Can Anyone Keep Pace With Arsenal, and Are Manchester United Doomed?

Three questions after the opening weekend: whether anyone in the Premier League is equipped to chase Arsenal, whether Manchester United have simply restarted an old cycle under a new manager, and whether the most hyped teenager in American soccer is finally worth the noise.

Should the Premier League just hand Arsenal the trophy now?

Arsenal's 3-0 win over Coventry City on opening night did not settle anything, but it did make the gap look wide. The champions were comfortable in a way they rarely were last season.

That is the interesting part. Arsenal spent much of last spring winning ugly, dragging themselves through matches that felt like tests of nerve for a fanbase that had waited 22 years. The tension at the Emirates thickened as the finish line approached.

Against Coventry, and against Manchester City in the Community Shield, none of that was visible. They generated 1.62 open-play expected goals against Coventry, against an open-play average of 0.95 across last season. Winning the thing appears to have loosened them.

The caveat writes itself: Coventry came up from the Championship. Monday's trip to Villa Park, where Arsenal lost last season, is a more honest measurement.

Even so, the rest of the league is not in a state to punish anyone. Most of the top clubs are integrating new managers or new signings or both, while Arsenal are running a system they have spent several seasons building. We looked at why defending a title is the hardest part last week, and history is genuinely against them. Form, right now, is not.

Are Manchester United repeating the same cycle again?

This season was supposed to be the break in the pattern. Out of the Ruben Amorim era, into something lighter under a manager the squad actually wanted. Then Saturday's defeat at Hull City arrived full of Amorim-isms.

United were overrun in central midfield. Their box defending was poor. In the final third they barely manufactured a clear look at goal. After a second half of last season that suggested real progress, this was a return to the performances that ended the previous regime.

The most worrying part was the running. Whatever else went wrong under Amorim, his United ran. That intensity has drained out of them over the summer, and the Hull match gave no evidence of pre-season fitness work paying off.

With one week of the transfer window left, the shopping list looks longer than the club seemed to think. Midfield reinforcement has arrived. The defence has not been refreshed. There is no second centre-forward to spell Benjamin Sesko. There is still no top-level left winger.

So Michael Carrick will mostly have to find answers inside the building: Kobbie Mainoo's availability, Carlos Baleba alongside him, Sesko's return, perhaps something recoverable from Marcus Rashford. If none of those land quickly, the cycle simply runs again.

Is Cavan Sullivan finally justifying the hype?

MLS built its post-World Cup marketing push around a handful of faces: Lionel Messi, Son Heung-min, Miguel Almiron, a bobblehead Antoine Griezmann, and Cavan Sullivan.

Sullivan is the one selling the future rather than the present. He has carried that billing since May 2024, when he signed a record deal that includes an eventual move to Manchester City, two months before breaking Freddy Adu's record as the youngest player ever to appear in a senior MLS match at 14 years and 293 days.

The Adu comparison was not meant as a compliment for long. Sullivan was expected to be central to Philadelphia this season and had started one league game by late April. Even once he was in the side, it was often hard to see what City had seen.

That has changed over the past few weeks. Sullivan is now driving a Philadelphia team repairing a dreadful first half of the year, and his form since the World Cup, which happens to coincide with a change of coach, has been strong enough that some are tipping him for a USMNT call-up next month. Mauricio Pochettino could use a player of that profile.

Whether he is ready for that is a separate question. He is 16, he does not join Manchester City for another two years, and the leap to the Premier League remains a large one. It is simply easier to picture than it was a month ago.

Featured image via Pexels.