The overstuffed football calendar is reducing quality but increasing drama | Jonathan Wilson

IIt was a very good weekend for Liverpool, and a pretty good weekend for the Premier League. It’s one round of the game, and mistakes and quirks happen. But that three of the top four could lose on Saturday morning felt not only invigorating – perhaps this isn’t a competition determined entirely by how much money you have – but perhaps also part of a pattern.

And that football pattern is a bit patchy, a bit scratchy, a bit lacking the fluidity and quality we’ve become accustomed to, which is perhaps not so good. Apart from Moisés Caicedo’s equalizer, Chelsea’s draw against Manchester United in Sunday’s showpiece was an extremely limited match. The feeling this fall was that there were a lot of teams full of good players who weren’t playing particularly well.

Aston Villa’s defeat at Tottenham produced the most spectacular scoreline, 4-1, but was in some ways the least remarkable of the three defeats for teams near the top. As brilliant as they have been under Unai Emery, a reset has been expected for some time, if only because the demands of the Champions League, especially from a side unaccustomed to the demands of the European League and balancing the Premier League even when their manager is – are so intense.

After they had to concede late against Bournemouth last week and lost to Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday, it was not the biggest surprise that they also had to drop points at Tottenham. What was unexpected was the way Spurs tore them apart in the second half. Perhaps it was just a case of Villa opening up as they chased the game and being picked off by wildly inconsistent opponents having a good day, but it was impossible not to wonder if fatigue could be a factor.

Arsenal’s woes are well known and the defeat to Newcastle was no big surprise. The loss of Martin Ødegaard has affected their balance in midfield, but it also seems to have hit them psychologically – as if they can’t quite imagine the possibility of playing well without him. They have already lost twelve points this season. Given a good rule of thumb is that a side hoping to win the title must achieve 90 points, which puts their title challenge in serious doubt; they effectively only have 12 more points to drop in the 28 remaining games.

But maybe 90 points won’t be needed to win the league this season, and not just because of the potential points deduction hanging over Manchester City. City’s 32-game unbeaten record in the Premier League came to an end at Bournemouth on Saturday – a statistic that in itself should warrant a pause; Teams really shouldn’t be able to go the equivalent of 85% of a season undefeated, or certainly not in the way City have done it, with a tired sigh and no one paying much attention to it.

Bournemouth deserve their own recognition in this; their last three games have been against Arsenal (home), Villa (away) and City (home) and they have taken seven points from them. As Pep Guardiola said on Saturday: “We couldn’t match the intensity.” That goes to Andoni Iraola and his excellent Bournemouth, who have found good form after a shaky start, inspired by Antoine Semenyo.

But in reality, City have been uneasy for some time. Five times in the league this season, they have conceded the first goal in a match and have struggled to beat Fulham, Brentford, Wolves and Southampton. This is not the control Guardiola is aiming for. He lamented a season that, with the Club World Cup next summer, could last 70 games – “like the NBA, but the NBA has a four-month holiday and we have three weeks… When that happens you have long-term injuries. time.”

And of course he is absolutely right: top players are expected to play too much. City miss Rodri and Kevin De Bruyne. Arsenal can also rightly point to their injury list. To which there is an obvious answer: stop playing so many games. They are the clubs that have driven the expansion of the Champions League, the clubs that go on long pre-season tours, the clubs that have the power to refuse to play in the Club World Cup. To eagerly take the money and then complain about the consequences – while, for example, replays in the first rounds of the FA Cup are being scrapped and smaller clubs are being denied much-needed income – is illogical and distasteful.

However, the implications for competition could be fascinating. City suffered a run of one win in six Premier League games in November last year before winning 17 of their last 20, so no one should draw any firm conclusions, but there is a possibility this is an old story . old-fashioned season in which the elite not only ruthlessly cut through opponents, but actually have to compete.

It’s terrible that the costs are injuries for players, who are expected to push their bodies beyond the limit. But if that can be ignored on a more abstract level – and it may not – a dip in quality may be worth it if the narrative drama improves, a terrible paradox that the economic model of modern football has forced the game into. .

• This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.com and he will provide the best answer in a future edition