Premier League Notebook Heading into Week 16

After one season ended in disappointment on Tuesday, a new season starts this weekend for Liverpool. If Brendan Rodgers' side want to recover what they lost on a desperately disappointing night at Anfield, they will have to do it the hard way.

After being knocked out of the Champions League for failing to beat Basel on Tuesday (drawing against the Swiss champions when they needed a win in order to progress to the knockout stages), Rodgers immediately attempted to turn the team's focus to qualifying for next season's competition.

That means achieving one of two things: winning the Europa League (something they last achieved in 2001) or finishing in the top four of the Premier League. Rodgers said, per the Guardian:

"

For us it is simple, we haven’t been good enough over the course of the competition. We are going to fight as hard as we can to make sure it is not another five years [before Liverpool return to the Champions League]. We are bitterly disappointed and we will fight very hard to make sure we are back in it next year.

"

Winning the Europa League is an arduous task, one that relies as much on good fortune at key moments as the quality of a team's first XI. Finishing in the top four in the Premier League might be the more realistic ambition of the two, although that will require a significant improvement in consistency and quality over the second half of the campaign.

Much has been made of Liverpool's impotence without Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge, whose influence on last season's remarkable achievements grows with each game they miss this time around.

But even the absence of those two does not really excuse how lacking in pace and invention Liverpool have been this season.

Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert slow things down as the focal point of the attack, which forces Raheem Sterling to take on too much creative responsibility, as the likes of Jordan Henderson, Joe Allen and Steven Gerrard find it is much harder to do their jobs without SAS (Sturridge and Suarez) creating space for them up top.

What is more, with his selections, Rodgers makes it appear as though the Sterling-Suarez-Sturridge forward line was more the product of luck than judgement, considering how his attack has struggled this term.

Lazar Markovic, Emre Can and Fabio Borini (three players who could arguably help inject a bit of pace and, in Can's case, power into the mix) have hardly got a look in, making you wonder why Liverpool bought the trio in the first place.

Such are Liverpool's woes that there has been talk of bringing Divock Origi's move to the club forward to January, even though the Belgium international is currently approaching 1000 minutes without a goal for Lille.

As Liverpool struggle, others are thriving. With Chelsea and Manchester City looking imperious and Manchester United slowly consolidating third place, it is fourth that Liverpool are realistically competing for if they want to be in next season's Champions League.

Then again, it is not as if United have been playing noticeably better than Liverpool in recent weeks—they have just been finding a way to win in the end.

It is telling that goalkeeper David De Gea is the club's standout performer so far this season. United's most recent win (their fifth in succession) came despite the team only managing two shots on target.

United are yet to put in a statement performance this season—yet there they are, third in the table and only eight points behind the leaders. That failure to impress is partly due to injuries, with Van Gaal famously limited in his options for much of the campaign. Then again, those injuries also suggest the club has the capacity to improve as the season goes on.

"When you have injuries you cannot solve the problem otherwise," Van Gaal said, per Rob Dawson of the Manchester Evening News. "Do we have to buy players? No. We have more than enough."

Jon Super/Associated Press

Last season, the first meeting between these two clubs was a sign of things to come: Liverpool lapped an abject United side, just as they would in the final league standings. This season, the first game comes later in the campaign, at a point when many of us think we already know where things are headed.

If Liverpool are to shake that up, they may need to start at Old Trafford.

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Week 16 Fixtures

All games 3 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. ET) unless otherwise stated.

Saturday

Burnley vs. Southampton
Chelsea vs. Hull City
Crystal Palace vs. Stoke City
Leicester City vs. Manchester City
Sunderland vs. West Ham United
West Bromwich Albion vs. Aston Villa
Arsenal vs. Newcastle United (5:30 p.m.)

Sunday

Manchester United vs. Liverpool (1:30 p.m.)
Swansea City vs. Tottenham Hotspur (4 p.m.)

Monday

Everton vs. Queens Park Rangers (8 p.m.)

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Stu Forster/Getty Images

1. What to Watch out for This Week

Familiar Faces, Different Places

One of the more convoluted transfers of the summer was struck between Tottenham and Swansea, when the London club sent Gylfi Sigurdsson to Wales in exchange for Ben Davies, and then Spurs paid an extra £3.5 million to sign goalkeeper Michel Vorm.

So far, the deal—which must have taken a while to work through—has not exactly been as influential as either club might have anticipated. Sigurdsson started the season brightly for the club he enjoyed a half-season loan at earlier in his career, but since notching a couple of early goals, he has struggled to influence games behind Wilfred Bony.

Vorm and Davies, meanwhile, have had to get used to being back-up players in their new surroundings. Vorm has barely had a run-out, even in cup competitions, while Davies has been in and out of Mauricio Pochettino's side until recently, as he seems to finally have usurped Danny Rose at left-back after the Englishman suffered an injury.

Sigurdsson is virtually guaranteed to start on Sunday, however, and in front of the television cameras, he will be eager to make a point to Pochettino, who was happy to let him go without seeing him play a competitive game for the club. 

With Christian Eriksen occupying the Iceland international's preferred spot behind the main striker for Spurs, perhaps Sigurdsson cannot begrudge the Argentinian's decision. Nevertheless, he would surely love to outshine the Dane on Sunday.

Home and Away, a Tough Place to Play

Having clambered out of the relegation zone on the back of home wins against Leicester City and Burnley, QPR now face Everton hoping to break their away losing streak. Harry Redknapp's side have lost all seven of their away games in the Premier League so far this season, scoring just two goals and conceding 17 in the process.

