing to goals, one team with a lot of goals coming from different players, with Salah and Diaz with 7 and 5 respectively.

Brighton who have now lost and drawn the last two games, after a decent start, are looking good but can they continue their form under their new young German manager.

City are dithering a bit with a few but important players missing like De Bruyne, Rodri, Grealish, Oscar Bobb and Ruben Dias so lack that creativity and always have a bit of a slow start, they have let in 11 goals but scored 22. Chelsea, Maresca and standout players Caicedo and Palmer have worked out something that works, can they keep pushing on? I think they will be fighting for Europe, as their billion worth of talent is finally paying dividends, under a manager who has a clear way of playing. They are ahead of schedule, and fourth place is within reach competing with Villa and all the others around them.

Nottingham Forest are the suprise package, winning once more against West-Ham, they are team that some pundits had in relegation and are on a good run. Simply, a case of underrated players like Chris Wood, Anderson and Hudson-Odoi finding their feet at a smaller club where they can excel. Wood has joint second most goals with 8 goals, and the highest shot accuracy with 67% v 60% for Haaland, so an in form strikers helps a lot. The team are gelling on all fronts and seem to have a point to prove, how long will they continue this? Let’s see as they face another team who has rekindled their form in Newcastle United with two wins in a week, a brilliant goal against out-of-form Arsenal, with a cross taking straight from the 90s books.

Tottenham delivered a brilliant second half against Aston Villa, and there is a bit of bite about them, they always struggle with inconsistency but their attacking players are enjoying themselves, since B.Johnson deleted his social media because of some backlash he has looked a different player with six goals so far in all competitions, four in the league joint with Solanke who is growing in confidence as well, Johnson sits ahead of Son Heung-Min and James Maddison by one goal in the league.

Can Tottenham continue their run? I’m not sure as they always seem to cave against unlikely teams to lose against, but they are playing good positive football.

Bournemouth are the team which like Forest are over performing. They are managed by the brilliant Spanish manager Iraola who has added steel and directness and fluidity to their game, they look like a tough team who play direct, front-foot football and who took the game to a poor ‘flat’ looking Man City instead of sitting back and relying on countering. Bournemouth took the lead with Semenyo and Kerkez hugely impressive players, are showing a lot of potential. They may have lost Solanke, but they are playing with full of confidence and the manager definitely wants to build Bournemouth into more than a small seaside club, and seems to be looking to build the club, exciting times for them.

Which teams are in form in Europe?

Barca win another with a 3-1 win at home against Espanyol, Atletico Madrid have now won two in a row, the key for Barca has got to be Lewandoski the classy Polish who is scoring goals for fun with the most goals in all top 5 leagues in Europe with 14 goals, a classy player who gets better as he ages.

Osasuna are looking really good with two wins in the last three games, and have a big game against slightly out-of-form Real Madrid on the 9th November at the Bernabeu, a tough fixture.

Bayer Munich continue their resurgence with three wins in a row in their mission to reclaim ‘their’ title from Leverkussen, winning 4-1 against Werden Bremen, Harry Kane is enjoying himself with the joint second most goals in all the top 5 leagues, with 11 goals, alongside Atalanta forward Mateo Retegui and Haaland.

Leipzig had four wins in a row before this weekend’s narrow 2-1 loss, they are looking good with Lois Openda with 5 goals, equal with Bayern’s Olise. Frankfurt demolished Bochum 7-2, and Omar Marmosh with 10 goals in the league, another Egyptian who is on fire at the moment.

Napoli had five wins in a row before losing to in-form Atalanta at home, stunning them, surprisingly their leading goalscorer was on the bench before coming off with 10 minutes to score in stoppage time. Atalanta now have an impressive 5 wins in a row and sit third with Inter Milan with 5 wins and undefeated in six games. Atalanta’s Lookman with a brace of two early goals and taking his goal tally to 7 in all competitions, the British players doing well in Italy, with Scott mctominay proving that it wasn’t him the problem but that Man Utd perhaps had structural issues to solve.

Fiorentina looking really good in fourth place with five wins in a row, under their young new manager Raffaele Palladino, who similar to Man Utd new manager Ruben Amorim, likes to three player defence and a 3-4-2-1 formation.

PSG lead the way in the French league 1 with three wins in a row. Lille and Nice are looking good in fourth and fifth. Marseille and Monaco are the current league contenders to rival PSG for the league title, although Monaco have lost two in a row with a poor 0-1 defeat to Angers at home (who have now won two in a row).

Marseille’s Greenwood has seven goals in the league, second after Barcola for PSG, and the impressive New Yorker and Lille striker Jonathan David with the same amount of goals, just ahead of the Nice striker Evann Guessand with six goals. All to play for.

Which teams will up their game this week and which strikers will challenge the leading scorers? Let’s wait and see.