If Liverpool are to go on and win the Premier League title this season it is perhaps stoppage time away at Brentford, where a Darwin Nunez brace turned one point into three, that they will look back on as the key moment.
Arne Slot’s side maintained their advantage over their rivals thanks to the Uruguayan’s late show, negating Nottingham Forest’s win over Southampton and stretching ever so slightly further clear of Arsenal, who stuttered in a 2-2 home draw with Aston Villa.
There was to be no such smiles for Tottenham or Manchester United, both of whom are mired in misery this season, as they fell to their twelfth and tenth respective defeats in the league.
Elsewhere, Newcastle’s red-hot form was extinguished in devastating fashion by Justin Kluivert and Bournemouth.
While Graham Potter’s start to life as West Ham boss hit all the wrong notes in a 2-0 turnover at the hands of Crystal Palace.
In the latest instalment of this weekly column, Mail Sport picks out five of the most interesting talking points to emerge from the Premier League’s latest round of matches.
Liverpool’s win over Brentford will likely be viewed as a key moment of the title race
RUUD AWAKENING
There is a lot of finger pointing going on right now right across the Premier League.
Tottenham fans are pointing at Ange Postecoglou. Manchester United fans are pointing at Ruben Amorim. And Leicester fans are firmly pointing the finger at Ruud van Nistelrooy as he oversaw a seventh defeat from eight Premier League games.
This time it was Fulham who kicked the Foxes while they are down. In truth, it doesn’t matter who Van Nistelrooy’s team play, they lose.
Since beating West Ham 3-1 in his first game in charge, a result that had some believing a turnaround was in store, Leicester have seen wheels come loose – and now off.
In those seven defeats, Van Nistelrooy’s side have lost by an aggregate scoreline of 18-2, conceding at least two in each of those seven losses.
Factor in too that only Everton (0.96) have a worse Expected Goals (xG) per 90 than Leicester this season and the issues come into sharp focus.
An anaemic attack, which has scored just once in the league since December 29, ranks 19th in the league for shots on target per 90 (3.15). Only Southampton, equally as hopeless, are worse with 2.9 per 90.
Ruud van Nistelrooy’s message is not resonating and his Leicester team are in freefall
Also, no team has fewer touches in the opposition box per 90 than Leicester (17.65), while they rank dead last for successful passes made in the final third per 90 (61.7).
Not done.
Leicester rank 15th for possession (45.59 per cent average per 90) and 19th for goals allowed per 90 (2.2). Only Wolves are worse (2.25).
And to top off the menu of misery, Leicester have conceded more goals (25) than any other team since Van Nistelrooy was appointed.
The Dutchman was roundly jeered by his own supporters at the weekend during the defeat to Fulham and it has taken a matter of weeks for a seemingly positive situation to turn itself irreversibly sour.
‘We were talking about a Leicester team devoid of confidence and ideas before the game, but he’s got a performance out of that group tonight,’ former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson said on BBC Radio 5 Live after Van Nistelrooy’s first game, and now only league win with Leicester to date.
‘But there’s something there for Van Nistelrooy to work on and what he’s seen tonight would have given him a lot of delight.
‘He’s made some big changes. His in-game substitutions and management looks good. It’s good signs for Leicester.’
As Leicester continue to fold like a house of cards against minimal opposition resistance right now, those signs may have been a mirage that soon disappeared. Slumped in 19th, the writing looks to be on the wall already for Van Nistelrooy.
He has overseen seven successive defeats in an alarming slump that could spell relegation
AMORIM IS RIGHT NOT TO PANIC
While one figure synonymous with Manchester United looks devoid of ideas, another is in quite the opposite camp.
Ruben Amorim is a charming man, a clear and concise speaker, and somebody with plenty of self-assurance that his ideas can and will work.
‘I’m not going to change the way I see the game. I’m very clear on that,’ Amorim said after a 3-1 defeat to Brighton brought on the worst form at home in 131 years.
‘The players are going to suffer, I’m sorry, the fans are going to suffer. I have one way of doing things, I know it’s going to [bring] results.
‘But we have to suffer these moments. I think it’s very clear for everybody what we are going to do.’
Manchester United have allowed the tail to wag the dog for too long and that saw Erik ten Hag cave on some of his key principles in search of short term fixes to secure his future.
But Amorim is steadfast in his belief that with time and squad restructuring he can rebuild this house with far stronger foundations than the fallible ones he inherited.
Ruben Amorim is convinced his ideology will filter through to his Man United team eventually
The Portuguese pulled no punches in his assessment of United’s current state on Sunday
It should be said too that when Manchester United made their pitch to him in Portugal, they expressed their desire for him to be a culture changer, a project builder, a shaper of a club that was spiralling in the wrong direction.
United intimated this was a ‘now or never’ job offer and Amorim, who had transformed Sporting Lisbon into the powerhouse of Portuguese football, took it even with the knowledge he would not have his own players or the necessary funds to do much to improve the squad.
His 3-4-2-1 system lives and dies by its wingbacks, to which he doesn’t have a single player used to the role.
