Are Man City players the wrong age? How long will Amorim take? Was Cooper always doomed? – The briefing

Welcome to the briefing, where every Monday this season The athlete will discuss three of the biggest questions facing Premier League football this weekend.

This was the weekend when Tottenham cemented their reputation as the world’s most unpredictable team with a brilliant 4-0 win over Manchester City, when Arsenal returned to winning ways, when Liverpool extended their lead at the top of the table to eight points and when Wolves showed their best performance of the season.

Here we ask whether Manchester City’s age profile is a problem, whether we truly understand how long it might take Ruben Amorim to understand Manchester United, and whether anyone can take credit from the brief situation between Leicester City and Steve Cooper .

Does Manchester City have enough top-age players?

Pep Guardiola’s face has a special expression of panicked desperation when something goes wrong with his team.

There aren’t many managers who look calm in defeat, but Guardiola seems to find it particularly difficult to hide what’s going on in his head. Which is perhaps not surprising considering that things don’t go wrong very often.

However, everything is going very wrong at the moment. Manchester City’s poor form, which has become the first reigning champions to lose five games in a row since Chelsea in 1956, can be attributed to several factors.

The most obvious is Rodri’s injury; Other injuries, particularly on defense, were also a problem; fairly poor form from players who used to be bankers, such as Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gündogan, John Stones or Phil Foden; even Erling Haaland’s slightly odd up-and-down form, which has him looking like a killer some weeks and wayward in others (he has scored two goals from 36 shots in his last seven Premier League games); You can’t rule out a certain degree of ‘pep fatigue’ either – remember that the famously committed Catalan had never coached anyone for more than four seasons before City, and some of these players are already in their eighth or ninth season under him.

However, there is another possibility: could it be due to the composition of the squad?

As this graphic shows, there aren’t many players in the City squad who are in their “peak years”, defined for these purposes as 24 to 29. In fact, there are only three players in the middle of this sweet spot: Rodri, Ruben Dias and Matheus Nunes, the former two injured and the latter clearly convinced that Guardiola is not good enough, despite City paying more than £50m 18 months ago ($63 million) spent on him.

Of the 120 outfield starting spots Guardiola has selected so far this season, 72 have gone to players either 22 and under or 30 and over.

Of course, there are reservations here: no one describes Haaland or Foden as immature, naive young people because they are 24, and we don’t write off Jack Grealish, Nathan Ake or Manuel Akanji as old guys because they are 29. It is also not the case that any player outside of this zone is automatically useless and must be dismissed lightly.

But could that be a factor? Does a team need a core of players who have a good mix of youth and experience skills?

The usual warnings apply here. Beat Liverpool next weekend and it will look like over-analysis. City could very easily kick into gear and become City again soon. Nobody writes them off. But it’s possible that the composition of their squad is contributing to their poor performance.

How long will it take for Ruben Amorim to recognize Man Utd?

If you drew clear and far-reaching conclusions about Manchester United from Ruben Amorim’s first game as manager, then your certainty is admirable.

After one game and a handful of training sessions with most of his players, we’re obviously not going to see anything close to what Amorim wants. After the game, he described a series of performance issues, largely due to his team not knowing how he wanted to play.

“We will need a lot of time to figure out these issues,” Amorim told Sky Sports after Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Ipswich Town. “My players were thinking too much. It’s not just about the ball, but where it should be.”

It’s hard to tell if Amorim seemed surprised by his team’s performance. Perhaps he was surprised at how good Ipswich were: not to achieve everything, “everyone can beat anyone in the Premier League, the best league ever”, but if he thought this was a gentle entry against a newly promoted team in the bottom three rows, he might have been shocked.

While it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions, and while it’s tempting to focus too much on the 3-4-2-1 system (Amorim encouraged us not to think about it too much), one thing stood out : How many players weren’t in the right position or were at least playing roles they hadn’t played in a long time.

Amorim is trying to teach his players a new way of playing (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

In the starting line-up, full-back Noussair Mazraoui played the right central defender; Full-back Diogo Dalot played left wing-back; Winger Amad played right wing-back; Winger Alejandro Garnacho played as number 10; Bruno Fernandes is used to playing as a number 10, but not usually with another number 10 next to him; Wide striker Marcus Rashford played as number 9. Substitutes Luke Shaw and Joshua Zirkzee also played unusual roles after coming on. So that’s exactly half of the 16 outfielders deployed, who not only have to find a new manager and a new formation, but also new positions.

