Nuno Espírito Santo (West Ham 3-1 Newcastle)
Premier League manager rankings points: 10
Not much has gone Nuno Espírito Santo’s way since he took over at West Ham. Having inherited a club languishing in the relegation zone and racked by discontent among fans, the affable Portuguese ushered in the post-Graham Potter era with a creditable draw at Everton, only to then preside over three straight defeats. His first home game was the subject of a supporters’ boycott, and while plans for that show of dissension against the ownership predated his appointment, a derby defeat to Brentford in which West Ham played with inverted full-backs and mustered just a single shot on goal did little to lift the mood.
So on Sunday, when Jarrod Bowen clattered the Newcastle woodwork after four minutes only for the visitors to launch an immediate counter-attack that culminated with Jacob Murphy punishing some poor defending with a neat finish, it felt like more of the same. A bad team playing bad football, and now afflicted by bad luck to boot. Having arrived at the London Stadium without an away league win since April, Newcastle looked ready to turn a corner. As for West Ham, low on confidence and with their already subdued fans now stunned into silence, it barely seemed worth wondering if they could mount a response. The sense that fate was conspiring against Nuno and his men only deepened when Bowen subsequently saw a penalty award overturned. West Ham were cooked.
Except, they weren’t. Nuno and his staff spent the previous week working intensively with the players, both collectively and in smaller groups, fostering connections, nurturing togetherness, infusing spirit. It showed. Heads did not go down. Senior players stepped up. There was resilience, defiance. Shortly before half-time, Lucas Paquetá caught out Newcastle goalkeeper Nick Pope from distance, and in short space Sven Botman turned an Aaron Wan-Bissaka cross into his own net. Cautious hope gradually gave way to cautious optimism and, when Tomas Soucek bundled home at the death after another Pope error, there was even a rare outbreak of joy – although, this being West Ham, it was quickly tempered by yet another protest against the ownership.
Even so, Nuno’s role in guiding his basement strugglers to victory over a Champions League side was inarguably the managerial masterstroke of the weekend. He kept things simple, reverting to a four-man defence after the ill-fated experiment with a back three at Leeds. Players were deployed in their natural positions, with Wan-Bissaka and El Haji Malick Diouf respectively deployed at right- and left-back. In midfield, 22-year-old Freddie Potts excelled on his first Premier League start, showing wit, discipline and composure against an opposing midfield of far greater stature and experience. And while Newcastle’s struggles beyond Tyneside are well documented, it should not be forgotten that this was West Ham’s first home win since February.
“In the first half things went against us but we bounced back,” said Nuno. “In the second half we were against the ropes, but we were resilient. We gave our fans something small, and what they gave us back was huge: the noise was amazing.”
Great things sometimes come from small beginnings, and Diouf later revealed on social media that Nuno had pinned childhood photographs of each player on the dressing room wall. The message was clear: remember where you came from, remember why you first fell in love with the game, don’t betray the dreams of your youth. It got the desired response, and West Ham got a result that they can build on when they host fellow strugglers Burnley. Nuno deservedly tops this week’s Premier League manager rankings.
Arne Slot (Liverpool 2-0 Aston Villa)
Points: 9
The lazy take would be that Liverpool should defeat Aston Villa at home; that they are the reigning Premier League champions, spent £415m on recruitment this summer, and have not lost to Villa at Anfield since Gabriel Agbonlahor prodded home an early winner from close range in September 2014.
Yet context is everything in football, and while Liverpool came into this match on a run of four straight Premier League defeats, and facing the very real prospect of matching their worst league run since 1953, Unai Emery’s visitors arrived on Merseyside with four straight wins behind them. With manager Arne Slot under intense scrutiny, if not among match-going fans then certainly beyond L4, and the wounds still raw after a demoralising midweek League Cup defeat to Crystal Palace, against whom almost all Liverpool’s senior players were rested, the onus was on the Dutchman to get the big decisions right.
