Observing Liverpool’s effective use of their substitutes at Burnley highlights the triumph of their recruitment strategies. Unlike other teams still unsure about their recent acquisitions, you have to look way back to find a true misstep in Liverpool’s player selections.

We can discuss players such as Federico Chiesa – left out of Arne Slot’s Champions League squad – Takumi Minamino and certainly Darwin Nunez*. 

In fact, the last major financial miss for Liverpool dates to the summer of 2018, when they invested £50 million in Naby Keita from RB Leipzig. Eventually, Keita departed without a transfer fee.

The standout performer in Liverpool’s narrow victory over Burnley was midfielder Ryan Gravenberch. The Dutch player, acquired for £34 million from Bayern Munich in 2023, anchors Liverpool’s attack with his consistent presence.

He made 87 passes during Sunday’s game and few were wasted. He sets the tempo and the rhythm.

Nunez, who netted 40 goals and assisted 22 in 143 appearances for Liverpool, was later sold for £50 million. While not a complete failure, he didn’t quite deliver the expected impact for the team.

LESSONS STILL TO BE LEARNED

As for Manchester United, have they truly fared as poorly as their outcomes indicate? Analyzing their goal attempts, touches in the rival penalty area, and precarious XG shows that Ruben Amorim’s squad is making gradual progress.

Still, though, United make mistakes in the wrong areas and can appear heavy-handed and reactive in the transfer market and team selection.

United say it was their intention to sign goalkeeper Senne Lammens all summer which makes me wonder why it took them so long and, once they had done it, why he didn’t go straight in to the team on Sunday.

Manchester City waited for Ederson’s move to Turkey to go through before pressing the button on the Gianluigi Donnarumma transfer and putting him into the side. The save he made from Bryan Mbeumo with the score at 2-0 was crucial. 

I do wonder what that move means for England’s James Trafford – firmly ensconced now as number two at the Etihad at a time when his career needs to move forward – but that’s a debate for another day.

The fact is that if United had put some faith in their new number one, it may have had a profound impact on the result.

AN OLD FACE COULD HELP 

Still with goalkeepers, Graham Potter already has a decision to make with his. With his West Ham defence all over the place against Tottenham, it is clear they need a guiding hand between the posts and they are not getting that from Mads Hermansen.

Signed from Leicester for £16.5m during the summer, the 25-year-old Dane does not look like an upgrade in what is threatening to become a problem position for the Hammers.

So what does Potter do? A pragmatic coach may turn to the man quietly re-signed by the club last week, Polish veteran Lukasz Fabianski.

Having been released at the end of his contract last June, Fabianski has returned to fill the number three spot and was on the bench alongside another goalkeeper, Alphonse Areola, at the weekend.

Whoever is in goal when Potter continues his uncertain reign at home to Crystal Palace at the weekend, some better work at set pieces would also help. Watching Pape Sarr head in Tottenham’s first while unmarked at a corner on Saturday, made me pine for the days of old-fashioned man-to-man marking.

VILLA FIRING BLANKS

Una Emery’s problems lie at the other end of the field with his Aston Villa side having not scored a single goal in five league games going back to the middle of May.

The only other team in the whole of the England and Scotland professional and semi-professional ranks not to have found the net so far this season are Aberdeen, who sit bottom of the SPL.

Much is naturally being made of the drop-off in form of centre forward Ollie Watkins, who touched the ball only once in the Everton penalty area as the teams drew 0-0 on Merseyside.

But Watkins has never been especially prolific – he scored a career-best 19 league goals for Villa two seasons ago – and it’s clear he needs help. Villa did sign a striker – 24-year-old Frenchman Evann Guessand – in the summer but that apart their off-season work relied on playing the loan market.

Villa have been pressed so hard against their financial ceiling for so long that refreshing Emery’s squad each summer becomes ever more difficult. As such loan players Harvey Elliott and Jadon Sancho – both on the bench at Everton – are going to have to do some heavy lifting.

EDWARDS CHOOSES HIS MOMENT

At the top end of the Championship, Middlesbrough boss Rob Edwards chose his moment to criticise his team’s fans for booing one of his substitutions after a late goal saw his team grab a 2-2 draw at Preston.

‘I don’t want to see that response when I am making a substitution,’ said Edwards. ‘We are a family and if we going to achieve something then we have to be together. I don’t want to see or hear that because I don’t think it helps us at all.’

Edwards showed himself to be an empathetic, emotionally mature manager when taking Luton into the Premier League, and out again, and this feels like a smart play.

If you are going to take your supporters to task for something, it’s best to do it from a position of strength and Middlesbrough are currently leading the promotion race.

STEADY DOES IT

Last season’s promoted teams are learning some lessons from what happened to Leicester, Southampton and Ipswich, it seems. 

Arne Slot said Burnley spent 90 minutes with eleven players in their own penalty area on Sunday but insisted it was not a criticism. Burnley manager Scott Parker dropped midfielder Josh Laurent in to defence to play with a five and came within a couple of minutes of a clean sheet.

The Clarets’ opening run of fixtures read like a horror script when they came out in the summer but some sensible football is yet to see them embarrassed. 

Similarly, Sunderland – helped hugely by their new Dutch goalkeeper Robin Roefs – now have two clean sheets, two wins and seven points to their name and are sitting in the top half of the table.

The only team to beat them so far this season in the Premier League? Burnley!!

SOME THINGS WON’T CHANGE

Ange Postecoglou looked taken aback when the BBC’s Jonathan Pearce suggested how fit and well he looked as he returned to the Premier League arena with Nottingham Forest at Arsenal on Saturday. 

The new Forest manager was straight into his ‘eyes to the floor’ routine that we saw so many times in uncomfortable post-match interview situations at Tottenham.

‘I don’t do small talk,’ he told me when I saw him for an interview at Spurs a couple of years ago. ‘It just makes me uneasy. I never know what to say.’ 

On this occasion a simple ‘Thank You’ probably would have been enough.