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Enzo Maresca showed Arsenal that the title race will not be straightforward, while Manchester United, Unai Emery and Axel Disasi all have ample reason to be embarrassed.

The Premier League table is beginning to settle into shape, although a few sides still seem unaware that movement between the winners and losers columns is entirely possible.

Arsenal

For a seven-day stretch, Arsenal coming from behind to beat Chelsea, then travelling to snatch a late win at Napoli, before getting through a bruising 90-minute battle with Sunderland, perfectly sums up this absurdly compelling side.

No team shifts to its surroundings more smoothly, or switches styles more effectively. Arsenal can play, Arsenal can scrap and Arsenal can manage everything in between.

With the kind of decisive individual quality running through the squad, and the sort of structure illustrated by David Raya and Bruno Guimaraes, the champions are performing exactly like a side that has earned that label.

Enzo Maresca

“After the red card, all the planning and everything doesn’t exist any more,” Maresca said of a gameplan that had to be thrown “in the bin” because “we needed to defend with five players”.

“When you are one player down, it becomes completely difficult and changed the game,” he added, after turning a problem into a full-blown crisis with some dreadful management.

The circumstances were not identical. Phil Foden a) was sent off after 23 minutes rather than four, and b) is not a goalkeeper. But Maresca did learn from the mistakes of his previous 10-man trip to Old Trafford, and highlighted how that growth could keep Arsenal under pressure in the title race.

Much of it may have depended on how far Maresca trusted the players at his disposal. When Chelsea lost a man less than a year ago, his response was to immediately remove two forwards and then later withdraw a half-fit third, all within 21 minutes.

Manchester City’s experienced players steered them through this time, helped by a coach who stayed calm, resisted panic and even made positive changes that helped drive the win.

Even so, it is worth remembering just how comically disastrous that collapse was the last time around.

Alvaro Arbeloa

A very encouraging point, even if he did inherit Rafa Benitez’s short blanket at Anfield.

Hull

If the Manager of the Month curse cannot derail Sergej Jakirovic and his players, then perhaps it is time to ask what provision exists for Hull simply continuing to be excellent.

As he said after the draw with Chelsea: “We’ve shown again that we are a serious team and that it is not going to be easy to beat us.”

Even that may not fully do Hull justice, because they could quite realistically have beaten the Blues at Stamford Bridge.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this brilliant start is that, despite Hull signing a league-high 18 players in the summer, they are still leaning heavily on their Football League core. Thirteen new arrivals have yet to play more than an hour in the Premier League this season, while five are still waiting for their debut.

Only Konstantinos Tzolakis, Elliot Stroud and Nobel Mendy started against Chelsea after arriving in the summer. The latter two were later replaced by Lucas Herrington and Sorba Thomas, two more newcomers who appear to understand that, by and large, the players who got Hull here will be trusted to keep them here.

Brighton

The hat-trick is on. Brighton had the highest number of different Premier League scorers last season (19) and the season before that (18), and already have eight different players on the scoresheet in 2026/27.

No other club has more than five.

Oliver Glasner

There he is.

Glasner transformed a return of one win in six into the greatest spell in Crystal Palace’s history, so it will be fascinating to see what he can do after beginning with one in five at the two-time European champions.

Judging by that superb winning goal, he will be very enjoyable to watch.

A narrow defeat and two draws against fading but still protected members of the Big Six were hardly cause for alarm, apart from among those fearing another bout of Mr Marinakis madness.

But this was a necessary burden lifted: the first win of the new era, backed by strong displays from all four summer first-team signings, and creative, effective coaching fixes born from injury-driven necessity.

Nottingham Forest are beginning to click, and Glasner looks to be finding his rhythm.

Jarrad Branthwaite

In four of the last five Premier League seasons, James Tarkowski has blocked more shots than any other player. This season, Branthwaite already has at least two more blocks than anyone else, including some outstanding interventions against Spurs.

“Jaz is an amazing partner. Strong as an ox, rapid, brilliant on the ball, two-footed, communicates really well,” Tarkowski said, in the unusual position of personally helping to shape the rise of his natural successor.

They must be a nightmare to come up against in training.

Leif Davis

It will be exceptionally amusing when Ipswich fans take the forthcoming England snub of Davis as a deeply personal insult and an unforgivable attack on their club’s very existence, simply to feel something during one of the most endless international breaks imaginable.

A match-winning performance against 10-man Crystal Palace, coming two weeks after scoring in a thrashing of Manchester United, does not exactly make it easy for Thomas Tuchel and his supposed built-in bias against Ipswich to ignore.

But Davis is undeniably a better player now than he was in his first full Premier League season two years ago. He is also a different player. Ipswich’s main creator in 2024/25, and ninth in the entire division for chances created, is now being asked by Gary O’Neil to get on the end of chances more often himself.

“We pick how we use him – sometimes we use him inside, sometimes we move him outside,” said the manager. “He arrived in the box so many times [against Liverpool] but always kept missing the cross. Today, he nailed it.”

The result is that Davis is averaging roughly three times as many shots and twice as many touches in the opposition penalty area per 90 minutes this season compared with Ipswich’s previous Premier League campaign, and he has already made this the joint second-best league scoring season of his career.

He was involved in all three goals against Palace. Put him on whichever mode of transport gets him there fastest.

Crystal Palace

Axel Disasi is suspended for three games.

