1- Unai Emery Smelling The Coffee: Arsenal’s blood and thunder Premier League victory over North London rivals Spurs once again emphasised the numerous strides the Gunners are making under Unai Emery.
By fighting back from going down to a phantom penalty and doing so with style, Arsenal proved that the years in which they were a yo-yo club happy to settle for Champions League qualification are over.
Emery has his tactics, team selection, substitutions and team balancing all spot on. If the Gunners continue improving at such an astronomical rate, a title challenge might be in offing within eighteen months.
2- Everton Equipped To Fight For Top Four:
There is no reason why Everton shouldn’t be fighting for a Champions League position.
Marco Silva has assembled the best Toffees squad in the Premier League era. For example, while Spurs are overly reliant on Harry Kane, and Chelsea are stuck with two misfiring strikers in Olivier Giroud and Alvaro Morata, Everton have SIX number nines. Richarlison is the pick of the bunch, but any of Ademola Lookman, Oumar Niasse, Theo Walcott, Dominic Calvert Lewin and Cenk Tosun can be match winners for Silva.
3- Juventus To Roll Over Serie A Rivals:
Fiorentina is one unofficially one of Serie A’s top six sides.
The Florentines were supposed to challenge Juventus’ unbeaten start to the campaign but Old Lady brushed them aside 3-0 with minimum fuss.
Massimilliano Allegri’s champions have now already beaten AC Milan, Fiorentina and Napoli. If they tame Inter Milan on Friday, we might as well hand them their eighth straight Scudetto.
4- African Footballers Impact Diminishing:
There was a time when at least three African footballers were in the running for individual accolades of best player or top scorer in Europe’s top five leagues.
1995 World Footballer Of The Year George Opong Weah led the way. In the early years of this century, Cameroon legend Samuel Etoo was always in the reckoning for Pichichi.
In England, Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Nwankwo Kanu and Yaya Toure could all have won gongs before Riyad Mahrez and Mohammed Salah were crowned EPL Footballer Of The Year.
This season I can’t see any African footballer winning anything.
5- Bayern Defenders Have Lost Fear Factor:
Bavarian giants Bayern Munich’s patchy form is in no small measure courtesy of the team’s loss of the fear factor.
Fingers are being pointed at manager Niko Kovac but the entire team must take blame for poor defending especially at the Allianz Arena.
Jerome Boateng, Matt Hummels and Niclas Sule have all been so poor, journeymen strikers always arrive in Munich confident of giving them a runaround.
Bayern’s defensive problems are being transferred to the German national team where Joachim Loew is in the middle of his worst run of results.
