No prizes for guessing the game of the weekend, but there’s also the prospect of a Manchester United debutant beginning the trivial task of simply fixing all of their problems. It is, in short, a Big Weekend.
Game to watch: Tottenham v Arsenal
Routinely two of the best games of every Premier League season, the North London Derby almost never lets you down. We can’t decide if it’s ironic or simply very apt that two teams who so often set the benchmark for letting you down in the end almost never, ever do when they come into direct contact with each other.
This one feels like it’s beautifully set up, too. Arsenal’s injury crisis is being overplayed, of course, but is still significant. As their most vocally online fans cry about cancelling the season because Martin Odegaard might be out for a fortnight, the more thoughtful might ponder just how far they’ve come in such a short space of time that having to rely on a midfield containing three vastly experienced senior internationals in Jorginho, Thomas Partey and Kai Havertz is what now constitutes a crisis.
But it does make this all look a little bit more old Arsenal. You know, like three-years-ago Arsenal. A potentially vulnerable Arsenal, and at a time when that is least welcome, with Spurs and City away either side of the first Champions League game of the season.
Decent case to be made that if you asked Arsenal to pick any two Premier League games in which they would most fear being depleted, it would be these two. City because they are City, and Spurs because they are Spurs.
The focus has, inevitably, fallen largely on the visitors here given the assorted setbacks across the international break but really it’s Spurs who have the most questions to answer. They’ve had a very silly start to the season, largely controlling games at Leicester and Newcastle yet carelessly emerging with only a point to show from them.
This game is unlikely to look much like those, and even less like the routine 4-0 thrashing of poor old Everton, but Spurs really could do with providing some evidence that the Postecoglou Project remains on track. They’ve been really quite poor for a really quite long time now, failing to beat anyone of note since a wild 4-0 win at Aston Villa back in March. They’ve been handed an unexpectedly feasible chance of putting that right.
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Team to watch: Everton
They head into the weekend as one of only two pointless teams left in the competition, and, with Southampton in Saturday lunchtime action against Man United, Everton might even be out on their own by the time they play Aston Villa.
They’ve had two weeks to stew on that truly absurd defeat to Bournemouth before the international break, and in classic Everton style the break has been spent in a swirl of unhelpful uncertainty over further takeover talk.
They take on a Villa side who have beaten West Ham and Leicester while losing to Arsenal, and the bad news for Toffees fans is that it’s quite obvious which category of club they are currently closer to.
A 4-0 defeat at Villa was one of three straight Premier League losses Everton suffered at the start of last season, but despite the assorted bleaknesses they’ve suffered over the years they have never started a Premier League season with four defeats in a row. Yet.
Player to watch: Manuel Ugarte
Hard to think of another summer signing of whom more is expected and indeed demanded than Ugarte. The timing of his move, arriving just before the latest Casemiro Blunder Hour against Liverpool but being unable to do anything about it having not been registered in time to feature is clearly no fault of the Uruguayan but has ramped up the already massive pressure on his shoulders.
His task is a deceptively simple one. Just come in and fix – or at the very least convincingly mask – all the problems currently afflicting Manchester United. Come on, mate, crack on.
There’s no doubt Ugarte possesses the qualities and talent that United’s midfield has lacked since Casemiro fell off so badly, and it’s worth remembering just how different a side Erik ten Hag’s United were in that first season when their midfield existed.
Everything being asked of Ugarte is clearly unreasonable, but he does at least have the advantage of a relatively straightforward opening task. What looked like a catastrophic misjudgement in not having Ugarte available against Liverpool might prove an accidental masterstroke; he now gets an easier start in every way. The opposition is easier, but so too is the task of being obviously better than what was there before.
Manager to watch: Eddie Howe
All feels a touch febrile at Newcastle. They’ve made a decent enough start to the season, but there’s a fragility to it. They made hard work of beating Southampton at home, were fortunate to escape Bournemouth with a point and the performance that sneaked them past Spurs would not have beaten a less generous team.
But more than that there remains what feels like an uneasy truce between manager and boardroom after what was by any reasonable measure a messy, botched summer for a club with Newcastle’s ambition.
Key gaps in the squad have been left unfilled and Howe is entitled to feel this isn’t quite what he signed up for, even if he remains reluctant to admit out loud precisely what it is he signed up for.
And yet, here they are with seven points from nine ahead of a trip to a Wolves side smashed to bits by Chelsea – Chelsea! – in their previous home game and with Fulham to come after that.
Newcastle could quite feasibly become the first crisis club in history to have 13 points from their first five games.
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Football League game to watch: Leeds v Burnley
A Premier League team from last season travels to one who reckon they should probably be one this season, with both setting about the task of ensuring they get there next season.
Leeds had a tumultuous summer and difficult start but back-to-back wins in Yorkshire derbies have got them back on track while Burnley have gone the other way, starting with a pair of wins before defeat at Sunderland and a draw with local rivals Blackburn.
It all leaves both sides in the top six and a point apart heading into what even at this early stage looks a pretty significant fixture for the Championship promotion picture.
European game to watch: Girona v Barcelona
Barcelona take their flawless La Liga record to Girona for a Catalan derby with plenty on it. Last season’s surprise package, Girona inflicted a pair of memorable 4-2 defeats on Barca and don’t yet appear to be going away quietly like so many surprise packages before them.
After this local derby they face PSG in their Champions League bow and, while this is a very different Barcelona side in lots of ways, the memories of last season and the adventure that awaits means Girona once again present a uniquely vexing threat to their more storied rivals.