Aston Villa’s 11th straight win might be the most impressive. Plus: Inter must sharpen up

The festive fixtures are in full swing, but while several of Europe’s top leagues are on a winter break, the English Premier League and Italian Serie A still offered plenty to talk about. (So too did the Africa Cup of Nations, which kicked off last weekend.) First up, Aston Villa‘s impressive come-from-behind win at Chelsea was a battle of top four teams after which Unai Emery’s side might legitimately be entering the title race alongside Arsenal and Manchester City.

In Italy, Inter Milan rode their luck at times in defeating Atalanta 1-0, but they’re going to need to sharpen up if they’re to run away with the Scudetto. (That said, with Christian Pulisic in A-plus form for AC Milan, expect any title race to go down to the wire.) Elsewhere, we had talking points galore around Tottenham (they won a game!), Liverpool (Florian Wirtz scored a goal!), Cristiano Ronaldo (he can’t stop scoring), Arsenal (wow, David Raya!) and so much more.

It’s Monday morning, so what better time for some musings? Let’s get into it.

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– Ranked: 25 of the best kits from the 21st century
– Lindop: Wirtz finally scores, but Liverpool still need work
– Ian Darke’s PL team of the season so far

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Aston Villa make it 11 straight wins, but this one’s on Chelsea too…

It pretty much has to be. You’re a goal up at home, you didn’t even let the opposition take a single shot of any kind until the second half and somehow, you end up losing 2-1. When that happens, it’s not just because Aston Villa finished strong and Unai Emery got his substitutions (is it witchcraft?) right.

Chelsea can recriminate about the missed opportunities in the first half, or the penalty they didn’t get when the ball struck Ian Maatsen‘s arm. Fine: maybe they would have scored enough goals to get the three points, but it wouldn’t explain the late collapse, either.

Four shots — three of them blocked — is not an acceptable second-half return in a game like this. Enzo Maresca is squeezing as much as he can out of this group, but some facts are undeniable.

The revolving cast of characters lining up alongside Trevoh Chalobah affects the chemistry and stability of his back line. A midfield duo of Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández risks being outmanned unless Caicedo dons his Superman cape, which he does often, but not always. Up front, João Pedro is a second forward/number 10 type and Liam Delap is having a rough season. You could get away with them if the wingers scored regularly, but they don’t: Take Pedro Neto out of the mix, and the other three have combined for just two league goals. Last season, Cole Palmer papered over a lot of cracks. This year, with injuries playing a part, he’s back to being human (for now), and Chelsea are paying a price.

As for Villa, Emery looks like a genius because his substitutions paid off. They worked out, as Ollie Watkins scored the two goals that turned things around, but in fact, what else was he supposed to do? Emery played the cards he had, needing to come back — hence Watkins, Amadou Onana (who you assume was being rested) and Jadon Sancho are called in. In fact, the only reserves who didn’t get into the game for Villa were a defender (Andrés García) and two teenagers.

Villa’s run under Emery is unbelievable — they’re three points off the top, in case you hadn’t noticed — but it wasn’t Saturday’s subs that make him great. It’s what he has done since late September in all competitions, winning 17 of 19 games, making individual players better and showing that tactics and coaching matter.

Can they make it a three-way race for the title? We’ll know real soon: Arsenal away are up next.

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Inter beat Atalanta to stay top of Serie A, but they’re playing a dangerous game

The weekend’s 1-0 win sends them a point clear of Milan, but there’s a parallel world where things work out differently. One where Berat Djimsiti doesn’t give the ball away to gift Lautaro Martínez a goal midway through the second half. One where Lazar Samardzic doesn’t miss a sitter on his left foot and Inter end up losing.

Coming off the back of the Super Cup elimination against Bologna, another defeat could have sent them into 2026 under a cloud, and that would have been hugely frustrating because, truth be told, Inter dominated much of the game, creating chances and pinning Atalanta back. They had their foot firmly on the opposition neck only to relent around the hour mark and, after taking the lead, retreating into a 5-4-1 formation that invited only danger.

You’ve played well, you should have scored more, so finish the game the way you played most of it: going for the jugular. In Cristian Chivu’s defense, you imagine it was a case of not having another forward to put on (Ange-Yoan Bonny was unavailable, the other forwards on the bench were teenagers) and wanting to preserve Lautaro (Marcus Thuram had earlier made way for Francesco Pio Esposito). But, especially against Atalanta away — in particular, an Atalanta side with no Ademola Lookman — going conservative late in matches is hugely risky.

Inter boast the deepest, most talented squad in Serie A. They’re better off playing like it for 90 minutes.

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Tottenham get a win, but not a performance, away to Crystal Palace

At least, not a convincing performance of the sort that makes you think Spurs are offering anything other than spirit and fight and all those other things you’re supposed to take for granted.

