Merson says: Advantage Arsenal after ‘vital’ win but Man City’s performance a warning

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Paul Merson gives his verdict on the opening weekend of the season, including a “vital” win for Arsenal at Man Utd and Man City’s “impressive” rout of Wolves.

In his exclusive column for skysports.com, the Magic Man also gives his thoughts on United’s goalkeeper issues, Tottenham’s start under Thomas Frank and Chelsea’s lack of cutting edge in front of goal…

‘Advantage Arsenal? Huge win for Arteta amid difficult fixtures’

The name of the game is winning.

Old Trafford is a difficult place to go, especially on the opening weekend, but Arsenal found a way to win.

They will need to improve because it wasn’t the greatest of displays. They had to rely on a set piece again, but they got their goal, and the defence was rock solid. They got themselves over the line for a vital three points, especially with the game against Liverpool coming up soon.

It was a must-win game with Liverpool away, Man City at home and Newcastle away coming up, but they will have to play better to get results in those games.

But advantage Arsenal. The way I see it now is Liverpool and Man City have to go to Old Trafford to win to match Arsenal, and that’s a huge positive at such an early stage of the season.

Special mention for Martin Odegaard. I thought he was back to his best.

There were a couple of times he didn’t have the options on the counter, and he also made a couple of wrong decisions, but he was so much better than last season.

If he can maintain those levels that is a big plus for Arsenal.

‘Impressive City send out warning’

No-one has really even mentioned Man City in the build up to the season.

It’s like no-one knew what to expect from Pep Guardiola and his side, but they really impressed me. It’s like we forgot how good they can be because of how bad they were last season. People are starting to take notice now, however.

The win at Wolves was a warning to the other sides wanting to win the title.

Tijjani Reijnders was impressive. He made things look so easy and with good players around him at Man City, he’ll get better and better.

I know it wasn’t the hardest game in Wolves, but winning away from home 4-0 on the opening day of the Premier League is no mean feat.

It was the result of the weekend for me because no-one on Soccer Saturday mentioned them as title winners. Everyone is on Liverpool or Arsenal but the performance from City was a wake-up call for everyone.

There will be bigger tests to come for them, that’s for sure, starting on Saturday against Spurs, but they were very impressive.

‘You can’t win things without a good goalkeeper’

It is rare in football that a club wins a league title, a Champions League, a Euros or a World Cup without a solid goalkeeper.

You have to have a good goalkeeper because they save you points. David Raya won Arsenal points on Sunday, Alisson Becker does it continually for Liverpool and Ederson has done it through the years at Man City.

Altay Bayindir has lost Man Utd points already with that error against Arsenal. It was a big mistake, a critical mistake in the end.

I can’t emphasise how important a top goalkeeper is to a football club and Man Utd have to now react before the transfer window closes.

Apart from that error, Man Utd did alright against Arsenal.

I was impressed with Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo but there is still plenty they need to work on to improve as a cohesive unit.

I really like Matheus Cunha as a player. He’s off the cuff as a player. He’s a real handful for opposition teams.

Add in a fit and firing Benjamin Sesko and they will definitely cause plenty of teams problems, but there is still plenty to solve for Ruben Amorim.

They played as well as they could against Arsenal but still lost the game. That’s not the best sign for a team.

I still can’t see them not being around the middle of the table come the end of the season without further improvement before the transfer window closes.

Stop Palmer, stop Chelsea? ‘He needs help’

Chelsea were not good against Crystal Palace. The draw was worrying.

If Cole Palmer isn’t going to break a team down, I’m not sure who is for Chelsea.

Palmer is now the talk of the town in team talks up against Chelsea. Teams are trying to stop him because they think stop him, stop Chelsea. Stop Cole Palmer will be the message for West Ham on Friday. That’s just how it is.

He needs some support. If opposition teams pick him up and mark him well, I’m not sure what threat Chelsea have. Pedro Neto and Jamie Gittens have pace, but they struggled to beat their defenders on Sunday.

But he also has to have a bit of faith in the team. He needs to stay as high up the pitch as he can because when he gets frustrated, he gets deeper and deeper. He goes shorter and shorter to get the ball and it’s so difficult to hurt a team from inside his own half.

It’s hard for Palmer. You’ve got have runners around when you get the ball and for me, he hasn’t got those.

Friday 22nd August 7:00pm


Kick off 8:00pm

It’s not just all on Palmer because Enzo Maresca has to come up with solutions too. He has to work out a way to get him the ball in areas where he can hurt teams. But for Palmer, patience is key. He has to wait for the ball a bit more instead of dropping deep to come and get it.

You cannot hurt anybody on the halfway line. He needs the ball in and around the box where he’s special.

‘You don’t need to be Einstein to know how to play against PSG and Burnley’

I’m not buying it just yet with Spurs.

That was a must-win game against Burnley. I expected it to be a bit tighter so credit to Spurs for that, but it would have been a shock had they not got all three points at the weekend.

It was a good result, but the acid test is still to come. Let’s see how they perform at Man City at the weekend and then we can start to make a judgement.

People were going mad about the PSG performance but there’s still a long way to go for Spurs.

It wasn’t hard for Thomas Frank to change things up considering what came before. Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs were so open, as open as you can ever seem from a football manager and team, so it wasn’t going to take much to adjust.

You don’t need to be Albert Einstein to work out how to play against PSG. You need as many defenders as you can on the pitch. Then, against Burnley, you need as many attackers on the pitch as you can to keep causing them problems.

A lot of Tottenham fans have been on already saying this is it, but the acid test is against Man City this weekend and he can set up to stop Pep Guardiola’s side playing.

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