The Manchester derby produced 9 goals and reinforced the fact that Manchester City look utterly unstoppable this season, and so does Erling Haaland. Both Haaland and Phil Foden scored hat tricks, though Haaland achieved this first and became the first player in a Manchester derby to do so since Francis Lee scored 3 in December 1970. Lee would end up as City's top goalscorer that season with 14 - Haaland already has that figure in the first week of October. We could of course wax lyrical about the Norwegian all day, all week and all year and write up several thousand words on him, he is a machine and that in itself already feels cliche. It's not even a stretch of the imagination to think he can have 20 league goals by the end of this month and he may well score more goals before the World Cup starts next month than the leading goalscorers of last season in which Mohamed Salah and Heung-Min Son shared the prize with 23 apiece. This was also of course Haaland's first Manchester derby and what a way to make your mark. One goal would have felt special enough but with Haaland there is always going to be more. And you want more earth shattering records? Haaland has now scored 3 consecutive home league hat tricks in a row, something that has never been achieved before in the Premier League era.
Of course let's not leave out Phil Foden who scored three goals too as City wrapped up the game 6-3. Had Haaland never joined City, the champions would still have one of the brightest young players in European football and Foden ticks all of those boxes. He now has 5 league goals from just 8 games the most he has scored in the league previously was 9 and that will be shattered very soon. Going into the match it wasn't a surprise to see that City were the odds on favourites and this was a Manchester derby with a clear favourite. But not many would have expected to see 9 goals and City claim six of them. As for Manchester United they scored some good goals themselves, Antony's was a stunner but the final score did flatter them.
There is also the fall out from this game and one has to wonder if Ronaldo who scored more goals than Harry Kane last season and won the most player of the month awards last season deserves to be nothing more than a bench warmer? Would Ronaldo's inclusion against City have avoided defeat? No. But what did Marcus Rashford in his place do? Yes Rashford found form in September winning his own player of the month award but all in all Rashford has not been up to the level required for a Manchester United player for a good two years. United made Ronaldo who he is but now they are the club who is tarnishing his legacy and January will not come soon enough for the Portuguese legend. In one sense you can praise Erik ten Hag for having the strength to drop quality players when he sees fit but are genuine mistakes being made? If one wants to wave Ronaldo's age around why did Scott McTominay keep £70m signing Casemiro out of a Manchester derby? Casemiro has won Champions League titles and a plethora of trophies, he comes with a wealth of experience and the former Real Madrid player at this moment in time must be wondering if he's made the correct move? Finally there has been a lot of heat on Manchester United for losing this game. Granted they didn't play well but they were up against one of the best club sides in world football and on form possibly the best. United had shown good form coming into this game, and perhaps they are being criticised too much, the next few weeks will be more telling.
Coming into this season the objective for Arsenal would have been a return to the Champions League and deep cup runs but after such a blistering start to their campaign there will be talk of more, much more. Many believe that the current league leaders will not be able to hold off Manchester City, and true the Gunners are only a point above Pep Guardiola's side but a firm 2nd place finish could well be on the cards, and that would show fantastic progress under Mikel Arteta. This team also look like trophy winners and in the domestic cups especially they could make their mark. At the weekend it was another 3 points but these ones were special with a north London derby win over Tottenham finishing 3-1. Arsenal have passed every test this season bar one, an away loss to Manchester United but you feel they are growing by every game.
To win the Premier League: Manchester City 1.25, Arsenal 9.00, Liverpool 13.00, Chelsea 34.00, Tottenham 34.00
The sack race continued at the weekend as Wolves Bruno Lage became the 3rd Premier League manager to lose his job in just 33 days. This followed a 2-0 defeat against West Ham and leaves Wolves in 18th place. But was sacking Lage really the correct choice? True the club have won just once in their past 15 games but that also takes in the last two months of last season where Wolves for the majority of that time were safe but at the same time could not qualify for Europe so players tend to switch off. Lage had a win rate of 37% and compared to some other managers notably Graham Potter when at Brighton of 31% that isn't bad going. Wolves have also had key injuries especially to their forwards since Lage got the job and before the Hammers defeat the club looked to be on the right path losing just once in their last four. It's unclear if Lage had lost the dressing room but this seems, on the face of it, a harsh sacking.
Wolves next manager: Pedro Martins 4.00, Ruben Amorim 7.00, Sergio Conceicao 14.00, Andre Villas-Boas 17.00, Sean Dyche 21.00
Finally statistics are all the rage in sports today and of course football is no stranger to that. With Tottenham losing at the weekend only Manchester City are unbeaten after 8 games and it is no surprise that they have scored the most goals with 29 netted so far- they are on course to score 130+ goals this season- madness! But what about the best defence? Well, with just over 20% of the league campaign gone that award goes to Everton. The Toffees have conceded just seven goals and while only two games from their first 8 have been clean sheets Frank Lampard has built up a solid defence. James Tarkowski has given meaning and confidence to the back four and Nathan Patterson has been superb and certainly could be one of the great British defenders in the future, and Conor Coady looks like a steal from Wolves even only if on loan. Defence was such a huge problem for the Toffees last season where they shipped 66 goals. The project at the club looks exciting and certainly more stable and it will be fascinating to see where Lampard can take the famous club.
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