Let’s get the mitigating factors in their 1-0 win out of the way. Xavi Simons and Cuti Romero were suspended and the trio of James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke were all injured (just as they have been virtually all season long). But you still expected to see more than what they offered up against a Palace side who were equally hampered by absentees and whose squad is considerably thinner.

Packing the midfield and seemingly having little plan to score, except in transition or on set pieces, presumably isn’t why Thomas Frank was hired. It’s understandable to play that way with a lead, but in the 42 minutes when it was 0-0, Spurs managed just two shots, both off target. When they did score, it was a goalmouth scramble off a set piece and after the break, when they were busy defending and conceding 68% of the ball to Palace, they still gave up far more chances than you would like.

With one win in eight heading into this game, Frank was presumably feeling the heat. But he’s going to need to generate several orders of magnitude of improvement if he is to return next season.

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Quick hits

10. Time for some David Raya love: If Arsenal win the Premier League by two points or less, I hope someone will get a photo still of Raya’s save to deny Yankuba Minteh on Saturday afternoon, blow it up and plaster it around the Emirates. I know it doesn’t work like that: A season is a compendium of moments that can go either way, meaning you can’t just isolate one. But on Saturday afternoon, with Arsenal hanging on to a 2-1 lead just as Brighton was starting to come alive, Raya’s stop kept the Gunners top of the league and preserved the three points.

It felt like a narrative was building. Wasteful Arsenal outplay Brighton for much of the game but are undone by a stunner. Cue uncertainty. Cue insecurity. Cue second-guessing. Cue Manchester City. Instead, Raya was there to snuff out the danger with a superb stop. It was one of only three shots on target he faced in the game, and it underscored the loneliness — and importance — of having a good goalkeeper.

It took Raya a while to win me over — maybe Mikel Arteta too, considering he was alternating him with Aaron Ramsdale when he first arrived — but there’s no question he’s one of Arsenal’s key men this season, especially given the turmoil in the back line. And if they win silverware, you hope he’ll get to be near the front in the celebratory pictures.

9. Christian Pulisic guides Milan past Verona and into second place: Rafael Leão usually gets the headlines (he was unavailable Sunday), but it’s Pulisic who regularly carries Milan’s attack. There’s a reason why, since landing at San Siro ahead of the 2023-24 season, he has more goal involvements (31 goals and 19 assists) than anyone, even Lautaro Martinez. And the thing about Pulisic is that even when he’s off his game offensively, he works his backside off out of possession (unlike, say, Leão) and stays involved in the game.

Against a Verona side that raised the barricades, it was Pulisic who broke the ice late in the first half, before Christopher Nkunku bagged his first two league goals for the club en route to a 3-0 win. With Santi Gimenez out, Nkunku still a question mark production-wise and Leao being a box of chocolates (aka «You never know what you’re going to get»), Pulisic is Milan’s most (only?) reliable attacking solution.

8. Cristiano Ronaldo makes it 40 at 40: Forty goals in a calendar year, that is. Admittedly, calendar year stats are sort of cheesy, but when you’ve done it in 14 of the last 16 seasons and your career stretches into your fifth decade? Well… that’s a different story.

You want to be snooty about scoring goals against the likes of Al Akhdoud, against whom he netted twice in a 3-0 win on Saturday? Fine. But remember that Karim Benzema, Ivan Toney and Aleksandar Mitrovic — guys who scored a ton of goals in top European leagues and who are substantially younger — also play against a bunch of teams like Al Akhdoud, and and they don’t score anywhere near as many goals. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Enjoy Ronaldo while you can.

7. Ruben Amorim finally changes his system and Manchester United win! Don’t worry: The headline, while technically true, is meant to be sarcastic. The shift away from his trademark 3-4-2-1 to a more traditional 4-2-3-1 was largely motivated by absentees — which in itself is a bit of an indictment, because who could possibly have imagined that Amad Diallo and Noussair Mazraoui might have chosen to play in the Africa Cup of Nations? — rather than a tactical revelation. Because if it was a newfound conviction that they’re better off long-term with a flat back four, you would have to seriously question why he couldn’t have reached this conclusion earlier, maybe before embarking on a campaign without European football and with five senior central defenders.

The main takeaway this weekend is that United looked no better (and arguably worse) in the 4-2-3-1. They got the three points against Newcastle thanks to a wonder strike from Patrick Dorgu («I didn’t know I could do that,» he said afterwards, which was sweet) but there was little else to cheer, especially in a second half that saw them parked in front of their own goal — just 24% possession and three shots, none on target — as they ended the game with no fewer than seven defenders on the pitch.

Amorim himself said it best: There were games in which United deserved more and ended up dropping points. This was the opposite.

