The Briefing: The Premier League title race is over, Rashford rejuvenated and the Palmer problem

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.

This was the weekend when Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest played out one of the strangest matches you’ll see all season, Chelsea’s slump continued as they were beaten by Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur made short work of Ipswich Town and Manchester United showed some backbone to draw 2-2 with Everton.

Here we will ask how on earth anyone can topple Liverpool, whether moving to Aston Villa has actually rejuvenated Marcus Rashford and why Cole Palmer is suffering a dip in form at Chelsea after failing to score or assist once again at the weekend.

Did we ever think the title race would be this… undramatic?

That’s that, then.

In all honesty, the Premier League title race was half over before this weekend. It was nearly all over after Arsenal lost to West Ham on Saturday. But it was killed stone dead by a brilliant, efficient, controlled 2-0 Liverpool victory over Manchester City on Sunday.

City losing games this season shouldn’t be a surprise anymore, but it was still mildly startling to see just how easily Liverpool held the reigning champions at bay. At no point did you think City would trouble Arne Slot’s side, who were slightly unlucky not to score more than two goals. Then again, two goals were more than enough.

And for this game, read the whole season. We knew City’s dominance wouldn’t last forever and one day someone would depose them, but did we really think it would be this straightforward? Well, perhaps not straightforward but… undramatic? Did we think the team that took their title would be 20 points clear of them in February?

For all City’s dominance has made previous seasons feel like inevitabilities, their past few title wins have actually been reasonably close. Last season they won it by two points. The season before it was five points, and was closer than that until Arsenal lost their third and second-last games. The season before that it was one point, and they had to come from behind to beat Aston Villa on the final day to seal it.

This season there will be no such drama. Unless something extraordinary happens, Liverpool will canter to the title and probably have it wrapped up with plenty of games to spare. They’re 11 points ahead of second-placed Arsenal, who admittedly have a game in hand — but it’s not merely the numerical gap that makes this a foregone conclusion.

Arsenal had their foibles and weaknesses even before they lost most of their first-choice, and some second-choice, forwards to injuries, but now they have so few options in attack, there is simply no way they can pick up enough points to make enough of a dent in Liverpool’s lead.

If Liverpool win at the rate they have so far, they will finish the season on 90 points. Let’s say they do drop off slightly, and end on, say, 85. That still requires Arsenal, currently on 53, to take 33 points from their last 12 games: or, to put it another way, win 11 of them. It would be a tall order if they had Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli fit for all of them, but they don’t so there’s just no way.

For Liverpool to not win the title from here would require one of the greatest chokes in football history. And as they showed against City on Sunday, they simply don’t look capable of that.

Is Rashford on the right path?

There’s a lot of narrative around Marcus Rashford.

When things were going wrong at Manchester United, the story was about his decline, about the kid who was the future once but, for reasons too varied and nuanced to boil down into responsible talking points, had become persona non grata at Old Trafford.

Now, having moved to Aston Villa on loan, the story is revival, rejuvenation, a change is as good as a rest, that maybe a new environment would breathe new life into a career that was going off the rails.

As such, it’s been tempting to lean into whichever narrative you prefer, and to over-emphasise any incident that supports whatever point of view you take.

Rashford has only made four appearances for Aston Villa since joining them on loan in January, 181 minutes on the pitch in which he hasn’t yet scored a goal, a sample size far too small to draw significant conclusions. If you are using that as proof that he is ‘back’, however you want to define that, then you have drunk too much from the narrative cup.

But it is at least nice to see him playing football again, to see him as part of a decent football team and away from United. Whatever the reasons for his decline, it’s clear he needed to get out of his boyhood club.

It was incredibly sad to watch, to remember how good he once was and see a facsimile of Rashford play more and more listlessly and be shifted more and more to the periphery.

Marco Asensio celebrates scoring Aston Villa’s second goal against Chelsea with Marcus Rashford (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

He registered two assists in Aston Villa’s win over Chelsea, prodding across the penalty area twice for Marco Asensio to score two goals. You can’t necessarily credit him with carving open the Chelsea defence and creating two chances from nothing, particularly the second which owed more to suspect goalkeeping than brilliant forward play.

But he looked like some of his vigour had returned. Every time he got the ball in that wide-left channel, you shifted a little further forward in your seat. You could hear the anticipation in the crowd. When he did that in the low points at United, you flinched slightly and hoped he didn’t embarrass himself.

Here he was quick, dynamic, direct. He was even tracking back and helping out his defence, something that was a key source of frustration at United.

His team-mates seem to enjoy having him around, too. “Every time he got the ball he was dangerous,” Youri Tielemans told Sky Sports after the game.

“Marcus is someone who can threaten everyone one-versus-one and even one-versus-two. He is very important for us in the way he plays because he gives us something different on the left-hand side.”

Rashford is not yet “back”. But, at the very least, it’s encouraging that he seems to be on the right path.

What’s wrong with Palmer?

Cole Palmer has not recorded a Premier League assist since December (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)

Football moves so fast these days that it’s easy to think that Palmer has been woefully out of form for months. Actually, he last scored a goal six league games ago, which is his longest dry spell in a Chelsea shirt. For a player whose main job is theoretically to create rather than to score goals, it isn’t that long.

It just feels much longer because of how brilliant he has been for his entire time at Chelsea.

He also hasn’t registered an assist since December 1, 15 games ago. Again, very concerning on the face of things, but assists are a tricky thing because they rely on others doing their jobs. In the time since his last actual assist, his xA (expected assist) number is 3.3. So, you can make a case that he’s actually still creating chances at a decent clip, but his colleagues just aren’t converting them.

You could even make the case that his fairly glaring miss against Aston Villa at the weekend, when he was set clean through on goal but stumbled and had his shot cleared off the line, was the consequence of bad luck rather than a player going through a crisis.

But the numbers are stark and the eye test suggests he is not playing with the same decisiveness as he was before. He appeared frustrated on the pitch against Villa, which is perfectly understandable but also perhaps betrays his lack of confidence.

This is probably just a blip. All players go through lean spells. Palmer hasn’t been playing terribly, and his team-mates aren’t exactly helping him out massively at the moment.

But it’s probably not a coincidence that his form has tailed off at about the same time Chelsea’s has. If Enzo Maresca’s team are to arrest the slide that has seen them win just three of their last 12 games in all competitions, they need Palmer back to his best.

Coming up

• What does a committed Premier League fan want after a Premier League weekend? More Premier League, of course! There’s a piping hot, juicy full midweek round to gobble up over the coming days. It starts on Tuesday with a quartet of so-so fixtures, the pick probably being Brighton & Hove Albion vs Bournemouth, but Crystal Palace vs Aston Villa should be decent, too.
• Then on Wednesday, some spicier games: Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester City! Liverpool vs Newcastle! Nottingham Forest vs Arsenal! Good stuff, cancel your plans.
• On Thursday, West Ham vs Leicester City rounds things off with a bang, but maybe only the bang of quite a small balloon popping.
• If international football is more your bag, there’s a nice big glut of Women’s Nations League games, the standout being a repeat of the 2023 Women’s World Cup final as England host Spain at Wembley on Wednesday.
• Finally, it’s FA Cup time next weekend, but next weekend actually starts this week as Aston Villa vs Cardiff City on Friday is the grand opening for the fifth-round games.

(Top photo: Getty Images)

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