Big Questions for GW3

What's on our minds going into the third week of the season?

So that cleared up all of the Week 1 confusion, right? We can pack it all up for 23/24. Brighton have won the league. City ran them close but just didn’t have enough goals in the side (as we all expected). Manchester United have rejoined Chelsea on the banter club perch. And mercifully, after last year’s confusing disarray, we have back the David Moyes defensive solidity we are used to. Sheffield United and Everton remain comfortingly bad. Fulham and Wolves seem to be joining them in the basement of bad teams. All done. Or we could wait a bit longer before making our conclusions, brush ourselves off and go again another 36 times?

Fine. We’ll do that. We hate small samples here, after all.

There are some really interesting fixtures this week, not least because there are some teams that are still a living embodiment of the shrug emoji to me. I’m basically only truly confident in evaluating Manchester City and Sheffield United so far. Handily they play each other. So we’ll learn something about the other 18 clubs. Oh and welcome back Luton and Burnley, great to have you back in the mix.

So what have we got our eyes on this week?

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Can Brighton maintain their momentum against West Ham?

As the early Premier League table can attest, no team has started the season quite as fast as Brighton. Turning over half the team hasn’t slowed them down at all so far. The last argument against Brighton having an even better season than they did last year sits squarely in looking at the teams that they’ve played so far. Luton and Wolves are both teams most of us would’ve expected to be in the 16th-20th positions in the table coming into the season. You can only beat what’s in front of you (and beat them they certainly did). But this weekend is a slight step up, defensively at least.

West Ham did not have a vintage year last year. And we’ve still got a tonne of questions for this season—mostly related to who is going to create and score goals—but what they did have even in their down season last year was the 7th best xGA in the League when away from home. David Moyes knows how to set up a defence—just ask Mauricio Pochettino. It’ll be intriguing to see what group of forwards Brighton choose to try to unlock the stubborn hammers.

Mitoma (22.75 points this season) looks the closest to set and forget in this Brighton team but Solly March (28) isn’t far behind him, despite pre-season worries that he was in a fight for his spot. The remaining two spots in attack will split between Danny Welbeck (4.5), Evan Ferguson (7.75) and Joao Pedro (9). Pick your warrior in this one. With Enciso having picked up a minor knock last weekend, and a reported more significant knee injury in training, we would assume he sits. The rest comes down to whether De Zerbi wants the experience of Welbeck to break down a stubborn West Ham or if he fully unleashes the youth movement. We will once again put our tick in the Ferguson x Pedro combination box if it’s put to a vote.

Brighton vs West Ham - 5.30pm UK, 12:30pm US kickoff, Saturday

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What does Ange-ball look like without James Maddison?