Matchday 32 Awards
Liverpool are continuing their procession to the title after winning against West Ham, taking advantage of yet another stumble from Arsenal.
Manchester City showed that there’s still fight in old dog Kevin De Bruyne as they roared back to a 5-2 win against Palace, Chelsea could only rescue a 2-2 draw against Ipswich, while Newcastle utterly dominated Manchester United in a 4-1 win.
But perhaps the biggest surprise of the round came as Everton beat Nottingham Forest away.
As usual, you can click here to check out all our reports from this round’s action.
And you can visit our YouTube channel for previews of each matchday, as well as predictions and hot takes on current EPL topics.
But back to the task at hand: who earned our Premier League awards this time? Read on to find out.
Best Player
Harvey Barnes performed at a very high level against Manchester United on Sunday and it left us wondering why he is not starting on a more regular basis for Eddie Howe’s team.
He scored two goals, with the first one being a poacher’s finish from a Jacob Murphy cutback, while the other was a wonderful solo strike, picking Mazraoui’s pocket and powering forward through a poor United defence. Barnes finished what he started with a great shot that ended up in the top corner of Bayindir’s net.
It was a crucial contribution from the former Leicester player as Newcastle have now done the double over Manchester United for the first time in almost 100 years (1930/31 season).
Great stuff!
Best XI
GK – Kepa Arrizabalaga (Bournemouth)
RB – Thomas Partey (Arsenal)
CB – Jarrad Branthwaite (Everton)
CB – Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
LB – Rayan Ait-Nouri (Wolves)
CM – Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City)
CM – Sandro Tonali (Newcastle)
CM – Youri Tielemans (Aston Villa)
RW – Ben Johnson (Ipswich)
ST – Joao Pedro (Brighton)
LW – Harvey Barnes (Newcastle)
Best Goal
We absolutely loved Jadon Sancho’s goal for Chelsea against Ipswich. It was a textbook example of a supremely controlled strike, with the winger simply refusing to lash out at the ball in a game that had very little for the Blues to be pleased about.
Have a look!
A peach from SANCHO! 🍑 – YouTube
Best Game
We had some incredible games this weekend, but we can only give one Best Game award. And it goes to Wolves vs Tottenham.
Four wins in a row! | Wolves 4-2 Spurs | Highlights
Six goals, six further big chances, outstanding performances, a slapstick own goal, great tempo and proper Prem entertainment all round.
More of the same please!
Best Stats
Mohamed Salah broke the record for goal involvements in a 38-game Premier League season, with his assist for Luis Diaz’s opener against West Ham bringing the Egyptian’s tally to 45 (27G, 18A). Liverpool still have six games left to play.
Manchester United have now lost 115 of their 450 EPL games since Alex Ferguson’s retirement. They registered 114 defeats in 810 games in the competition under the Scotsman.
No defender has scored more goals than Virgil van Dijk’s 24 since the Dutchman’s Premier League debut in September 2015.
One good and one bad for Villa. Emery’s side became the first team in Premier League history to have three players score as substitutes, as Ollie Watkins, Donyell Malen and John McGinn all came off the bench to score against Southampton.
The bad? They had to do so in part because of Marco Asensio missing two penalties. He became only the fourth player in Premier League history to squander two spot kicks in the same game, after Saido Berahino (West Brom, 2016), Darren Bent (Tottenham, 2010) and Juan Pablo Angel (Aston Villa, 2005).
Best/Worst VAR Decision
Not necessarily great or terrible, but this weekend saw the implementation of the Semi-Automated Offside Technology in the Premier League, with its first use coming in the early Saturday kick-off. It denied Eberechi Eze a third Palace goal in their game against Manchester City.
The delay was reasonably long, so we can only hope that this brings an improvement to the debacle that VAR has been for most of its existence on English shores.
Best Substitution
Any of the three Aston Villa players we’ve mentioned above could snatch this award, but we’re giving it to Ollie Watkins, whose opening goal did a lot to settle the nerves of the visitors, especially since it came minutes after Asensio’s first penalty miss.
Still trying to work out how Ollie Watkins scored that goal 🤯 – YouTube
Not to mention that it was a fantastic finish!
Funniest Moment
It’s pretty obvious that Liverpool’s Andy Robertson was not best pleased with his captain’s efforts that led to West Ham’s equaliser.
We have a lot of sympathy for the Scotland captain here, as it went down as an own goal from him.
And we couldn’t help but chuckle at Andre Onana feeling vindicated for being left out by Amorim for United’s trip to St. James’ Park. His replacement, Altay Bayindir, also did very poorly, prompting this reaction from the Cameroon goalkeeper.
