Ole Gunnar Solskjaer finds a way as Premier League middle-classes show their quality

Saturday's winning Sporting Life football tips

• Under 2.5 goals in Frankfurt v Leipzig at 8/5
• Man Utd to beat Tottenham at 7/5
• Burnley to beat Brentford at 17/10
• Over 2.5 goals in Burnley v Brentford at 6/5
• Under 2.5 goals in Watford v Southampton at 19/20
• Over 2.5 goals in Newcastle v Chelsea at 3/4
• Both teams to score in Plymouth v Ipswich at 17/20
• Mitrovic first Fulham scorer v West Brom at 7/4
• Under 2.5 goals in Leicester v Arsenal at 11/10

United draw up a blueprint but Spurs remain a mystery

This is how Manchester United should always be playing, a tediously cautious style of football that keeps things tight until Cristiano Ronaldo does something amazing. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer clearly doesn't have the coaching pedigree for expansive and direct attacking football, for the United Way as he puts it.

Instead, try the Galactico Way, the Zinedine Zidane Way.

So many of their problems this season have been about defensive frailty, a knock-on effect of Solskjaer deciding it's time to play on the front foot. But at Spurs we finally saw some humility and a return to the defence-first, counter-attacking strategy that compresses space (nobody rushed out of position today) and waits, patiently, for Ronaldo to turn up.

It is far from ideal, and it won't win titles. But Solskjaer is in crisis management mode and this, surely, is his best blueprint. With it, he could emulate how Zidane's Real Madrid stood for little, tried to do very little, and then won the 'moments'.

There is still a Champions League up for grabs and it is not impossible to fluke that with players like Ronaldo, sensational on Saturday, and Bruno Fernandes.

Certainly the 3-5-2 gave food for thought. United's back three provided a layer of security that a hapless Harry Kane found no way to break beyond, while Fernandes was surprisingly effective as the right-sided central midfielder in a three.

He found pockets of space in the transition to set United on their way, largely because Tottenham's narrow 4-3-3 left too much room on the outside.

And truthfully United didn't have to be particularly good today. Spurs were dreadful, arguably as bad as in any of their games under Nuno Espirito Santo so far and, in front of an increasingly mutinous crowd, it felt like an endgame performance at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

What is Nuno's plan? Nobody seems to know, certainly not the players.

Their attempts to progress the ball through the lines are chaotic to the point of random, and yet – unlike his Wolves team – there is no alternative method in the works: no cross-field passes; no attempts to bypass midfield with a more direct approach; no partnerships emerging.

This was never going to be a game of high quality, but credit to Solskjaer for dramatically altering his tactical setup to take a deserved three points.

It's unlikely to be a turning point, not unless he abandons the attempt to play expressive, entertaining football for the rest of the season. Nevertheless today he had a plan, which has not always been the case. Nuno did not.

Ramsdale performance makes the brittle look gritty

From a dominant first-half blitz led by Alexandre Lacazette’s slippery performance as a second striker to a backs-to-the-wall showing of defensive resolve in the second 45, Arsenal managed to deploy two radically different tactical approaches in the same game – an impressive feat that shows Mikel Arteta’s team is coming together.

Or, if you cut off what happened in the two goalmouths, an excellent first 30 minutes followed by a familiarly passive collapse; a nervous, shrinking retreat towards their own goal that would have led to a Leicester City comeback if not for Aaron Ramsdale’s heroics.

Analysis is always skewed towards goals, actions that are often close to random – millimetres either side of brilliance, from shooter and goalkeeper – and therefore should be given less weight in the narrative.

The Saturday lunchtime game was a clear example of this, a story applied retrospectively to events that were actually dictated simply by one exceptional performance in goal.

Ramsdale made another brittle second half look like grit and steel, like an Arsenal team maturing. Leicester’s xG was 1.89 compared to Arsenal’s 0.85.

In Arteta’s defence, it does look as though this is part of a deliberate strategy to press hard from the outset, race into the lead, and then sit deeper to frustrate, but really only the first part of that system worked.

Leicester’s 3-5-2 was in poor shape in the first half. When Arsenal were building out from the back James Maddison was pulled too far to the left; Youri Tielemans repeatedly broke rank by pressing someone on his own; and the front two left a large gap between themselves and the Leicester midfield.

This allowed Bukayo Saka, Lacazette, and Emile Smith Rowe to run the game, swarming the hosts and deservedly taking the 2-0 lead.

What followed can’t have been Arteta’s plan. As Leicester cranked up the pressure, primarily thanks to Brendan Rodgers switching to a 4-2-3-1, Arsenal frantically dropped their line a good 20 yards.

This opened up a huge patch of grass just inside the Arsenal half, in which Tielemans and Harvey Barnes in particular could run the game. Only a string of saves from Ramsdale, including one from a free-kick that was scarcely believable, prevented a comeback.

And had Leicester managed it, all the talk would be of another Arsenal collapse; of a frail, hesitant defence unable to swagger for a full 90 minutes. We shouldn’t let the scoreline distract us. That is, in fact, exactly what happened.

Rise of the middle-class prevents monopoly at the top

When Manchester City and Liverpool won 98 and 97 points respectively in the 2018/19 season we thought we would never again see two such extraordinarily talented teams compete in the Premier League.

That remains true, but only if we revise the theory a little.

In retrospect as magnificent, as era-defining, as Jurgen Klopp's and Pep Guardiola's teams have been over the last few years it is time to admit the Premier League itself wasn't of a particularly high standard.

That, surely, is the only conclusion to reach as we watch these two sides play to their unbelievable best in 2021/22... only to continually drop points against mid-table clubs. Between them, City and Liverpool have dropped 18 points from 20 games.

Crystal Palace are Man City's bogey team and their 2-0 win at the Etihad on Saturday wasn't unique, but what was unusual was the quality of their performance. It was not smash-and-grab as it has been in the past, but rather another example of Patrick Vieira's aggressive midfield press asserting itself.

Over at Anfield, Brighton came back from 2-0 down because of a daring tactical decision from Graham Potter to leave three attackers high at all times, allowing them to catch Liverpool's high line on the break.

Vieira and Potter are a significant tactical upgrade on their predecessors Roy Hodgson and Chris Hughton, following the trend of the Premier League's middle-class improving all the time.

Look back to 2018/19 and the quality is markedly lower: this was a division with the likes of Mark Hughes and Claude Puel in mid-table jobs.

The Premier League has got a lot better. And that means Man City and Liverpool, no matter how good they are, will not be able to reach the heights of three years ago.

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