Premier League weekend awards: De Bruyne’s magic and Onana on corners
Player of the week
It would have been hard to script it better. After missing five months with a hamstring injury, Kevin De Bruyne came off the bench against Newcastle to turn a 2–1 defeat into a 3–2 win, netting a goal and an assist.
Watching City in 2024 without De Bruyne is like watching golf in 2006 without Tiger Woods. It is De Bruyne who turns Pep Guardiola’s robotic winning machine into a spectacle. He injects a sense of chaos and disorder into Guardiola’s carefully executed symphony.
We’ve reached that point in the year where City normally go into freight train mode and put on a run with results that leave everyone around them in the dust. Eighteen wins in a row. Twenty games undefeated. Another record set. Another title lifted.
However, after a shaky run of performances and results over the past month, it looked like City could struggle to achieve that form this season. But De Bruyne’s return changes the calculus. His goal was typical De Bruyne, driving through the center of the field and burying an effort from outside the penalty area. His assist to beat Oscar Bobb’s winner was the kind only a handful of players in the world can see or perform. The assist was De Bruyne’s 104th in the Premier League, moving him level with Wayne Rooney for third place in the competition’s all-time rankings.
Pep Guardiola still has Erling Haaland to reintroduce into his team when the forward returns from a foot injury. But it is the return of De Bruyne – who looks as sharp as ever – that has tilted the title race towards City.
Goal of the week
Let’s persevere City. This is why Guardiola’s team is chasing four titles in a row: with the score at 2-2, they are able to speed things up that no one in the league can live with.
Hoo boy. It starts with De Bruyne’s ball. The City midfielder always thinks one or two steps ahead. De Bruyne sees every possible pass, and with his mix of cleverness and technique, every pass is possible. But there’s still plenty for Bobb to do once he arrives. He catches the ball with long strides, and in two sudden jerks he bypasses the goalkeeper and rolls the ball into an empty net. Moments define seasons; these four touches will probably define it.
Nathan Fielder’s chilling performance of the week
Did anyone notice the ending of The Curse? The Safdie/Fielder collaboration was meandering TV at best. Unless you’re looking, of course André Onana against corners.
Goalkeepers are expected to do more than save shots or help build out from the back. There is an assumption of some kind of presence and command. The best of the best inspires confidence within the entire team. Whatever happens, we know we have Alisson, Ederson or Vicario at the back.
Onana is at the other end of the Goalkeeper Confidence Index. His underlying numbers this season remain encouraging, but there is just one feeling about his general demeanor that another banger is coming: his starting position is wrong; he smells shots he has to save; he bumps routine efforts; he sits, frozen at his goal line, instead of looking at the ball and attacking it; its distribution was idiosyncratic.
That lack of confidence trickles down to the entire United team in open play. But it is most evident in set pieces. There stands Onana, rooted in his line, as if set pieces bring actual death and terror. United conceded an average of 6.2 corners per game, the third highest figure in the league. For other teams, that figure wouldn’t be a big problem. They have the set-up, the goalkeeper and the defenders to deal with a lot of corners. United not. They also concede the fourth-highest number of shots from corners per game.
Top goalkeepers control their area with a kind of macho arrogance. Even if they smell the ball, they know that they will most likely be saved by a decision by the referee. Perhaps Onana was put off by his blunder in the first week against Wolves. Perhaps it’s a coaching decision on United’s part – David de Gea was criticized last year for taking a similar position at set pieces.
Opponents have caught up. There’s nothing special about their plan of attack. They drop the ball on the penalty spot again and again and challenge Onana to claim the ball.
Corner kicks are typically a chess match between the taker and the goalkeeper. The delivery must be sharp and accurate: not so close that the holder can come and pick it up; not so far away that any potential opportunity is too far off target.
Onana’s positioning tilts the odds in favor of the attacking team. They can plop the ball into the six-yard box without fear of the only player who can use his hands getting in the way. The attacking players waiting in the penalty area for the delivery can run downhill knowing that any form of contact from four yards out has a decent chance of flying past the United goalkeeper. “It’s not like he has the reactions to make it,” said the former United goalkeeper said Ben Foster this week.