That doesn’t mean these players won’t be able to adapt. For the most part, the viewpoints aren’t entirely alien and aren’t so far from the norm that they should be questioned in the long run, but when Amorim says it’s going to take a long time, believe him.

“We (could) try to just win games and not risk anything,” Amorim continued, “but I guarantee that at this point next season we will have the same problems. “We will have problems from the first moment and the players will be confused at times, but we have to deal with the new ideas.”

Was Cooper doomed from the start at Leicester?

The news of Cooper’s sacking by Leicester on Sunday afternoon was surprising and not surprising at all.

The surprising thing was the timing. If Leicester were convinced that Cooper, who they appointed in the summer, was not their man, then why wasn’t that decision made at the start of the international break? Did the 2-1 defeat to one of the best teams of the season, Chelsea, really worry them enough to tip the balance? Perhaps their preferred replacement is suddenly available and they had to act quickly, but at the time of writing it’s not immediately clear who that will be.

On the face of it, it was perhaps surprising: Leicester are in 16th place with 10 points from 12 games, which is about what you would reasonably expect from a newly promoted team given the instability they have had to contend with since last season would.

The unsurprising thing about it was that it happened at all. From the start it felt like it wasn’t a good fit on both sides. Cooper joined a team with a very distinctive style of play that had probably sold its best player in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who at the time assumed he would be given a point deduction for PSR breaches. It’s difficult to keep a newcomer at the top at the best of times, but these clearly weren’t the best of times.

Cooper and Maresca have very different approaches (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

Leicester replaced the dogmatic Enzo Maresca with a manager who has no defined “philosophy” or strict system that he always sticks to. At Nottingham Forest he won games by figuring it out, sometimes game by game. Requiring players to adapt not only to a higher league but also to a significant change in coaching style was always going to be difficult. He is also a hero at Forest, Leicester’s local rivals: the significance of this statement has probably been exaggerated and few sensible Leicester fans would have held it against him too much, but it must have been at least a minor factor in them when he arrived were careful.

Cooper obviously didn’t help himself. There were some strange selection decisions, not least the insistence on ticking time bomb Wout Faes and largely ignoring Ricardo Pereira. His style of play is not particularly exciting to watch and he is often conservative. His constant complaints about the referees have also become almost embarrassing, not least after the Chelsea game when he insinuated that referee Andrew Madley had something against Leicester when at least one player could easily have been sent off in the first half alone.

It all adds up to the feeling that this was doomed from the start. Perhaps both Cooper and Leicester simply didn’t have better options in the summer, but ultimately this has resulted in a club changing managers at an incredibly difficult time and a manager with a five-month spell on his CV, which is never a good look. For everyone involved, this all feels like a colossal waste of time.

Coming this week

Enough Premier League? No, of course not: you want MORE. Luckily, gluttons like us are on the safe side when it comes to Monday evening’s game, which promises to be an exciting game: Newcastle hosts West Ham.

However, if you’ve had enough of the Premier League, the Champions League is here to help you. Tuesday’s games are largely more “hmmm, that could be interesting” than mind-blowing, although Bayern Munich vs. Paris Saint-Germain is meaty. Arsenal travel to Lisbon to play Sporting CP, while Manchester City look for their first win in a month by hosting Feyenoord.

Similar sentiment on Wednesday, which has a very top billing/undercard feel: Liverpool v Real Madrid is the clear, shining highlight, but Aston Villa v Juventus and Celtic v Club Brugge also deserve your attention.

Then on Thursday we have secondary competitions: Tottenham and Roma meet in a Jose Mourinho Survivors Club meeting and Manchester United host Bodo/Glimt in the Europa League, while Chelsea visit Heidenheim for the Europa Conference League and second-placed Legia Warsaw travel to Omonia Nicosia.

They also have a big fat chunk of the Championship: Sunderland v West Brom looks to be the standout game on Tuesday, while league leaders Leeds take on beleaguered Luton and Middlesbrough v Blackburn on Wednesday could be a lot of fun.

The week ends with ANOTHER Premier League game. Ambassador, you are treating us to this bonus Brighton vs Southampton on a Friday evening.

What else is there to read?

(Top photo: Getty Images)