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Saturday Premier League scores, Week 4: Liverpool make no sense, Manchester City wrecking fools

Only one of the Premier League's top sides is playing like it at the moment. Manchester City are coasting past opponents, but what's wrong with everyone else?

By Kim McCauley
Clive Mason/Getty Images

Another Premier League Saturday is in the books, and most of the league's top teams still don't really know what they're doing. Manchester City aren't having problems posting easy wins, but Arsenal are having a bit more trouble getting the results they want. And in the cases of Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea, they're not getting the results they want at all.

Heading into Sunday, City have a five-point lead on the next-best "Sky Six" teams -- Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Chelsea and Spurs currently sit in the bottom half.

Saturday scores

Newcastle 0-1 Arsenal
Chelsea 1-2 Crystal Palace
AFC Bournemouth 1-1 Leicester City
Aston Villa 2-2 Sunderland
Manchester City 2-0 Watford
Stoke City 0-1 West Bromwich Albion
Liverpool 0-3 West Ham United
Tottenham Hotspur 0-0 Everton

Arsenal need to sort their attacking personnel out

Aaron Ramsey and Mesut Özil have had their moments this season, but strangely, Arsene Wenger has deployed both of them on the wing quite a bit. It's not working, and it also doesn't make any sense. Why is Santi Cazorla sitting deep in the center while Ramsey drifts out wide? What is the point of that?

Quality over quantity for Crystal Palace

Patience is a virtue in soccer. It's better to have one extremely good chance than five average ones. So even though Palace had 13 fewer shots than Chelsea and three fewer on target, they deservedly won their match because of the quality of chances they generated.

Callum Wilson's bike!

Credit: user Thankyouedge on r/soccer

Basically nothing happened in Bournemouth-Leicester, save for this. It was the only thing of substance either team generated all game. But if you watched it, this goal probably made it worth your 90 minutes. Well done, Callum Wilson.

What does Tim Sherwood have against substitutes?

Tim Sherwood got a bad rap during his time at Spurs for his lack of tactical nuance, but this is a perfectly legitimate criticism of him. He's late to use his subs, and often doesn't use all three. If Villa had someone with fresh legs up top at the end of their match against Sunderland, they might have two more points in the bag right now.

Raheem Sterling is on the board

Credit: user cveiz on r/soccer

And now that he's finished one of his chances, City will go on to be an unstoppable force. As a reminder, he's going to be running onto flicks and through balls from Kevin De Bruyne soon. Terrifying.

Stoke are down two key players for a bit

Credit: user tagproPlayer_ on r/soccer

This red card for Charlie Adam was the second of the game for Stoke. Ibrahim Afellay was sent off earlier for slapping Craig Gardner. This means that Stoke will be without two of their best players for their trip away to Arsenal. These dumb fouls didn't just cost them a loss to West Brom, but maybe one against the Gunners as well.

What is Brendan Rodgers doing?

Liverpool lacked creativity in the first half of their game against West Ham, while Dejan Lovren embarrassed himself repeatedly. So what did Rodgers do? Took off Emre Can and put on Alberto Moreno, switching to a defensive 3-5-2/5-3-2 while down two goals. It didn't work, and the Reds never had a chance after Philippe Coutinho got sent off.

Spurs keep getting unlucky

Harry Kane can't do everything. Spurs need someone else to finish open chances once in a while, and they couldn't do it against Everton. Though, in Spurs' defense, Tim Howard was brilliant on the day. A returning Christian Eriksen, plus the additions of Clinton N'Jie and Son Heung-min, should help quite a bit in the finishing department.

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