Slot delivered in spades. He finally took Milos Kerkez out of the firing line, restoring club vice-captain Andy Robertson at left-back, and was rewarded with a first clean sheet since mid-September. As a newfound sense of assurance spread across Liverpool’s previously porous back line, Conor Bradley delivered his finest performance of the season at right-back. Bradley’s display in turn meant there was no need to usher Dominik Szoboszlai into service in defence, enabling the Hungary international to shine at the heart of midfield, where he was ably assisted by the returning Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister.
Florian Wirtz was also dropped to the bench, with Hugo Ekitike – alongside Szoboszlai an early candidate for Liverpool’s player of the season – the only summer signing to make the starting XI. With the nucleus of Slot’s title-winning side restored, Mohamed Salah looked more like his old self. Like Bradley, the Egyptian benefited from the presence of familiar face and the re-emergence of familiar patterns of play, producing an unerring finish to open the scoring after a sloppy attempt by Emiliano Martínez to play out from the back. It was Salah’s 250th goal for Liverpool, further contributing to the Anfield feelgood factor.
Villa could point to mitigating circumstances, given that they twice hit the woodwork and were on the receiving end of an unlucky deflection when Gravenberch drove home Liverpool’s second shortly after the break. Nor should it be ignored that the Merseysiders benefited from facing a team who eschewed the more direct tactics adopted by the likes of Manchester United and Brentford in recent weeks.
But after what Steve McManaman rightly described as the “avalanche of nonsense” directed at Slot in recent weeks, this result was accompanied by a sense of vindication for the Dutchman. Having kept faith with Wirtz and, in particular, Kerkez throughout so much of Liverpool’s torrid recent run, there was a boldness about his team selection that augured well for the challenges that lie ahead against Real Madrid and Manchester City this week. Liverpool are not out of the woods yet, but this was a start.
Sean Dyche (Nottingham Forest 2-2 Manchester United)
Points: 8
Despite earning a precious first league point as Nottingham Forest manager, Sean Dyche was entitled to feel aggrieved that, for the second week running, his side conceded a goal from a corner that should probably not have been given.
Replays suggested that, with just over half an hour gone, Forest full-back Nicolò Savona had kept the ball in play after winning an aerial duel with Benjamin Sesko in the box. The linesman thought otherwise and, in an echo of events at Bournemouth the previous weekend, when a dubiously awarded corner likewise led to the opening goal, Forest went in at the break trailing, this time to a Casemiro header.
For Dyche, whose reputation was built largely on defensive organisation and discipline, it must have been incredibly frustrating to see his side once again fall behind to a set-piece of questionable provenance. Not unlike West Ham, however, Forest refused to be derailed by an early setback. Whatever the gravel-voiced relegation firefighter said at the interval clearly worked, because Forest were ahead within five minutes of the restart courtesy of goals from Morgan Gibbs-White and Savona, and were denied victory only by a late strike from Amad Diallo.
It takes strong leadership and strong minds to put self-pity to one side in such circumstances and, while Dyche did not hold back afterwards, his ability to inspire a fightback in testing circumstances bodes well for Forest’s attempt to stay afloat.
Mikel Arteta (Burnley 0-2 Arsenal)
Points: 7
Were it not that Arsenal keep churning out victories and clean sheets like they’re going out of fashion, Mikel Arteta would no doubt feature higher on this list. As it is, the league leaders’ fifth straight league win and seventh consecutive shutout across all competitions felt like a foregone conclusion. Even former Arsenal boss George Graham, who knows better than most what it takes to end a prolonged title drought in the red corner of north London, might have envied such a sequence. At this stage, who would bet against Arteta ending the Gunners’ 21-year title drought, just as Graham finally returned the championship to Highbury in 1989 after a wait of almost two decades?
Inevitably, the opener came from a set-piece, Viktor Gyökeres firing in a Declan Rice corner, and Arsenal have now scored a dozen goals this season from dead-ball situations. There will inevitably come a moment when opposing teams find a way to counter that particular strength, so when Rice added a second with a meaty header from Leandro Trossard’s chip, it was more than just a postscript. Nonetheless, from that point, which came 10 minutes from the interval, the outcome was a given. There was an unlikely late scare when Marcus Edwards hit the post from a free-kick, but even that wouldn’t have altered the outcome. Increasingly, Arteta’s Arsenal are inevitable.
