The Score: Man City’s giant two fingers, Spurs’ dilemma and Forest controversy

This is The Score, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

Hello and welcome back to The Score, a weekly column on the biggest talking points of the Premier League weekend. For the new season, we’ve given it a little revamp – with a new structure and some shiny bells and whistles at the end. This week, football news editor Kat Lucas is writing in place of Daniel Storey.

A good day for fans of banners and bananas. Maybe the football was never going to live up to all the rest of it – maybe it had to end with Manchester City gaining an unfair advantage.

It took Ryan Gravenberch’s incredibly harsh sending-off to change the tone at Anfield. Two soft yellow cards, two quick-fire goals and a giant two-fingers to the rest of the Premier League.

City’s three goals that steamrolled Liverpool were aesthetically sensational, if difficult to properly enjoy. If there was one overriding emotion on the day, it was powerlessness. Liverpool were impotent up against the trident of Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki, unable to do anything but scream into the void. It was not even possible to assess what any of it would actually mean in the long run.

In Liverpool’s proxy war on behalf of the rest of English football, they came armed with Oasis puns, boos and whatever projectiles they planned to throw at the City bus before it diverted through a secret entrance to avoid the crowds.

That was never going to be enough, because the title will ultimately be decided by the kind of quality Doku shows when running at defences and by Haaland’s finishing. In fact, judging by Enzo Maresca’s celebrations in front of the away end with his players at full-time, City’s siege mentality may only make them more formidable.

A word, too, on those City supporters, who will keep turning up week after week to bear the brunt of the animosity. What are they supposed to do? Not go? Interrupt the rhythm of their lives, or dull it by switching off the technicolour of their team? The potency of this City side makes this case all the more pressing, because there is a very real prospect of them brushing aside the rest of the division this season.

No excuses for Forest

Exactly the performance Oliver Glasner would have hoped for on his return to Crystal Palace – and the worst possible result. Palace’s second was farcical, given to Jefferson Lerma, then briefly to Anan Khalaili, before deciding it had come off his elbow and back to Lerma. Forest have every right to be furious, but it does not excuse how they managed this game, especially after falling behind.

The irony is that both players were being run ragged by Forest, but they failed to capitalise and Glasner’s side missed seven – yes, seven – big chances. Liam Delap’s was the worst of them, just from yards out. Forest somehow turned what should have been a routine victory into a comprehensive defeat.

Credit for De Zerbi

The glass-half-empty version is that Tottenham produced their best performance of the season at Old Trafford but only snatched a draw through a peculiar late equaliser. That is a little unfair. Roberto De Zerbi’s starting XI looked just as odd but he got it right.

Conor Gallagher in the No 10 role was superb, aided, you have to admit, by an atrociously unbalanced Manchester United midfield. Archie Gray did his job at right-back and it is only a pity that Mateus Fernandes does not seem to be fit enough to play 90 minutes.

The one dilemma is whether Omar Marmoush would have buried the chances Dominic Solanke missed. On his showings so far, the answer has to be not necessarily. Spurs have to stop doing this – they were the better side for such long spells against Newcastle, Everton and Aston Villa, too, and won none of those matches.

Gameweek 6 highlights

Goal of the weekend – Abdoul Ouattara (Ipswich) vs Fulham

Let’s park Fulham’s latest self-immolation and throwing away a very good three points with two minutes of ordinary time remaining. Ipswich knew how to hurt them from set pieces but there Ouattara’s hit from 25 yards had two wonderful ingredients – the initial touch and the finish.

Statistic of the weekend

Tottenham have not won any of their opening six games. They have made such an awful start only twice in their history, with the previous occasion coming under Juande Ramos in 2008. He was sacked after the eighth match.

Villain of the weekend – Luke Shaw (Man Utd)

There is absolutely no contesting Rodrigo Bentancur’s red card, which bizarrely earned him a kiss from Roberto De Zerbi in the dressing room. That tells you everything about the lack of fight which has frustrated the Tottenham boss all season, but he will be less delighted about the fact Shaw escaped a red having started the altercation.

Player of the weekend – Jordan Henderson (Chelsea)

Among the list of qualities for which Chelsea signed Jordan Henderson, pace and urgencies were probably not ranked all that high. Yet it was he who set the tone against Bournemouth with a goal and assist in the first three minutes, before adding another of his own – and it could have been a hat-trick. Most importantly we have been waiting to see how effective he is alongside Moises Caicedo – it won’t always be as easy as it was against Bournemouth but the link-ups with Morgan Rogers were very promising indeed.