6. Some of Newcastle’s issues are beyond their control: And some are not. It’s obvious that they weren’t planning on playing the 2025-26 season without Alexander Isak. And maybe, if they’d had a chief executive and sporting director in place, Isak would have stuck around with a new deal or they would have had time to find the right replacements. Instead, they got Nick Woltemade, a very gifted forward, but — despite his six-foot-six frame — not a target man, and not even really a central striker, based on what we saw of him in the Bundesliga last season.

So then you end up with games such as Friday’s against Man United, when they pumped no fewer than 46 crosses into the box and, in 68 minutes on the pitch, Woltemade managing to get off a grand total of zero shots. They still deserved something from this match, maybe even a win, because Eddie Howe is a good coach and they have good players. But there’s a sense of this team being nowhere near their ceiling, coupled with a sense that they won’t be getting there any time soon.

5. Why Rasmus Højlund is far more productive this season: And there’s no argument about him being better. He scored both goals in Napoli‘s 2-0 over Cremonese which keeps them in the title hunt, taking his seasonal tally to nine, which is just one fewer than he had all of last year at Manchester United.

Part of it, quite obviously, is that the Premier League is tougher than Serie A, but that’s only part of the story. Højlund also has five goals in five games for Denmark since joining Napoli, which is as many as he had in the previous 33 months. A simpler explanation is that he has a better coach in Antonio Conte than anyone he had at Old Trafford and is being played to his strengths, which builds confidence.

What happens when Romelu Lukaku returns next month? My guess is that we’ll see them together from time to time. You can do that when you have a great coach and players who are willing to listen and grow.

4. Reijnders and Cherki are making Manchester City their own: It’s not just that they both scored (with Rayan Cherki assisting on Tijjani Reijnders‘ opener, too), but more the fact that they bring dynamism and creativity to a side that can sometimes become one-dimensional and simply waits for Phil Foden to do something or ride the Erling Haaland bus. Reijnders’ intelligence and ability to make City’s attack multi-pronged with his runs from deep opens space for Haaland and gives them another dimension. Cherki, right now, must be one of the top players in the league.

On the flip side, defensively they’re not where they should be — attacking midfielders impersonating fullbacks is still not working off the ball — and the Rodri-less midfield still feels like a turnstile sometimes. That matters when you face sides such as Forest, who will simply clog up space until they need to get back into the game. (Before Omari Hutchinson‘s equalizer, helped by poor defending, they had two shots for a cumulative xG of 0.04 in 54 minutes of football.)

3. Pisa make life difficult, but Juventus keep rising: It took them a while to get going, and Pisa hit the woodwork twice, before late goals from Pierre Kalulu and Kenan Yildiz saw Luciano Spalletti’s team make it seven wins in eight with a 2-0 result. So much so, in fact, that some critics said it felt like an «old-school» Juve win, which is a euphemism for saying they were awful, outplayed and fortunate.

It wasn’t their best game and they did ride their luck at times, yes, but this is nothing like the Juve of old. The numbers — 1.74 to 0.65 xG, 15 to 8 total shots, 7 to zero shots on target — bear this out. So does the eye test. Juve are imperfect, but they’re designed to do things with the ball and create chances, and they’re doing it. This was a fully deserved win, not something you can say about some of the victories in the «old-school» days some keep pining for…

2. Florian Wirtz gets his first goal as Liverpool win again, but we’re not there yet: In fact, you might go so far as to say that other than the result (seven games in a row unbeaten, which is not nothing, but not where you expected to be in the summer), the signs of progress are marginal. Wirtz, this time wide left in a 4-2-3-1 featuring no Dominik Szoboszlai, but both attacking fullbacks (Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong, who was was exceptional), got his first goal for the club. He has been better than his goal and assist numbers suggest, and it can’t be easy when you’re shuttled all over the front four, but we’re talking marginal gains here.

More of a concern, you would think, is that Liverpool’s two first-half goals in the 2-1 win against Wolves were, along with Hugo Ekitike hitting the post, the only real chances carved out in the first half. And the second, frankly, was worse: just the two shots on target, an xG of 0.42 against an opponent who has lost 19 of their last 22 league games, hasn’t won since April and was chasing the game. Arne Slot has work to do.

1. Big hitters ease into Africa Cup of Nations: With two group games already played, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt have already advanced to the knockout rounds, while Morocco, Senegal, DR Congo, Ivory Coast and Cameroon are just about there.

Nobody has really set the tournament alight yet, but that’s more than understandable. Most teams were assembled only a week before it began, none got to play friendlies. Chemistry takes time to build: With this format, you just want to make sure you’re still playing next weekend. That’s when, I think, we’ll see the big nations lift their game.