The briefing: Will Arsenal and Liverpool regret their draw and is it time to ditch the VAR?

Welcome to the briefing, where every Monday this season The athlete will discuss three of the biggest questions facing Premier League football this weekend.

This was the weekend where Crystal Palace finally got their first win, Tottenham played probably their worst game of the season, there were a series of result-changing goals in stoppage time, Brentford and Ipswich played a thriller and Cole Palmer once again made his case to be the best player in the league.

Here we question whether both Arsenal and Liverpool will be disappointed with their draw, why VAR can't be eliminated if it adds errors to the game, and whether it's already too late for Southampton…

Will Arsenal and Liverpool regret their draw?

It was a bit of a strange game at the Emirates on Sunday.

At first glance, a 2-2 draw between two of the best teams in the league looks like a great duel. Four goals. Both Mohamed Salah and Bukayo Saka scored. One team took the lead twice and the other equalized twice. Aren't you entertained?

Well, no. Not really. There was plenty of exciting play and some phenomenal moments of individual skill, not least the graceful but brutal efficiency of Saka's early shot, the sweeping move for Salah's late equalizer or Declan Rice's sensational cross from deep to head Mikel Merino placed second for Arsenal.

But overall it was… maybe not entirely boring, but certainly not as entertaining as the bare facts would suggest.

It was also a strange game in that both teams may have felt they had missed a great opportunity to not only take three points but also move a point clear of a near-rival, while both are fighting to beat Manchester City defeat.

Arsenal and Liverpool canceled each other out (Adam Davy/Getty Images)

For Arsenal, any team that takes the lead twice at home and doesn't win will be disappointed. Yes, they were without William Saliba and lost Gabriel to injury in the second half. From this perspective, one could argue – and not without reason – that a point against the league leaders is a good result.

But their first-half performance was so impressive that they could/should have easily been further ahead, and Liverpool were so disjointed at times that one suspects Arsenal could/should have won in the second half too.

And yet at times after the break they resembled a team of ten men playing with their backs to the wall, desperately trying to get a point. That was understandable considering that after the 54th minute and the departure of Gabriel they no longer had their first four defenders – neither on the pitch nor in their preferred position – but for that reason Liverpool will feel that they could have made more.

At stake here was a wounded main rival who wasn't necessarily playing badly, but was clearly weakened. It will therefore come as a huge disappointment that Liverpool were only able to manage four shots on goal in over 100 minutes of football.

You can turn all of these arguments around and use them to argue that this was actually a pretty good point for both sides, but both know that every point is crucial with City still around the corner. For both of them it feels like a missed opportunity.

Go deeper

The briefing: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 2 – Nunez stays cool. Was this a missed opportunity for Arteta?

Why can't we accept that VAR makes the game worse?

The case for VAR came in the closing stages at Stamford Bridge when a marshmallow soft penalty awarded against Chelsea was correctly overturned. If the technology wasn't there, there would have been a wrong decision and, technically speaking, an injustice would have occurred.

But if this was a calm, considered case for VAR, there was a loud outcry against it in London when West Ham were awarded a penalty against Manchester United that apparently not even Danny Ings, the man supposedly fouled, agreed with that he should have been forgiven.

This isn't necessarily a foolproof way of judging these things, but the fact that none of the West Ham players requested the penalty should be a pretty good indicator that it wasn't the clear and obvious mistake that was made the officials apparently thought was possible.

United fans will be irritated on two levels: firstly, because the penalty was awarded against them that gave West Ham the winning goal; Secondly, that it gives Erik ten Hag and (perhaps more aptly on this occasion) their players an excuse for an incredibly wasteful performance and their fourth defeat in nine this season.

Matthijs de Ligt “foules” Danny Ings at the London Stadium (James Gill/Getty Images)

For the rest of us, though, what matters most is what this tells us about an innovation that should have improved the game but is actively making it worse.

Maybe this is naive, but we should be able to deal with people who make mistakes. Everyone does it. Player. Manager. Referee. Even journalists, if you can imagine such a thing. It is part of human fallibility and we should all be aware that it is unavoidable, especially when the error is a refereeing decision made on the face of it and the action happens as quickly as a premiership -League game.