Pep Guardiola (Manchester City 3-1 Bournemouth)
Points: 6
An intriguing talking point ahead of Bournemouth’s visit to the Etihad concerned whether Pep Guardiola would consider naming Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki in the same starting lineup. What few expected, after the previous weekend’s lacklustre defeat to Aston Villa, was that the Spaniard would adjust his formation to achieve precisely that, particularly against a side sitting second in the league. Guardiola’s 4-3-2-1 formation reaped dividends, however, the midfield duo combining in an advanced role behind Erling Haaland to set up all three goals. The chief beneficiary of Cherki’s creativity was, inevitably, Haaland, who was twice put through by the Frenchman and scored a brace that took his Premier League tally this season to 13. They were Haaland’s first league goals against Bournemouth at Eastlands. Foden, meanwhile, found Nico O’Reilly for City’s third. Not for the first time, Guardiola’s tactics defied expectation; not for the last time, they earned his side a crucial win, one that moved them ahead of the visitors into second.
Fabian Hürzeler (Brighton 3-0 Leeds)
Points: 5
After a difficult October schedule that brought away trips to Wolves, Manchester United and Arsenal and just four points from a possible 12, Brighton could ill afford to slip up against promoted Leeds.
Fabian Hürzeler has bemoaned his side’s frequent inability to replicate the intensity they show against top teams when facing opposition from the lower end of the Premier League food chain, and there was trepidation among many Brighton supporters that the visit of Daniel Farke’s team was an accident waiting to happen. Hürzeler, though, has set up his side to play with verve and enterprise regardless of the identity of the opposition, and in Danny Welbeck he can call on an in-form front man. Welbeck’s early goal, his sixth in five league appearances, allayed any early misgivings, while a second-half double from Paraguay forward Diego Gómez put the contest to bed. Leeds’ passivity no doubt played a part in the outcome, but Hürzeler stuck to his attacking principles and was rightly rewarded with the points.
Enzo Maresca (Tottenham 0-1 Chelsea)
Premier League manager rankings points: 4
They love a visit to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, do Chelsea. They have now won all but one of their seven visits, and on Saturday they dominated their London rivals from start to finish, with João Pedro’s 34th-minute winner an inadequate reflection of the overall quality of their performance. Enzo Maresca set up his side to press from the front, and to a man they did their jobs admirably. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the win, however, was Maresca’s frank admission that he had no idea how his team could have performed so well – admittedly, against a woeful Spurs side with a woeful home record of late – after losing to Sunderland last time out.
“I cannot explain because I don’t have the answer,” said the Italian, whose side rise to fourth. “When I don’t know things, I prefer to say that I don’t know. When we can become consistent, I think we can be more close to the top.”
Such disarming honesty is alone enough to merit four points.
Marco Silva (Fulham 3-0 Wolves)
Premier League manager rankings points: 3
After four straight defeats left Fulham languishing in 17th spot, Marco Silva’s side simply had to take three points against bottom-placed Wolves, particularly with visits to Everton and Spurs in the offing this month, either side of what promises to be a challenging showdown with high-flying Sunderland at Craven Cottage. The Portuguese got his selection and tactics spot on, with a fine display from club-record signing Kevin on his first league start arguably the highlight of a win achieved with something to spare against the 10 men of Wolves, for whom Emmanuel Agbadou saw red shortly before the break. Yerson Mosquera’s own goal added to strikes from Ryan Sessegnon and Harry Wilson as Silva’s side climbed to 15th.
Oliver Glasner (Crystal Palace 2-0 Brentford)
Premier League manager rankings points: 2
After three league games without victory, Oliver Glasner masterminded a win that keeps Palace in the top half of the table, maintaining the momentum of the midweek League Cup victory over Liverpool.
Régis Le Bris (Sunderland 1-1 Everton)
Premier League manager rankings points: 1
Not quite the headline result Régis Le Bris achieved last week against Chelsea, but this was another quietly impressive from his side, who showed commendable resilience to battle back after Everton capped a strong start with Iliman Ndiaye’s solo effort. Garnit Xhaka’s second-half equaliser kept Sunderland among the Champions League places, something no one would have anticipated at the start of the season.