And yet United’s goalkeepers and coaching staff have not adapted. They rely on defenders to handle every ball in the penalty area, and the second ball that comes in from that first point of contact. When a corner goes past and the camera zooms in, you can almost see the entire United squad pleading, “Can you take it easy for once and short the next one?”. No. No, they won’t.
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It’s a wonder United have only conceded five goals from corners all season. Tottenham could have scored two more in the 2-2 draw on Sunday. Set pieces in a broader sense remain a problem. United have conceded 0.33 goals from set pieces per 90 in the Premier League this season, the 16th worst figure in the league. And that doesn’t even include a few Champions League howlers.
Onana has put in some solid performances this season. But it is difficult to evaluate his first six months at the club and conclude that he is anything but a blatant net-minus.
Ah, you know that feeling. There’s nothing like the run-up to a big match. The excitement. The nerves. The fear that you have forgotten yourself game-specific NFT.
PR blunder of the week
In order not to be left behind online, Chelsea brought the shame of the #ModernGame to the real world:
Chelsea fans were left stunned as a group of ‘supporters’ brushed their teeth and read a book during their match against Fulham
The stunt was to promote an upcoming film called ‘Argylle’, which is being made by a production company owned by Chelsea chief Todd Boehly… pic.twitter.com/GVhcEk6kjC
— VoetbalJOE (@VoetbalJOE) January 13, 2024
There’s nothing to see here, just a group of actors getting up mid-game to read a novel and brush their teeth to promote the tragic new film Argylle, backed and financed by members of Chelsea’s ownership group. And we thought Todd Boehly had gone quiet.
The Adam Driver Award for Best Performance in a Dramatic Film
On the Stamford Bridge pitch, Cole Palmer was again the difference maker for Chelsea, scoring the only goal in a 1–0 win over Fulham. In his past five league games, Palmer has scored four goals and two assists. In that period, only four players have posted a stronger xGChain than Palmer, a measure of a player’s creative impact. Everything that is good and good about Chelsea flows through Palmer these days. But Mauricio Pochettino’s side still spends long stretches of games looking stilted and arrhythmic, like a collection of disparate parts that cannot be put together into a coherent team.
Missed opportunity of the week
Unai Emery will feel frustrated that Aston Villa came away from their trip to Goodison Park with just one point after a goalless draw. The fighting Sean Dyches made it difficult for Villa in a boring match. Villa had the majority of the ball but failed to create many chances; Everton were often cumbersome with the ball, but had the better openings.
Emery’s team remain in third place, on level points, with Man City in second, although City have a game in hand and a superior goal difference. But the Villa manager will be (somewhat) concerned about the side’s away record this season. Have a villa the best home record in the league – nine wins and one draw – but have struggled along the way, winning four, drawing three and losing four.
The performance away at Everton was indicative of their problems on the road this season. At home, Villa plays with a sense of control and security. They work the ball smoothly. Things are more hectic outside the home. Their ‘pace to goal’ ranks fifth among slowest home games this season, according to Statsbomb. Away from home, they move the ball on sixth fastest speed.
It is logical. At Villa Park they rely on a stable midfield base that moves the ball slowly against defenses stuck in a deep block, before exploding the team’s front four in quick combinations in the final third. Being away from home means opponents are more likely to be in the foreground, which is why Emery looks to take advantage of his team’s pace, clipping the ball in behind and letting Ollie Watkins, Leon Bailey and Moussa Diaby get to work.
On paper it’s a smart strategy. But in practice it hasn’t been that effective. Emery tried to convert it against Everton, but it was all too difficult. In seeking greater control, Emery was rewarded with passivity from his players, with Villa too often bypassing the midfield to try and hit the difference makers up front after playing with the ball at the back.
If Villa are to maintain a top-four finish or stay in the title race, Emery must find a compromise away from home, channeling the energy of his attackers while maintaining the rhythm between the lines that his side enjoys at home made it so impressive. .