6. Tottenham
As fun as it was to watch Tottenham spank Manchester United all over the park, beating up on a bunch of unruly children is hardly much of an accomplishment. Using Manchester United as a barometer for making the Premier League top four is as useful as using Qarabag as a measuring stick for winning the Europa League.
Spurs have problems. Ange Postecoglou hasn’t really improved the team on his own merit, because Tottenham’s improvements in 2023/24 were down to the superior players they purchased in the summer window.
Right now, Tottenham’s biggest problem is that Aston Villa is still very good and Chelsea are much improved.
5. Aston Villa
Aston Villa were real letdowns this weekend against one of the worst teams in the Premier League, Ipswich Town, but if Emiliano Martinez didn’t look so pathetic at his near post, the Lions would have come away as mildly deserving winners.
As a whole, Aston Villa actually look better this season because of the emergence of Jhon Duran off the bench, as well as the even more sensational breakout star Morgan Rogers in the attacking midfield. Rogers, by the way, looked good again on Sunday.
The real improvement, though, lies behind him in the midfield. Amadou Onana is Villa’s most valuable player already, while Youri Tielemans looks more like the young Belgian phenom who caught everyone’s attention at Leicester City.
Unai Emery should get more shouts as the best coach in England right now for what he has done with Aston Villa, but because they don’t have the raw talent that Chelsea does, you have to bet against them repeating Champions League qualification.
4. Chelsea
Chelsea and Brighton predictably offered the prettiest fireworks of the Premier League weekend, with the best player in the league on pure performance (Mohamed Salah is the best on pedigree and ability, sorry) delivering the goods yet again with four to the good.
Cole “Cold” Palmer is so much better than Phil Foden that it isn’t even funny, and I can’t take the opinions of anyone seriously if they don’t have Palmer listed as a top-five player in the Premier League today.
Chelsea is about so much more than Palmer this season, though. The defense is showing signs of competency, the midfield actually looks good with Moises Caicedo bouncing back, and Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke are completing a Chelsea attack that is legitimately two deep at every starting position.
3. Arsenal
Arsenal just aren’t that good. It pains me to say it, but there are serious flaws with this squad in an attacking sense. I know it may not seem like the right time to offer that up after they literally just put up four on Leicester City, but, look, the Foxes can’t be any sort of legitimate barometer because they outright stink.
Mikel Merino as the midfield blockbuster signing with no real attacking reenforcement simply wasn’t an adequate enough summer in the face of Liverpool and Manchester City adding Federico Chiesa and Savinho, respectively.
Ethan Nwaneri had quite the performance, but he’s a year or two away from being the caliber of player who can swing a Premier League title race. Arsenal have been too complacent to tip themselves over the point of actually winning the Premier League, whereas Man City, for example, have been even more aggressive in order to stay ahead of the threat of the Gunners.
2. Manchester City
Manchester City fans can gloat all they want about all the goals Erling Haaland is scoring, but, problematically, nobody on the team has more than two assists and nobody else besides Haaland has more than one goal.
Pep Guardiola has won this league without a great striker before, and after losing Julian Alvarez this past summer, all the eggs are in Haaland’s basket, and his own development as a player is stagnating to the point where he is becoming a more one-dimensional striker than when he was a prospect at Dortmund.
Man City’s strength lies in their defense, which is the best in the world right now, but their midfield is due to be exposed a little bit without Rodri. A Mateo Kovacic and Ilkay Gundogan axis is quite mediocre for a Champions League title hopeful, and that downgrade is enough to open up the title race to a better team than Arsenal that can actually take advantage of City’s stumbles.
1. Liverpool
Liverpool are so much more dangerous with Arne Slot as their manager. Although I respect Jurgen Klopp for everything he has done at Mainz, Dortmund, and Liverpool, the reality is that Klopp was right; the club needed him to move on in order to progress.
Slot is getting the most out of two legitimate world-class wingers in Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz, the latter of whom makes the left wingers at Manchester City and Arsenal look like league average players in comparison.
And then there is the breakout of Ryan Gravenberch, who is running circles around Declan Rice. Whereas the media darlings of Arsenal have become overrated over the past couple of seasons, Liverpool are former Premier League champions with many of their veteran starters and have now become grossly underrated.
Look at the way some folks in punditry talk about Trent Alexander-Arnold. The man operates at a technical level beyond literally every single player at Arsenal and beyond all but two players (Kevin de Bruyne and maybe Bernardo Silva) at Manchester City.
Liverpool are the title favorites. The only thing that can screw them over is if Darwin Nunez throws in the towel and finishes like Jozy Altidore, but with his emphatic finish against West Ham and sheer volume of explosive plays, if anything, he’s more likely to blow any of Arsenal’s strikers out of the water by the end of the 2024/25 season.
Pick against Liverpool at your peril. When you stack up their XI by talent or turn on a game and watch the level of excitement and intensity they bring, I really wonder how come more fans in the Premier League aren’t extolling their virtues as the new title favorites.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.