Everton are usually an imposing prospect at Goodison Park, but they have struggled in league games immediately following a Europa League tie this season: Losing three and winning just one (against Burnley) of their five previous games after playing in Europe.

That should encourage the Londoners, although the fact the Toffees rotated considerably for Thursday's meaningless defeat at home to Kuban Krasnodar may end up limiting any advantage QPR will get.

Nevertheless, QPR should be fresher, more organised and perhaps in better spirits, considering their recent form (Christmas party shenanigans notwithstanding). But after saying that it was time Everton's results started to match their performances before their defeat Manchester City, Roberto Martinez will not want that plan of action to be delayed another week.

Manchester City Cannot Afford to Lose Concentration Now

Two big games without Sergio Aguero, two impressive wins for Manchester City. The second of those, against Roma on Wednesday, was particularly memorable—Samir Nasri's thunderous strike effectively turning the whole group-stage process in City's favour.

Manuel Pellegrini's side ended up winning 2-0 to secure passage into the knockout stages of the Champions League—their minimum ambition for the first part of the campaign.

With that achieved, City's attention now turns to domestic matters for two months.

Visiting Leicester City, the league's bottom side, would appear to be a walk in the park compared to travelling to the Stadio Olimpico, but it is exactly the sort of "straightforward" task City have often underestimated in recent times.

Pellegrini will impress the need to maintain concentration levels upon his side. Aguero may be out for a while, but the need to keep winning is still there.

2. Video of the Week

3. Player to Watch

Christian Benteke

The Midlands derby between West Brom and Aston Villa at the Hawthorns is arguably the highlight of the six 3 p.m kick-offs on Saturday. Not only is local pride at stake but also three points that could have a big impact on the picture at the bottom of the Premier League table.

Villa, thanks primarily to a fast start, have a five-point lead over the Baggies at this point in the season, with Alan Irvine's side lingering just a point above the relegation zone. That is partly a result of their lack of goals—with £10 million summer signing Brown Ideye starting just two league games (the first two of the season) so far.

According to Irvine, however, the 26-year-old is nearing a return to first-team action, per Birmingham's Express and Star:

"

He’s actually trained the best he has trained in the last couple of weeks. That’s not in terms of his application, which has always been good, but in terms of his effectiveness.

So he’s certainly looking more like what we would hope he would look. He has scored goals in training. There was a time when he was struggling to do that.

"

If Ideye is quickly looking like the poster boy for bad business in the transfer market, then Villa have a player at the opposite end of the spectrum in Christian Benteke (two years younger than Ideye).

The Belgian has proved an astute purchase at just £7 million and would surely now command much more than that on the open market. His value to Villa is huge—without him, they have an extremely anaemic forward line (at least until Libor Kozak overcomes his own injury woes).

Having said that, Benteke's winner against Crystal Palace at the start of the month was his first goal of the season, and his assist in Villa's last game against Leicester City was his first in that category, as well.

It is telling, however, that Villa won both games—Benteke is a player capable of elevating Paul Lambert's side above the relegation fray. And now that he is back playing on a regular basis, they will expect him to hit a rich vein of form over the coming weeks.

Alastair Grant/Associated Press

4. Game of the Weekend

Arsenal vs. Newcastle

After last weekend's victory over Chelsea, a club Newcastle have a remarkably good recent record against, Alan Pardew's side are set to visit Arsenal, a club they tend to do pretty poorly against.

The Magpies have lost their last five games against the Gunners, last winning at the Emirates in November 2010 (before that it was in 2001, when Arsenal still played at Highbury).

Pardew and Arsene Wenger have had their run-ins in recent years. The Englishman navigated a rough spell earlier in the season, and it is now Wenger facing criticism from the fans of his methods and speculation about his future.

Wenger was booed as he got on a train after the loss to Stoke City on Saturday, and the 3-2 defeat sparked speculation about his job security.

Pardew, for one, is on Wenger's side. He told reporters (via the Guardian):

"

The stadium should be named after Arsene. The job he did with that move across from Highbury, when he had all that debt and had to be very careful with his transfer budget, was incredible. It was a miracle that he kept them in the Champions League.

The incident at the train station was totally disrespectful. I think 90 per cent of Arsenal fans would have been ashamed of that and we could get the backlash of it. The crowd on Saturday will want to show how much they love him. After Sir Alex Ferguson he’s the best manager in Premier League history. Jose Mourinho hasn’t done enough yet.

I think everyone at Arsenal knows Arsene’s done a magnificent job—but all of us managers are on six- or seven-game trials with the media and social media. We have to accept that. Arsene knows instant results are massive, even for someone who has been in the position as long as he has.

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Pardew may have respect for Wenger, but he will not want to do him any favours on Saturday. Newcastle are only behind Arsenal on goal difference and smell blood.

Arsenal, however, bounced back from that Stoke disappointment with an impressive 4-1 win against Galatasaray in the Champions League—a game in which Aaron Ramsey scored twice and looked much more like the all-action, box-to-box player he was for most of last season.

It's a cruel blow, then, that Ramsey will miss this game, as will Laurent Koscielny (injured), Calum Chambers (suspended) and Nacho Monreal. How Wenger fashions his defensive options could be crucial in deciding whether he and his team avoid another dismantling on social media come 8 p.m. on Saturday.

“I think society is like it is today,” Wenger said on Friday. “You want to win the next game. It's a permanent tribunal from everybody, and it is as it is. You have to cope with that.