Five things we learned from the Premier League weekend: Man City can do no wrong, Man Utd worries mount, don’t write off Chelsea, Spurs calm in storm and West Ham need support
No Kevin De Bruyne? No problem. Come to that, Manchester City also rested Raheem Sterling and Kyle Walker and used Leroy Sane sparingly against Huddersfield on Sunday. Ominously, the record-breaking Premier League champions still won 6-1.
City can currently do no wrong; every tactical tweak made by Pep Guardiola pays off in spades. Here, it was the introduction of Gabriel Jesus alongside Sergio Aguero.
Not only did the Brazilian score, his presence stimulated strike partner Aguero into netting a hat-trick.
Read more: Trevor Steven: Unai Emery has to get his Arsenal team in sync
Guardiola’s two previous seasons in Manchester have seen his team streak out of the blocks. In 2016, they won their first 10 games in all competitions; last season, it was 11 wins and a draw from their first 12.
In this rampant form, it’s not difficult to imagine them bettering those flying starts. Now it’s over to Liverpool, who face Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park tonight, to keep pace.
Mourinho's worries mount
A defeat to Brighton is worrying enough for Manchester United, but perhaps the most concerning aspect of Sunday's 3-2 loss on the south coast was Jose Mourinho’s inability to engineer a fightback.
Mourinho threw on Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard when trailing 3-1 at half-time, yet it wasn’t until the 94th minute that fellow substitute Marouane Fellaini earned a penalty from which Paul Pogba cut the deficit.
United slumped to a shock 3-2 defeat at Brighton (Source: Getty)
United also lost this fixture last season, going down 1-0 in May in a half-hearted display that reflected a long-dead title challenge and a season petering out.
Here they had everything to play for, not least local pride having seen or at least heard of City’s shellacking of Huddersfield earlier in the afternoon.
Brighton, by contrast, were fired up. That United appeared to lack motivation and Mourinho inspiration points to trouble ahead.
Rio hasty on Chelsea
Rio Ferdinand made his mind up pretty quickly: the defensive flaws evident in Chelsea’s helter-skelter 3-2 win over Arsenal on Saturday ran too deep for either side to be a top-flight force this season.
Whether any team can mount a serious challenge to City remains to be seen, and Arsenal’s problems appear to run deep, but writing off Chelsea after just two games – two wins, no less – seems a touch hasty.
Chelsea are likely to improve when Hazard returns to the starting XI (Source: Getty)
Has Rio forgotten what happened just two years ago, when Antonio Conte’s Chelsea sat eight points off the pace after six games only to win the title by seven?
Or maybe Ferdinand recalls 2002-03, his first season at Manchester United? They languished in 10th place after six matches but were holding the trophy aloft come May.
Chelsea need to improve at the back but, unlike Arsenal, the quality of their personnel suggests that they can.
With Eden Hazard making match-winning cameos while his World Cup exertions still restrict his game time, Maurizio Sarri’s men deserve better than to be written off already.
Spurs stay calm in a storm
It would have been very easy for Tottenham, amid the chaos surrounding their overdue, over-budget stadium and renewed questions about their transfer strategy, to suffer an early-season hiccup.
Spurs have started so well that Harry Kane even scored in August (Source: Getty)
Against Fulham on Saturday, as in their opening fixture at Newcastle seven days earlier, Spurs were presented with ample opportunity to lose their heads and a winning position – to be Spursy, in other words.
Instead, they responded to Aleksandar Mitrovic’s equaliser for Fulham by calmly reasserting their superiority through Kieran Trippier’s sensational free-kick.
To top it all, Harry Kane got up and running for the campaign, banishing his curious absence of league goals in August, to leave Tottenham with maximum points.
If any of the off-field fuss is affecting them, they’re not showing it.
Hammers need fans on side
Manuel Pellegrini might have been a mild-mannered presence for most of his first stint in English football, but the Chilean has taken just two matches of his second spell to get exercised.
On Saturday the new West Ham manager voiced his disappointment that home fans had left the London Stadium long before the end of a 2-1 surrender against Bournemouth.
Supporters leaving early when they have shelled out significant sums for tickets is a mystifying phenomenon at the best of times, but on this occasion it is even more so.
Pellegrini was unhappy that some West Ham fans left the game early (Source: Getty)
With just one goal in it, the Hammers were still in the contest. As Pellegrini argued, they could have done with wholehearted backing as they searched for an equaliser.
If the issue is a wider disillusionment among the fanbase then that is understandable to a degree given recent seasons, but after a summer of heavy investment in high-calibre personnel – not least the seasoned Pellegrini – greater patience is required.