Wolves and Sheffield United embarrassing Premier League’s bigger teams
Whether you’re a superhero movie diehard or an independent arthouse type, this weekend’s best Premier League game features two teams putting the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal in the shade.
EPL
Don't miss out on the headlines from EPL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
If you’re reading this story, you’ve been delving deep into The Daily Telegraph’s sport offering. And if you’ve come this far, you may not reading anything but sport. So, for a moment, let us take a brief diversion.
The cinema fans among us will no doubt have been following the recent ongoing debate about the worthiness of Marvel movies, sparked by legendary director Martin Scorsese’s comments that the comic book giant’s expansive on-screen universe is “not cinema”.
In the face of unsurprising online outcry, the Oscar winner was arguing that the dominance of these tentpole pictures has come at the cost of smaller independent films that focus on “human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human beings”.
Stream live coverage of La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the EFL Championship with beIN SPORTS on KAYO. Get your 14 day free trial & start streaming instantly >
So, the Premier League this weekend features a round of fixtures that, on face value, would appear to have little to tempt most oversees viewers out of bed at some ungodly hour.
There’s no click of the fingers to watch Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United Infinity War crumble to dust, no Liverpool-Manchester City all-star Endgame slugfest – although Arsenal could do a pretty good Civil War and Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham move could be the best magic trick since Dr Strange.
Rather, this weekend’s most interesting game has no franchise history, A-listers or special effects.
Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Sheffield United isn’t Premier League box office. But if you love football, this is your cinema.
Both teams are defying expectations this season, with managers demonstrating a clear vision of how they want to play the game and how to get the best out of their players to achieve that.
At Wolves, coach Nuno Espírito Santo won plenty of admirers last season through the way he took a squad of just 18 players – the lowest in the Premier League – into seventh place, beating Arsenal, United, Spurs and Chelsea along the way.
The prize, if you can call it that, was entry into the Europa League qualifiers, ensuring that that same squad started their season on 25 July. For smaller teams, the knock-on effect of playing on the continent usually means their Premier League form suffers – but after a slow start, Wolves have gradually found their feet again.
With Mexican striker Raul Jimenez back in the goals and Portuguese midfielder Joao Moutinho pulling the strings, Santo’s team are unbeaten in eight Premier League games and are up to fifth on the ladder, with the 2-0 win over Manchester City the highlight of the season so far.
It’s this form that has Santo linked with a candidate to take over from the under-pressure Arsenal coach Unai Emery.
The visitors this weekend have perhaps impressed even more, given this is United’s first season back in the Premier League in more than a decade and again the man behind it is attracting the attention of bigger fish.
Coach Chris Wilder’s job at turning the Blades into a sharp-edged, competitive Premier League team has not gone unnoticed, with struggling West Ham reportedly eyeing the 52-year-old as a replacement for Manuel Pellegrini.
But as a former United player, it seems unlikely Wilder would walk away from the good things happening at Bramall Lane.
Unbeaten in six games, United have taken points off Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Everton, Arsenal, Spurs – not the form of recent promotees – as well as making Liverpool fight for a 1-0 victory and pushing Manchester United buttons in last weeks’ rollercoaster 3-3 draw. That was the fifth time they have come away a point after trailing in a match.
Wilder’s team should have put United to bed before Solskjaer’s lacklustre side somehow conjured three goals from an otherwise inept performance – but even the fact that they refused to buckle after going from 2-0 to 2-3 demonstrated the steel in this Sheffield team, most of which remains from the side that came up from the Championship.
And despite the somewhat earthy roots, United are no long-ball English nightmare; instead, Wilder has fashioned a team focused on retaining its shape, with overlapping centrebacks that make diagonal runs past their wingbacks. If it sounds unusual, it is – for an English manager, at least and United looked to have done more than enough to confound United.
It should be noted, however, that we are only about a third of the way through the season and only three points separate the seven teams between fifth and 11th. There is plenty of time for both to get dragged down by this mid-table morass, as the greater resources of bigger teams start to tell.
MORE NEWS
Why Rabbitohs hold key to Latrell’s future
Video: Sickening Hodges knockout punch
That Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs are still wallowing in this mess suggests that things won’t stay like this forever.
In the meantime, this is the aesthetes’ chance to enjoy what makes football so good; the capacity for those of smaller means to succeed at the expense of dominant forces. That Wolves, Sheffield and Burnley should all be placed above those underperforming members of the so-called “big six” shows that unlike Marvel movies, the Premier League story is not written to please the biggest audience.
Big clubs may still command bigger TV audiences and the revenues that follow but those tentpole teams are being overshadowed by those with a clearer philosophy and a vision of how the game should be played. Surely even Martin Scorsese would be satisfied with that.