Taking a closer look at five Premier League clubs (Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Southampton and Spurs), we delve into what needs they have for the upcoming season.

1) Arsenal: A striker

Towards the end of last season, when he was asked about his future at Arsenal, Mesut Özil said that he had unfinished “goals” at the club. With the lackluster Olivier Giroud and injury prone Danny Welbeck as Arsenal’s main strikers, the situation is real. There are basically two options – either Arsene Wenger has never fully been convinced by Giroud, or he is no longer fully convinced by Giroud – as is proved by his comments during the European Championship about the difficulty of playing with slow strikers.

Even if the answer in fact lies somewhere in between those two options, the conclusion remains the same. If Arsenal are going to harbor title hopes and atone for the missed opportunities of last season (something cliched for Arsenal fans), Wenger needs a better center forward. The only problem is, the last time the Arsenal fans called for signing a world class striker, Wenger responded by signing a certain French teenager named Yaya Sanogo.

2) Tottenham: A quality, back-up striker

Having one of the League’s top-scorers in your team hardly means that you don’t need anyone else. Of the top 20 players with the most minutes in the Premier League last season, only two were strikers. Troy Deeney played 3,293 minutes, and Harry Kane played 3,370. The difference between the two is that Kane played another 658 minutes in other competitions, almost 700 minutes for his country and then went off to the European Championships (not to mention taking up set-piece duties). The incredulous lack of rest might actually explain Kane’s recent below-par performances.

The other options for Spurs include Heung Min Son, who is not a classic central forward, Clinton N’Jie, who will require time to settle after a serious knee injury, and Vincent Janssen who was signed from AZ Alkmaar. While Janssen shows promise, the Dutch Eredivisie league isn’t the strongest, so even if he scored 27 goals for AZ, that doesn’t mean anything in the Premier League.

3) Manchester City: Full-backs

One of the key changes Pep Guardiola will notice as he settles in as the Manchester City boss is that he now has Aleksandar Kolarov in place of Alaba, and Sagna in place of Lahm.

There is an awful lot of work for Guardiola to get this Manchester City squad ready to be successful home and abroad rather than either/or. The signing of Ilkay Gundogan helps to solve the central midfield problem (although it adds to their ever-increasing list of extremely injury prone players), and the suspicion is that Leroy Sane will be the long-term replacement for Jesus “sprint, dribble, bad cross” Navas. However, it’s at the full-back position that City look most desperate. Pablo Zabaleta’s form has dropped off a cliff in the last 18 months, while neither Kolarov or Gael Clichy have ever screamed elite class. Plus Bacary Sagna is 33.

Having brought through David Alaba and Juan Bernat at Bayern, one just can’t quite see Pep sticking with his current options.

4) Manchester United: A “good” central defender?

One of the best examples for the phrase “Nothing is permanent” is showing two Manchester United backlines over the years – one with Vidic, Ferdinand and Neville, and the other, the current defense, comprising Daley Blind, Antonio Valencia and Phil Jones. Which is why it didn’t seem an odd thing to write when Manchester United have already paid their fifth highest ever transfer fee for a central defender in this window. But Eric Bailly is surely one for the future, and none of Daley Blind, Marcos Rojo or Phil Jones are reliable starters in that position for a myriad of reasons.

Hence a central defender to afford Bailly time to settle, and Chris Smalling some much-needed support/competition, would be greatly welcome. It might even allow Blind to play in his favored defensive midfielder role, where he had started brightly in the beginning of the season.

5) Southampton: All of the above?

Southampton seem to have taken over Arsenal as the Premier League’s favorite shopping destination, having made a legacy of selling their most important individuals in the recent years. Not only that, they even lost the one man who took them to an unprecedented 6th position when many had bet on them to be relegated. Even with the outstanding Victor Wanyama and their league top scorer Sadio Mane gone, the Saints will probably feel the loss of their manager the most.

Like Wanyama, Fonte and van Dijk were outstanding last season, but it remains to be seen if they, too, join the well-treaded path outward from St.Mary’s. Claude Puel, their new manager, will have to rebuild a squad now missing two of their most important players last season, including their joint-top league goalscorer. They have Nathan Redmond, but that must only be the start. Can they repeat the trick yet again?

The philosophy: Functional results through dysfunctional means

Manchester United’s draw at Newcastle proved Louis Van Gaal is struggling to balance fluid attacking play with defensive solidity, but he has at least managed to perfect the art of neither at Anfield. United’s attacking during the first half comprised of launching the ball long to an isolated Wayne Rooney or hoping to score via a set piece. Needless to say, even the most hopeless prayers are sometimes answered, and that was pretty much how they scored, while registering their only shot on target.

Adam Lallana continues to make you wonder what he does

In his last 30 Premier League games, Lallana has scored just one goal and provided four assists. Luis Suarez has scored more goals for the club since March 2014 (eight to Lallana’s five), and the Uruguayan’s last game for the club came in May of that year. And Lallana’s dribbling has been successful at a rate no better than that of Angelo Ogbonna, a defender for West Ham United.

SEE MORE: Analysis – Does Lallana add any value to Liverpool?

The truth behind the “false” of the false nine

The entirety of Liverpool’s starting XI on Sunday would rank 10th in the Premier League top scorers’ chart. Their array of attacking midfielders (well, at least they attack the opposition players) all found themselves, on occasions, the furthest man forward, and yet 40 yards from goal. With Daniel Sturridge now a full-time training room resident and only a part-time footballer, Liverpool need to look for striker options in the transfer market.

