B/R Football Ranks: The Biggest Overreactions to Premier League Opening Weekend
Few occasions attract a bigger, more intense microscope than the opening weekend of the Premier League season.
With fans starved of competitive football for, well, not too long (but it feels like an eternity), they flock to the first gameweek like starving hyenas to a carcass, not only feasting on it, but savouring every morsel in a way they wouldn't had they been kept appropriately fed.
This, naturally, leads to massive overreactions. It is in our nature to draw conclusions, and small sample sizes be damned! We'll draw them anyway, even if they're absolutely ludicrous.
B/R Football kept a close eye on the reaction to the Premier League's first 10 fixtures of the 2019-20 season, gauging the reaction to the events that unfolded.
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5. "Manchester United are back!"
A hell of a lot went right for Manchester United on Sunday.
The new defensive additions, Harry Maguire and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, impressed, Paul Pogba produced a few sensational moments, and both Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial staked their claims to be the Red Devils' reliable goalscorer this season.
No one can blame United fans for basking in the glow of this result. They finished last season on a five-game winless streak, drawing with Huddersfield Town and losing to Cardiff City—two teams that had already been relegated—and spent the summer having their transfer work questioned by every other fanbase.
But while the final scoreline and last third of the match looked excellent for United, things could have gone very, very differently were it not for the width of a post.
Two smacks of the woodwork from Chelsea—first by Tammy Abraham, next by Emerson—had the visitors heading in at half-time feeling extremely hard done by.
They were well on top until Kurt Zouma conceded the penalty, and Rashford's consequent strike swung the momentum viciously.
It's right to laud United's cutting second-half showing. It's also right to temper expectation—to suggest the Red Devils aren't quite back—based on a single showing against a team they actually struggled with for periods.
4. "Norwich City are doomed"
Some will have taken one look at the way Norwich City were cut open by Liverpool on Friday and decided they won't cut it in the top tier. There's an old trope that newly promoted sides must focus on being defensively sound if they're to survive, and that if you're not, you should enjoy the short stay while it lasts.
But Friday's 4-1 loss at Anfield to the reigning European champions showed why the Canaries do have the potential to beat the drop: They cut Liverpool open on multiple occasions, netted once and showed the attacking coordination that won them the Championship last year.
Clean sheets may be in short supply in East Anglia this term, but they've got the juice to score two or three against plenty of their Premier League opponents.
If they're to survive, they'll do it like Bournemouth, not Stoke City.
3. "Jack Grealish: Not up to it"
Jack Grealish's step up to the Premier League was among the most compelling narratives heading into the opening weekend, and truth is—one way or another—snap judgements were going to be made.
Sadly for him, a late mistake—dispossessed on the edge of his own box while trying to dribble out, leading to a goal—defined his performance for many.
It ignores the very good performance he'd put in up until that point, frequently sliding runners in for dangerous counters and carrying the ball extremely well, even under intense pressure.
He was, for 75 minutes, excellent in every area, but the final 15 against a relentless Tottenham Hotspur side proved a bridge too far for him and everyone else in claret and blue.
The mistake he made was one he wouldn't have made in the Championship—he was practically impossible to dispossess—but the Premier League is a step up, and you can safely assume he'll adjust fast.
2. "Ndombakayoko"
The reaction—and it's tough to say whether it was an overreaction or underreaction, really—to Tanguy Ndombele's debut performance for Tottenham was quite something.
There was a big division in perception of how he played overall. Some saw the good in what this writer believes was an excellent showing; others saw the bad in a few uncertain touches early on, suggesting his wondergoal saved him from dropping a 5/10.
Thinking someone played poorly when others thought he played well is fine. It's a game of opinions, and we look for different things in players and draw different conclusions.
But after just 45 minutes, some had determined Ndombele a fraud, a flop, and made comparisons to Tiemoue Bakayoko, the £40 million Chelsea midfielder who has endured a pretty horrid time in west London. His second-half rocket strike, beginning a brilliant comeback victory, probably prompted a lot of deleted tweets.
That, perhaps, sums up the snap-judgement culture in which we exist better than any other.
1. "Kurt Zouma, Be Gone"
So, Kurt Zouma has been disowned. That was quick.
He hit the No. 1 trending spot on Twitter in the UK on Sunday evening after conceding a penalty that Marcus Rashford buried to put Manchester United into the lead.
It was a rash, unnecessary tackle—one you should never really be attempting on a player as quick and nifty as United's No. 10. And it cost the Blues dearly, turning a game they were enjoying the better of on its head.
With David Luiz gone and Antonio Rudiger injured, the Zouma-Andreas Christensen partnership gave us a good look at what the Blues have in reserve; the first impressions weren't great.
Christensen also struggled, as did the veteran Cesar Azpilicueta, but Zouma's obvious mistake earned him the ire of a fanbase watching their team lose 4-0 on the opening day for the first time in history.
It doesn't really matter that Zouma enjoyed a fine 2018-19 campaign with Everton, putting in consistently good performances in a quite open Marco Silva system—similar, in some ways, to Frank Lampard's—and that sometimes things go a bit wrong. It's now Fikayo Tomori time for some.
That's what a 4-0 defeat will do for your patience.
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