Matchday 13 Awards

Is the title wrapped up? Are Manchester United back? If Arsenal are still in the title race, what are Chelsea’s chances? Are Evanilson and Kluivert a match made in heaven for the Cherries?

These are all questions we’ve been asking ourselves after the weekend’s games. There was plenty of excitement to go around and we’re still experiencing a bit of disbelief about how one-sided the Liverpool vs Manchester City game was.

Arsenal put five past West Ham, Chris Wood scored a goal that gave Forest all three points against Ipswich, Newcastle stumbled late on and drew with Palace, while Chelsea battered an out-of-sorts Aston Villa team.

As usual, you can also click here to check out all our reports from this weekend’s action.

So who earned our Premier League awards this weekend? Read on to find out.

Best Player

Kevin Schade’s hat-trick against Leicester feels like it came out of nothing. After only managing three goal contributions across all of last season, his three strikes against Leicester were quite crisp and showed no signs of a striker with such low numbers.

Better yet, he is now only the fourth German player to score a hat-trick in the Premier League, after Jurgen Klinsmann (1998), Fredi Bobic (2002) and Andre Schurrle (2014).

Best XI

GK – Robert Sanchez (Chelsea)

RB – Milos Kerkez (Bournemouth)

CB – Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)

CB – Gabriel Magalhaes (Arsenal)

LB – Marc Cucurella (Chelsea)

CM – Alexis Mac Allister (Liverpool)

CM – Enzo Fernandez (Chelsea)

CM – Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool

RW – Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)

ST – Kevin Schade (Brentford)

LW – Bukayo Saka (Arsenal)

Best Goal

There is just something so satisfying about a free kick that goes in off the underside of the crossbar, so this week’s Best Goal award goes to West Ham’s Emerson for his stunning effort to bring his side closer to Arsenal in their game.

West Ham 2-5 Arsenal | Premier League Highlights

Best Game

Brentford vs Leicester just wins it in our book ahead of West Ham against Arsenal, mainly because they managed to spread a bit of the excitement into the second half as well.

Brentford 4-1 Leicester City | Extended Premier League Highlights

Best Stats

It was an uber-dominant display by Liverpool against City in the first half, resulting in Guardiola’s men having to face seven shots in the first 20 minutes of a Prem game for the first time in almost 14 years (eight against Wolves in January 2011).

After his two goal contributions against Manchester City, Mohamed Salah has equalled Wayne Rooney’s record of games in which he has scored and assisted, with 36.

Wolves giving away penalty after penalty enabled Bournemouth to achieve not one, but two awesome stats. Justin Kluivert became the first player in the history of the Premier League to score a hat-trick of penalties in a game, while Evanilson is now the first to ever win three penalties in a single match.

Manchester United beat Everton 4-0, but the xG told a very different story, with Amorim’s team barely gathering more than the Toffees in this metric: 0.73 vs 0.65.

Nicolas Jackson doesn’t like letting his opponents settle into a game. He has opened the scoring in the first 10 minutes of a Premier League match for the fourth time in 2024, more than any other player.

Another one about Manchester United: the last time they won by 4+ goals in the EPL was a 5-1 win over Leeds in August 2021. That was before the appointment of Erik ten Hag.

Best/Worst VAR Decision

VAR took a little over 4 minutes to make a decision about Southampton’s goal on Friday. Even more frustratingly, halfway through this process there was an image saying that Cameron Archer was onside, only for the final decision to chalk off the Saints’ goal.

It also resulted in 10 minutes of injury time, which ended up being close to 13.

Best Substitution

Tom Cairney came off the bench for Fulham in the 61st minute of their match against Spurs, scored in the 66th and was sent off in the 83rd.

From hero to zero, but his goal still earned the Cottagers a point.

Funniest Moment

The Anfield faithful are sure about what they want when it comes to whether Salah extends his Liverpool contract.

The man ages like fine wine.