The entire Liverpool midfield wants to be Stevie G

Shooting at goal from distance isn’t bad, as long you shoot on the goal. And you don’t rank 19th in goals to shots conversion rates. Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana, Jordon Ibe, Emre Can, Alberto Moreno, Nathaniel Clyne and James Milner have had 80 shots from outside the penalty area between them in the league this season. Of those 80, only 15 have been on target and just one (Milner, versus Aston Villa) has actually resulted in a goal.

Van Gaal and Klopp have their own ways of celebration

Klopp is more of a leapin’ and punchin’ type, as we found out when Joe Allen netted the equalizer against Arsenal. Van Gaal, on the other hand, impassively scribbles a few words on his clipboard, with his face flushed pink like a 70 year-old grandpa, three whiskies sober, on a cold afternoon. Only Van Gaal had his chance to show his form on Sunday, but Klopp has already left his mark.

Liverpool needs taller players

Liverpool’s current fullbacks (Clyne and Moreno) aren’t even winning 33% of their aerial battles. Then you add Joe Allen (21% won), Jordon Ibe (33%), James Milner (36% at Manchester City) and Adam Lallana (30% over the past 18 months) and you’re looking at a whole collection of players who, mostly due to their height, aren’t very successful in the air. Add Simon Mignolet’s knack for letting his team down on a regular basis and you see why Liverpool are so good at letting their opponents score from set pieces. To make things worse for the Liverpool fans, someone just signed a new contract.

Christmas usually isn’t too merry for the Arsenal faithful. Over the years they’ve gotten used to seeing their side attain an impeccable position from which there is no hope of winning the title, even with half the season remaining; seeing their key players follow the footsteps of full-time hospital resident and part-time central midfielder Abou Diaby; or seeing their team get thoroughly dismantled against the other top teams in the English Premier League. And yet, the injury bit aside, the coming new year might well bring something to the Emirates trophy cabinet that the past decade hasn’t.

With their recent victory over Manchester City, the Gunners became the bookies’ favorites to clinch the title the next year, demonstrating yet again that they possess all the elements that define title-winning teams. Gone are the days when they’d let in goals which would make Shakespeare think of rewriting “The Comedy of Errors.” After a generation of stand-up comedians who were paid handsomely to play goalkeeper, Wenger finally seems to have found a true successor to Jens Lehmann in Petr Cech. The defense, comprising “the hare and the tortoise” duo of Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker, might not be as good as Tony Adams, et al, but they did manage to keep out the likes of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne.

Something else has changed in recent times – Arsenal’s transfer policy. Wenger is famous for trying to replace world-class players with the sheer force of 16-year-old youth and the vast experience of 38 year-old free agents (read Sanogo for van Persie; Kallstrom for Fabregas and Nasri). The recent signings of Santi Cazorla, Mesut Ozil and Alexi Sanchez, however, show the Gunners’ true intent. Sanchez was Arsenal’s Player of the Year last season, while Mesut Ozil has gone from a “42 million pound liability” to a true talisman. With 15 assists in nearly as many games, and Man of the Match in half of them, the German World Cup-winner embodies a true no. 10 in every way but his jersey number.

https://twitter.com/SoccerAspects/status/679526844970971136

What’s more impressive is Arsenal achieving this result without several key players, with approximately their entire first-choice midfield injured. This in turn has produced telling contributions from the otherwise fringe players like Mathieu Flamini and Joel Campbell. Campbell, in particular, has had a meteoric rise, similar to the feats of Francis Coquelin last year. Hector Bellerin and Nacho Monreal have been splendid at their fullback roles, both in defense and attack.

Arsene Wenger would know from his experience that it is too soon to write off any of Arsenal’s title rivals. And yet, a side that can beat Bayern Munich and destroy Manchester United within 20 minutes is anything but the Arsenal we are used to seeing. Perhaps it might be Le Prof’s season, after all.

Arsenal fans have always had a special place for Cesc Fabregas’s magical free kicks (not particularly the one that led to Chelsea’s goal against them this season, though). Be it those delicious inswinging curlers which nestled at the top corner, winning three points for the Gunners in the past, or the ingeniously pathetic ones he took against Tottenham this week, both were subject to a hearty applause from the Arsenal faithful.

Fabregas has always had textbook technique, a few tricks up his sleeve, and the ability to pick out teammates from any distance or angle. But here, from this weekend’s visit to White Hart Lane, let’s see what he does on a restart just inside his own half. Will he …

1. … make a short pass to the likes of Oscar, Matic, Ivanovic, Zouma or Cahill;
2. … ping a 50-yard pin-point pass that sets up a Chelsea chance;
3. … play a misplaced ball (a reasonable mistake-might happen to anyone)?

What he actually does:

https://twitter.com/JDFootball/status/670965175709749248

SEE MORE: Mourinho denies rift with brooding Costa.

But that wasn’t Cesc’s only contribution to Chelsea’s Sunday comedy routine. Here Tottenham players are surrounding the referee and complaining instead of falling back into defense. This is a good time to play a quick restart and catch them napping. What Fabregas saw, though, was, perhaps, a chance to catch his teammate Willian napping … and to knock him unconscious. Thankfully, Willian’s self-defense mechanism was quick enough to save the day for him, his club, and, of course, his dearest mate, Cesc.

This is the perfect microcosm of the season Fabregas is having. From the superstar that he was at the Emirates, he has suddenly become the living metaphor of his current team’s form. The Arsenal fans who were cursing Wenger throughout last season for letting Cesc join Chelsea are suddenly owning up their mistakes and admitting “Wenger knows best.” And if the follies weren’t enough to convince them, consider this bit of trivia:

We all know that Cesc Fabregas can be a world-class midfielder when he’s at his best. But to prove the good old “class is permanent” theory, he might just have to stop making pin-point passes to his opponents and take a lesson or two from Mesut Ozil.