Axel Disasi

There is a broader issue here concerning the generally dreadful standard of Crystal Palace’s defending, best illustrated by the fact they have conceded at least two goals in nine successive Premier League matches.

The last time they did not allow two or more in a Premier League game came against a) a team no longer in the Premier League, and b) a team silly enough to take Disasi on loan for a while.

West Ham rather enjoyed the Chelsea exile’s style, but Palace, through no real fault of Disasi’s, required far more.

The two best centre-backs in their history have been sold this year for an already cut-price £72m, and their replacements were a loanee from a relegated side, free agent Takehiro Tomiyasu, and two highly inexperienced teenagers – one of them, inevitably, borrowed from Chelsea.

With Disasi leading that back line, it is hardly surprising that it falls apart. His mindless red card for a shin-high challenge well inside the opposition half was not the only bewildering individual error from a Palace defender, or goalkeeper, against Ipswich, but it unquestionably set the tone and did the most damage.

Coventry

Have Coventry been unlucky to face each member of the current top four in their opening four matches of the season? Or are those teams only the current top four because they are the only sides to have played Coventry? Insert Matt-Le-Tissier-hmm.jpg.

The mystery of why clubs keep appointing Frank Lampard continues. If he genuinely believes “the players gave everything until the end” of a 5-0 defeat in which they shipped three goals from the 70th minute onwards, then they may as well start preparing for the Championship right now.

Manchester United

Their flaws can, should and already have been examined in painstaking detail across 2,500 words. These are relentless shortcomings that justify equally savage critiques at one-third of that length while being no less brutal. And there are entirely legitimate tactical reasons to condemn Manchester United too.

But, really, they remain a fundamentally unserious football club, filled with unserious footballers and led by an unserious football manager. Manchester United had never lost at Old Trafford against ten men in their entire history, and now they have done it twice in the last ten months, despite enjoying a numerical advantage for well over a half of football on both occasions.

The temptation may be to hide behind, or pin everything on, one subjective refereeing decision, but their complete inability to make use of the advantage created by another does rather drain away any sympathy.

Unai Emery

Money cannot buy luck, and Aston Villa would probably feel compelled by SCR regulations to sell half the squad just to finance the purchase anyway.

They probably would have held on for a draw with 11 players, but Ian Maatsen’s late injury arrived after Emery had already used all five substitutions. Another of those changes had been forced in the first half when Pau Torres had to go off, while it was also noted that the booked Nicolas Jackson was walking the kind of disciplinary tightrope he so often fell from at Chelsea.

That in turn also required the introduction of Alysson, because Emery himself admitted Villa were not going to get defence-stretching runs in behind from Tammy Abraham.

So by half-time Villa had already made three substitutions, which meant their double switch on the hour left them exposed to a situation like John McGinn freelancing at left-back and, inevitably, being targeted to great effect.

On another day, Forest might have had a player sent off for the challenge that injured Maatsen, Emery could have made a different sequence of tactical choices, and Villa’s best opportunities might have fallen to someone other than Victor Lindelof.

As things stand, though, luck is not with Villa, and Emery himself will accept that it is his “responsibility” to turn the momentum around.

Chelsea

Xabi Alonso twice complained that his side were “soft”, with the Spaniard craving a more “boring game” shaped by Chelsea control.

This remains a process, and the Blues do not look especially close to controlling matches consistently against opponents of this level. In their current form, games are happening to them, and results are simply being dictated by the natural rhythm of 90-minute contests.

No Premier League team has conceded more shots on target this season, which suggests an element of bad luck in terms of opponents’ finishing on the day, but it also reveals Chelsea’s habit of surrendering better opportunities through dreadful decisions in dangerous areas.

The old cliché about not letting the ball bounce exists for a reason. Wesley Fofana, Malo Gusto and Jorrel Hato were all guilty of it from a long Tzolakis kick for Hull’s first goal. And a painfully naive set-up at a corner – with Mohamed Belloumi left without an opponent within at least ten yards of him on the edge of the box as Chelsea committed bodies forward for a possible counter – combined with Emi Martinez’s failed punch, helped bring about the second.

Chelsea’s next match is against Brentford, the side against whom they recorded their last Premier League clean sheet, an utterly ridiculous 21 games ago. They are certainly too “soft” to mount a title challenge, but if that issue is not corrected it could also cost them Champions League qualification.

Liverpool

Since winning the title 17 months ago, Liverpool have won 18 of their 46 Premier League matches: fewer than Brighton, the same as Brentford and only one more than Everton.

Andoni Iraola, who has drawn five of his last six, 11 of his last 16 and 21 of his last 38 Premier League games, is not in himself the cause of Liverpool’s long-running problem with winning, but neither has he yet done quite enough to be trusted as the clear answer.

Anfield in particular seems to be a problem for them. Fulham are one of only four teams Liverpool have beaten at home in the Premier League this calendar year, and they fully deserved their first point and clean sheet of the season in front of a stadium that had a noticeable number of empty seats before the final whistle.

Iraola was not making excuses when he referred to “a lack of freshness” in a somewhat rotated side featuring Kostas sodding Tsimikas in the apparently cursed left-back role; he added that “it’s going to be the same way during the season” and “we have to adapt to these circumstances”.

But the grind of playing twice a week, something the manager is not used to, has become awkwardly entangled with Liverpool’s lost aura at home, and some persistently dreadful recruitment, to create a powerful feeling of stagnation.