Arsenal close to perfect weekend, Nuno Tavares progress, and more

Nuno Tavares, Mikel Arteta and Tijjani Reijnders (Photos by Marco Rosi, Justin Setterfield, Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

With about 25 minutes to go at Southampton on Sunday, it was looking like turning into a near perfect weekend for Arsenal in the Premier League.

Mikel Arteta’s side produced their best performance of the season so far on Saturday as they brushed Nottingham Forest aside 3-0 and then they sat back and watched Manchester City get taken apart by a clinical Spurs at the Etihad.

Southampton’s fightback against Liverpool at St Mary’s, which saw them leading 2-1 after falling behind early on, looked like putting the gloss on what had been an excellent 24 hours, but then that man Mo Salah performed his rescue act for Liverpool, albeit with a lot of help from the Saints keeper and defence.

So things didn’t quite turn out as well as they could have done for Arsenal, with Liverpool maintaining their nine point advantage over them, but to be honest that was expected at the start of the weekend. Any dropped points from Liverpool on the south coast would have been a bonus.

For Arsenal the key thing now is to just build on the result and performance against Forest, because it was very good. For the first time in a long time there was a real sense of balance in the team. They looked much more like the Arsenal side we have become accustomed to over the last couple of years and they need to build on that now.

You can see the difference that Martin Odegaard has made, it’s been massive. But having Riccardo Calafiori back on the left was crucial, as was having Jurrien Timber back playing on his more natural right hand side. Both sides of the pitch looked balanced and that’s something that has been missing.

If Mikel Arteta can continue to have his big players available to him over the coming weeks then there is no reason why they can’t string a strong winning run together. There are six winnable games in the league between now and New Year’s Day, if Arsenal win all six then I’m convinced they will be within touching distance of Liverpool when they enter 2025 and then it will be all to play for.

Liverpool are on a hell of a run, but it doesn’t feel like they are unbeatable. Things are going their way a bit and Sunday’s game at Southampton was a clear example of that.

On one hand you look at it and say they won while playing pretty poorly, which is the sign of a good team, but on the other you could say they are enjoying a fair bit of luck right now that has to run out at some point.

This weekend will obviously be huge. Arsenal have to make sure they get the job done at West Ham and then see what happens at Anfield when Liverpool host Manchester City.

City look a bit of a mess at the moment. They are so easy to play through and you would expect Liverpool to take advantage of that. But Pep Guardiola’s side will know they can’t really afford to lose and that could be dangerous for Liverpool.

So I don’t think the title race is over. It’s too early for that. Liverpool are in an unbelievable position. But I don’t think any of their rivals will be waving the white flag just yet.

Nuno Tavares in a press conference (Photo by Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images)

It’s great to see Nuno Tavares doing well at Lazio and hopefully the injury he picked up during international duty doesn’t keep him out for too long.

But there’s no way you can look at how he’s performing in Italy and the question whether things could have gone differently for him at Arsenal.

It’s not like he didn’t get opportunities. He got plenty. He was just very raw and didn’t really make the most of those opportunities.

You could see he had talent and that he had the attributes to be a decent player, but he was – and still is to be honest – a bit too chaotic a player for a Mikel Arteta team.

He does always tend to start brightly at new clubs as well and then tail off a bit. He did it at Arsenal and at Marseille, so it will be interesting to see whether he can maintain this form with Lazio.

Providing a few clauses are met, his loan will be made permanent in the summer and he will stay in Italy. Arsenal will get their money back on him and have a very big sell-on clause included in the deal with Lazio.

I think that is pretty good business to be fair. I certainly don’t look at what he’s doing and regret that he was allowed to leave and I can’t imagine there will be many people at Arsenal who feel any different.

Tijjani Reijnders is a player who constantly seems to be in the headlines at the moment, with clubs across Europe being linked with him.

Manchester City, Spurs, Barcelona, Real Madrid are all said to be looking at the AC Milan star, and I’ve seen Arsenal being linked now as well.

It’s not something that I’ve heard of myself and the speculation doesn’t really seem to be coming from outlets of much substance when it comes to Arsenal matters, so I’m a bit sceptical about it.

But he’s clearly doing very good things for Milan and is a quality player, so you would expect some of Europe’s top clubs will be keeping an eye on him ahead of the January window.

I’m still not expecting much from Arsenal when it comes to January though, the message we are getting is that the focus remains on the summer when it comes to any significant business.

Obviously that might change should an opportunity present itself in January that is deemed too good to turn down, but we’ll have to wait and see if that happens.

If Ruben Amorim didn’t already know the size of the task facing him at Manchester United before Sunday’s game at Ipswich, then he certainly does now.

It’s clear that there is plenty of work to do to turn things around at Old Trafford and you would think that Amorim is under no illusions in terms of the work that he will have to do to get them competing again.

I don’t know him overly well as the coach, but he’s clearly a very talented operator and he put together a fine team at Sporting, one that knocked Arsenal out of the Europa League of course just a couple of years ago with that penalty shootout success at the Emirates.

I think he’s an exciting appointment for United. He’s a young coach who has a clear philosophy and the evidence suggests that players like playing under him and he can get a lot out of them.