He has had limited training time and has inherited a bunch of players who look ‘anxious’ to carry out his instructions.
As CEO Omar Berrada and technical director Jason Wilcox, both central to the Amorim hire, watched on from the Old Trafford directors’ box on Sunday afternoon, it should have dawned on them if it hadn’t already that calm, not chaos, is needed in a difficult moment like this.
Amorim showed his tactical acumen with lesser tools at Anfield and the Emirates Stadium. He put it all on show in the Manchester derby, too. He’s made mistakes, not least in failing to counter the wing dominance of Brighton on Sunday as he found no way to stop the bleeding.
‘Everybody here is underperforming, no matter the circumstances,’ he said.
‘We have to accept that it’s unacceptable to lose so many games – for any club in the Premier League, imagine Manchester United.’
But unlike the sinking ship at Leicester that is going down with a captain looking lost in his technical area, Amorim’s idea is clear. He just needs the tools and the backing to do the job they dragged him here mid-season to do.
FODEN IS ON A HEATER
In short: no player has scored more Premier League goals than Phil Foden in 2025.
The longer version is that the reigning PFA Player of the Year finally resembles the player that made a mockery of opponents on a weekly basis last season.
He failed to score a single goal in his first 11 league games this season. That was a blank from 24 shots in those matches.
Since then he has produced six goals from far fewer attempts and looks to have rediscovered that spark that made him unplayable for Pep Guardiola and City last season.
‘It is good to see me back scoring goals with a smile on my face and enjoying football,’ Foden said.
‘I want to keep going and adding to that. You never know what can happen. The aim is to stay in the top four.’
And his manager is as relieved as he is that Foden looks back to the player City have badly missed until only recently.
Phil Foden has rediscovered his spark, in news that will be warmly welcomed by Pep Guardiola
‘When he is smiling every game is two goals, two goals, two goals… he has goals in his mind,’ Guardiola said.
‘We talk a lot the last two to three months, he was a completely different boy, he arrived at the beginning of the season and struggled with problems.
‘They are human beings, sometimes when you have the long, long careers you have setbacks.’
With off-field issues behind him now and a smile back on his face, Foden can be the driving force for City in a season that, despite obvious disappointments to this point, is far from over.
MOYES LAYS BLUEPRINT
While much of the fall-out is zoned in on Tottenham and Ange Postecoglou, it should not be lost how well David Moyes has done to get a tune out of Everton’s lacklustre attack.
Only Southampton (15) have scored fewer times than Everton (18) in the Premier League this season and most weeks see Everton struggle to create meaningful opportunities.
Their season average is 0.75 goals per game with 3.3 shots on target. Their average Expected Goals total is 0.97.
David Moyes has established his blueprint at Everton following their 3-2 win over Spurs
The goal-shy Toffees were full of verve as they secured an important three wins at Goodison
I say all that to demonstrate that as they scored three to down Tottenham over the weekend every attacking metric was up: goals (3), shots on target (6), touches in opposition box (26, up from 20.2) and Expected Goals up to 2.03.
‘It’s not something I’ve just come in and said, “We’re not quite good enough at finishing”,’ Moyes said in the build-up.
‘By the way, I can’t “magic” all that to change, I just can’t do it.’
It’s too premature to say one three-goal performance is a discovery of that magic, but the signs are positive and for the first time in a long while, Dominic Calvert-Lewin looked like a serviceable No 9 once more.
‘People keep telling me he has not been getting many chances. Well, he has had his chances in the last two games, he has his goal,’ Moyes said of Calvert-Lewin after he ended his goal drought.
‘The biggest thing today is he played like a proper No 9 at times. He made the centre-halves worried, he was a threat, he was challenging, winning a good percentage of his aerial duels. He got involved in everything.’
With resources stretched and goals at a premium, Moyes will hope he now has a blueprint for Calvert-Lewin to fire them to safety.
FOREST CONTINUE SETTING THE TONE
One of the counters that often comes up these days when it is floated that Nottingham Forest are in the Premier League title race is that rivals will eventually find them out.
But good luck with that when Forest are masters of getting themselves out in front.
When Elliot Anderson put Forest 1-0 up against Southampton on Sunday, he made it 18 times from 22 league games this season that his side have taken a 1-0 lead.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s Forest are a tough nut to crack once they go one goal ahead
To put that into context, in Premier League history only Man City in 2011-12 and 2018-19 have gone ahead in more games in their opening 22 matches of a campaign (both 19).
They were 3-0 up through 41 minutes but it is the first goal that allows them to settle into a rhythm that sees them control the game.
Earlier in the season there were blown leads against Bournemouth and Wolves, both at home, and Forest have matured since then which is why they go into late January joint-second alongside Arsenal.
They took the lead in 10 of their first 11 games this season, losing only once, which is another factor to consider.
Keep writing off Forest if you wish… but allow them to get in front and it’s a long road back.
Just ask Southampton, Wolves, Everton, Tottenham, Brentford, Manchester United, Ipswich Town, West Ham, Leicester City, Crystal Palace and Liverpool.
