The Euro XI: Man United make magic, Arsenal are still the set piece geniuses and Liverpool's Mohamed Salah scores again

So much for being "washed." OK, Mo Salah hasn't been great for a while now. There have been some loose touches, some uncharacteristic misses, a bit of selfish play that was unlike the winger who was in with a shot of the Ballon d'Or last year.

Claiming he is "back!!!" in full might be a bit much, but he got himself on the scoresheet against Aston Villa, and looked a real menace for the first time in months, leading the way Liverpool's surprisingly comfortable 2-0 win. 

Do we exist in a universe in which Manchester United are good at football now? Ruben Amorim supposedly has three years to get it right, which is a long time in the Man United universe.

True or not, he's certainly showing that he can conjure a few performances out of this markedly imperfect team. The latest one? A 2-2 draw at Nottingham Forest, complete with a cracking Amad Diallo equalizer. There might just be a team here.

Chelsea-Tottenham is meant to be chippy. It's one of those fixtures in the Premier League that doesn't necessarily have a geographical rivalry, nor a singular point of tension. Rather, it's just always angry. But it's usually also quite good, a truly high standard of football to match the vitriol. 

Well, this one was just plain bad. Spurs and Chelsea played out a miserable contest over the weekend. Chelsea won it, and just about deserved to do so - with Moises Caicedo making a decent case for the arbitrary "best midfielder in the Premier League" title. 

How do you win if you don't have time to train? The answer, for Arsenal at least, is to squeeze every last drop of quality you can out of the controllable. Welcome to the world of set pieces, where the ugly becomes your biggest advantage. And the Gunners are the kings of it all, a nightmare to deal with from dead ball situations.

They delivered again against Burnley, scoring from one set piece and then strolling their way to a 2-0 win. Declan Rice was among the goals in a prancy midfield role - something that suits him wonderfully. But most impressive? They allowed just one shot on goal. If defense wins championships, then Arsenal have placed themself in a good spot.

What can you even do when Erling Haaland is in moods like this? Pray? Give up? Both? Or maybe you just watch and try not to get absolutely battered.

City carved a really good Bournemouth team to bits with Haaland alone. He scored twice and could've had one or two more. This is the difference with him. City can be short of their best and still make things look very, very easy. 

Speaking of ridiculous forwards, who knew it would be so simple to get Mbappe to stay in a central position? And just how good he would be if he did? Mbappe bagged twice for Los Blancos against Valencia before very generously passing up a chance to bag a hat-trick by giving a penalty to Vinicius Jr. Madrid are humming, and this looks an awful lot like Ballon d'Or form. 

There is one issue, though: Vinicius just can't get going. Whether it be the fact that he's still not fully fit, or the obvious issue that he is playing second fiddle, the Brazilian hasn't yet found his stride. That much was clear Saturday, when he fired a penalty into the grateful arms of the keeper. Madrid still won, but it was far from impressive from Vini. 

The Clasico defeat was a bad one for Barca. They went into the game with injuries to deal with, but still figured to give Madrid a game. Instead, they rather collapsed, and deserved the loss. Hansi Flick's side needed a rebound performance, and provided just that with a 3-1 win over lowly Elche.

Lamine Yamal was sharper, Marcus Rashford bagged, and they looked far more comfortable. La Liga will be tough this year, but this felt like an important response to getting punched in the face. 

Is it disrespectful to play one of your closest rivals and put out, effectively, a B team for the game? Bayern benched a handful of their big guns - including Harry Kane - and still battered Leverkusen, 3-0.

In a sense, this was smart game management from Vincent Kompany. There are a lot of games to play, and his main man could do with saving his legs here and there. But it all felt like a statement of intent, along the lines of "Yeah, I can beat you with (some of) my backups." 

Igor Tudor was always an interesting fit at Juventus. He played some really enticing football in the French league, and with a load of interesting attacking players, had the chance to do so again in Italy. But he fell into the Serie A trap of being as boring as humanly possible.

Well, Juve went winless in eight, and he was always going to be shown the door. New manager Luciano Spalletti wasn't exactly tactically revolutionary in his first game in charge, but he did encourage a bit more expression. It all resulted in a much-needed 2-1 win. Maybe do that again next week, lads?

Milan did something horrific this weekend. They played open football. They tallied 17 shots, and created masterfully. But Roma managed 20. This was a frantic thing that somehow finished just 1-0 Milan. Turns out frenetic soccer might not be so bad, after all.