It is less easy to deal with errors being artificially introduced where there was no possibility of making them before. VAR adds an unnecessary layer of human fallibility which, because it takes place in a more controlled environment (the theoretical calm of a room at Stockley Park, as opposed to the hectic center of a football pitch), silences the conspiracy theories.

You can blame the on-field referee, David Coote, for this decision; It doesn't happen often, but referees can take one look at the screen and decide they were right the first time. Coote should have been stronger, but he would not have been put in this position had Michael Oliver, the VAR, not absurdly ruled that the incident passed the “high bar” for overturning decisions.

Two minutes and 34 seconds passed between the incident and the penalty being imposed. Four minutes and six seconds passed between the incident and the imposition of the penalty. Is it worth disrupting almost five percent of a football match, even if the VAR makes the right decision? It's definitely not like that if it's not like that.

The idea of ​​VAR eliminating all errors was always fanciful, but we were told that the game's suspension would be worth it given the calls corrected. If something like this happened in VAR's first two seasons it could be dismissed as a teething problem, but it's already the sixth season in the Premier League and it's not getting any better.

Some may argue that this situation just shows that this system simply needs to be improved. What's even more true is that the system will always make the game worse. But what's even more true is that this situation shouldn't have much impact on the conclusion: VAR should be abolished as soon as possible.

Despite Pep's praise for Southampton, is it already too late?

Pep Guardiola's post-match praise can be a double-edged sword.

He tends to reserve it for teams who have just smoked his Manchester City but have played the game in a way he likes. City didn't overwhelm Southampton this weekend, but his assessment of his counterpart Russell Martin still felt like a condescending pat on the head.

“It's a good game to learn as a manager,” he told the media after the game. “I'm going to learn a lot from Russell because they've done really well. The way they played is so sophisticated. They defend with the ball… and they’re really good at it, one of the best in the Premier League.”

That's all very well and good, and just losing 1-0 to City when you're the worst team in the division might actually give Martin and his team some encouragement. Undoubtedly there are positives to be seen.

Russell Martin and Pep Guardiola (Matt Watson/Getty Images)

But despite this praise, it may already be too late for Southampton. When measuring the worst teams in Premier League history, Derby County's 2007/08 vintage is always the antithesis of the gold standard.

It is our solemn duty to inform you that even they have had a better start to the season than Southampton are currently having.

Russell Martin's men became the fifth team in Premier League history to pick up just one point from their opening nine games. Everyone else got off. The total number of points required to avoid relegation has continued to fall over the years, from the magical “40-point mark” a few decades ago, through the mid-30s, to just 27 last season would have been enough to survive.

But even to reach that number from this point onwards, Southampton will need to get just under a point per game. If the points total is a little more in line with previous seasons, Southampton will essentially have to play like a mid/lower midfield team for the rest of the season to stay up. Does anyone really have faith that they can do this?

Maybe it will work next week against Everton or the week after that against Wolves. Maybe they'll improve and start picking up wins. Maybe they'll be encouraged by the fact that things aren't looking so good for many other fighters at the moment either.

But despite Guardiola's signing, even at this early stage of the season it feels like they have already progressed too far.

Comes

• For the discerning viewer, it's a relatively thin football pulp this week. It could be a good opportunity to clear your head and maybe read a novel, talk to our families, or maybe watch some of those movies you've had on that list in your notes app for months.
• There's a full series of Serie A games if you're one of the Euro 2020 fans: AC Milan vs. Napoli seems to be the standout game, but Juventus vs. Parma will appeal to 1990s nostalgics.
• If you enjoyed Chelsea vs Newcastle on Sunday, can we interest you in… Newcastle vs Chelsea on Wednesday? The rematch everyone/some people are demanding is in the Carabao Cup, which also features fixtures such as Brighton v Liverpool, Tottenham v Manchester City and what many refer to as the Invincibles Clasico, Preston v Arsenal.
• The actual FA Cup also starts this week, on Friday, when Notts County take on Alfreton Town (which is a local derby of sorts) and Tamworth take on Huddersfield (which isn't actually one).

(Top photos: Getty Images)