The Euro XI: Arsenal's Mikel Arteta plays it too safe, Liverpool look far from convincing and Erling Haaland keeps Man City alive

Why, Mikel, would you go out and spend big on Victor Gyokeres, Ebere Eze and Noni Madueke, if you aren't going to make the most of them? Arsenal's summer transfer business, from the outside, seemed a state of attacking intent. Here was a manager who loved his defensive structure, taking the handbrake off a little.

The Gunners could be expansive, maybe even just a little bit fun. But when it came to the big game, Arteta went right back into his shell. The Spaniard deployed seven (!) defensive players against a weakened Man City at home, and relied on a late moment of magic from Gabriel Martinelli to salvage a 1-1 draw.

Was this tragedy? No. But one point could have been three, if Arteta had just been a little more brave.

Man City are in a precarious spot. They are still rebuilding and tweaking, Pep Guardiola fiddling with a team rather than fine-tuning it. And you could see a side still a little uncertain of itself Sunday afternoon.

City went up 1-0 early thanks to a lovely goal from Erling Haaland. Guardiola's side of old would twist the knife, make it four or five. Instead, Guardiola shrunk and bunkered in. To be fair, it almost worked, but City were frighteningly conservative.

And even if Arsenal weren't exactly full of attacking inspiration, they could have few complaints about the draw. But something weird is happening: Pep is playing scared.

It is a good thing, then, that Guardiola has a super Norwegian space robot demon to play up front. Haaland wasn't exactly bad last year, but he was miles off the player that smashed the Premier League goalscoring record in his debut season. Now, it seems, he is determined to restructure his game a little.

Haaland's whole vibe for a long time is that he was very good at one thing: sticking the ball in the net. Everything else was low priority. But this year, he's changed it up. Haaland is carrying Man City not only by scoring - he has six in five games - but also by affecting the game everywhere else.

Haaland passes. Haaland defends. Haaland now does a bit of everything. And without him, City would be in a far worse place.

It's rather funny that the most likely team to win the Premier League are doing it while looking reasonably poor for long stretches. Liverpool were excellent for 30 minutes in the Merseyside derby. They scored two very nicely crafted goals, and might have had a third if Mo Salah's whipped shot not gone inches wide of the top corner.

After that, though, they closed into their shell, and let Everton play. They were, in the end, outrun, outworked and perhaps slightly fortunate to come away with three points against their rivals. It's an odd situation, all said.

Liverpool probably have too much attacking talent to lose in a shootout. But they do a pretty poor job of controlling games from ahead. At some point someone is going to punish them. The question is, who? 

Picture the scene: it's the 40th minute of a Premier League game. You are up 2-0 against a rattled visiting side, who are down to 10 men and without their best creative player. The opponent has not put a shot on target. What should happen next? A third goal? Perhaps a fourth? Surely, there's no way you could let them back into the game, right?

Wrong. 

Welcome to the world of Manchester United, where these things happen. United were comfortably in control against Chelsea. Bruno Fernandes had the Red Devils in total control. And then, Casemiro decided to get himself sent off on the stroke of half time for a daft second yellow card. 

The second half was a strange thing. Chelsea were without Cole Palmer, and on a waterlogged pitch, had few attacking ideas. They managed to get one back, but couldn't muster an equalizer. United scraped out win. Somehow, didn't feel fair. But neither would a draw. Sometimes, football just makes no sense.

No one quite knew what to make of Xabi Alonso's Real Madrid - especially after the Club World Cup. They Galactico'd their way to the semifinal, were battered by PSG, and appeared to be in reset mode. Well, we're five games into La Liga. Madrid have won all five, scored 10 and conceded two. Sound like the stat line of the struggling team? Nah. 

Espanyol were this week's prey, and it was simply ugly. Madrid lulled them to sleep with pass-after-pass, created three real chances, and relied on individual quality to win.

There are a couple of ways of looking at this. The first is that Los Blancos are boring and miserable to watch. The second is that they might be really rather good, and winning ugly is what champions do. Perhaps it's the latter.

Or perhaps it's the fact that they might have got a little lucky. It is football's yearly tradition to provide a centerback screamer. Every season, some lumbering dude must stroll up from defense and smash one into the top corner. 

There's no science here; these things just happen. Militao was gracious enough to provide this year's effort. Cheers, Eder.

It rained a lot in the south of France this weekend. Marseille were supposed to host PSG in Le Classique, routinely the biggest fixture in French football. It should have been a good one, too. Marseille had overcome a rough start to find some form. PSG are still in testing mode. Upset watch was on.

But the rain kept coming, and never stopped. PSG-Marseille was postponed, so dire were the conditions in the city. Ligue 1 responded by pushing the game back one day.

That, in itself, isn't extraordinary. But what it did do is reveal what might happen at the same time the match is being played on Monday - the Ballon d'Or ceremony was held Monday, too.

Was that a clue that Ousmane Dembele wouldn't win, and that it was Raphinha's to lose? Turns out, no. Dembele won the award - though PSG lost the match without him - and made an emotional acceptance speech.

It has been suggested, by some, that Harry Kane is the best player in the world at the moment. It's a strange statement in some ways. The Bundesliga is hard to judge, such is it's admittedly mixed level. How much do goals there really mean? Hard to tell.

But if you subscribe to the theory that raw data trumps all, Kane now has eight goals and three assists in four matches. That's fairly ridiculous. Meanwhile, Bayern are back to doing Bayern things after beating Hoffenheim, 4-1. Yeah, the German league might be over already.

Welcome back, Jose Mourinho. Football missed you so much. Of course, the Portuguese manager was only let go by Fenerbache a month ago. But Turkish soccer feels like a world away, not quite in the same universe. Now, he's at Benfica, and his first game was vintage stuff.

Mourinho gave an incendiary prematch news conference, set his team up in a 4-4-2, and won 3-0 playing some unwatchable stuff. This sport truly is wonderful.

As we all know, there are only two teams in Dutch soccer: Ajax and PSV. That's unfair to a lot of historic organizations, of course, but the point remains - this league is dominated by a duo of clubs these days. And it feels seismic whenever they meet. Their first clash of the season was this weekend, and it delivered with a tense 2-2 draw.