Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.
This was the weekend when Arsenal went nine points clear at the top of the Premier League, when Bruno Fernandes put on another masterclass for Manchester United, when Chelsea slumped to another defeat, and when all of the teams battling relegation drew so nothing changed.
Here we will ask what another late goal conceded by Liverpool means for Arne Slot, whether Tottenham’s point at Anfield will ultimately mean anything, and whether 16-year-old Max Dowman has taken Arsenal fans’ anxiety away.
Will Arne Slot pay the price for Liverpool’s many late concessions?
“I don’t know what happened, I have nothing to say. In the last minute, again, I don’t know how many times this season already. I feel flat.
“We have to wake up because if we carry on like this, we should be happy with the Conference League. I don’t know why this is happening, I honestly don’t know.”
Dominik Szoboszlai looked just as downcast as those words suggest when he was asked by Sky Sports for his reaction to Liverpool once again wasting an opportunity to collect points this season, after their 1-1 draw with Tottenham.
It would have seemed churlish to point out that makeshift right-back Szoboszlai’s positioning was a big reason for Richarlison being unmarked to score the late equaliser. Particularly as the Hungarian scored his team’s goal with his fourth direct free kick of the season, and more generally has probably been their best player.
But it wasn’t just that they were defensively lax enough to concede; more that they hadn’t killed Tottenham off well before that goal. Szoboszlai could have passed the ball to Richarlison himself and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit had they taken one of the many chances to put the game beyond Tottenham.
There are a variety of issues with Liverpool this season, but the most glaring is that they simply keep conceding late goals.
In nine games they have let in 10 result-changing goals on or later than the 84th-minute mark (including two against Manchester City which turned a win into a loss). Those goals have cost them 13 points: add those to their current total and they’d be second with 62 points.
Is this a mentality problem? Is it a fitness problem? Is it all a corollary of this collection of players simply not functioning together? Is it a problem with Arne Slot?
You could say that the first three of those questions come under the umbrella of the fourth: Slot is ultimately the man responsible, and while he got plenty of deserved credit for their title win last season, equally he must take the blame for their fairly abject defence of that title this season.
All of this is adding up to a sticky decision for Liverpool to make in the summer (especially if Liverpool fall out of the Champions League places, which is not inconceivable): do they decide they must continue with the manager who brought glory last season, or move on from the disappointment under him this season?
What will Richarlison’s equaliser mean for Tottenham?
How much should change with one goal?
As Tottenham headed towards a narrow defeat at Liverpool, in some ways it felt like a worst-case scenario: they were going to lose, but not by a margin or in a fashion that would have forced them into accepting that the Igor Tudor experiment was a mistake.
Then Richarlison scored his equaliser, a point was won, and suddenly the mood was much more upbeat. This was Tottenham’s best performance under their Croatian head coach, which is admittedly not saying a huge amount given the previous four included at least three abject humiliations. But the state of things at the club is such that they will take what they can.
Richarlison celebrates his goal (Photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
So what has that goal changed? Do Tottenham as a collective feel better about life under Tudor now? Has Richarlison’s equaliser improved the mood enough that something can be built upon it?
Ultimately, the question is, will this mean anything? In its most basic terms, they have not lost any ground on their relegation rivals because everyone else around them drew too. For a manager who was brought in for his instant impact, getting his first point in his fourth league game isn’t ideal, but it’s something.
“We hope,” Tudor told the media after the game when asked if the result might give them a kick as they try to avoid an unthinkable relegation. “It’s a long way to our goal, which is to stay in the Premier League, still a lot of games to play, but today was important to show what they showed, independently of the result.”
They have a second leg against Atletico Madrid to negotiate next: they’re extremely unlikely to overturn a 5-2 deficit, but another good performance, and maybe even a win on the night, will at least give some hope that domestic disaster might be averted.
Next weekend’s game against Nottingham Forest remains colossal, but now Tottenham go into it knowing they’re capable of a decent performance and result. But if they lose to Forest, then all the good work done at Anfield will be scuppered.
Finally, some relief for Arsenal fans?
At points this season, you have feared that Arsenal fans have been too anxious to actually enjoy having the best team in the country.
Maybe that has changed. And maybe it’s thanks to a kid who was nearly six years away from being born the last time Arsenal won the title.
The bare facts are that Arsenal would have beaten Everton on Saturday even if Max Dowman, at 16 years and 73 days old, hadn’t become the youngest ever goalscorer in Premier League history.
But his goal goes beyond the bare facts of the game and Dowman’s record.
Because Dowman scored a very specific type of goal; a type of goal that can mean just that little bit more to fans.
There’s something about the clincher in a 2-0 win, when the opposition has been pressing for an equaliser with tension mounting as your slender lead starts to look precarious. A particular type of tension builds in that circumstance, especially when the opposition have a corner and you have to defend it, and then you go on the counterattack and score, and that tension is released in a brilliant moment of catharsis.
A brilliant cross and a brilliant goal to boot.
At just 16 years and 73 days old, Max Dowman came on and made a massive impact in Arsenal’s thrilling late win over Everton. pic.twitter.com/YqQurE21Vz
— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) March 14, 2026
Added to that is the relief that you can enjoy the next few minutes safe in the knowledge that the game has been won and you can celebrate in the stadium without fear.
It not just that Arsenal beat Everton, Dowman’s goal coming on a counter-attack after an Everton corner. It’s that they repelled danger, showed some character and steel, held on, and then confirmed the win. That sort of thing can be extremely powerful, and is one of the many reasons Arsenal will now go on and win their first Premier League title in 22 years.
And it was because of a child, a 16-year-old who should be at best a peripheral member of a team with so many brilliant players, but who has forced himself into the picture by his own precocious brilliance.
He created Arsenal’s first, too: Piero Hincapie will get the assist, but it was Dowman’s superb cross from the right that actually made Viktor Gyokores’s opener. “It’s not only the goal that he scored,” Mikel Arteta told the media afterwards. “I think he changed the game.”
He may have changed even more than that.
Coming up
- The round of Premier League games is neatly tied off on Monday night, when Champions League hopefuls Brentford host recent discoverers of competence Wolves. Which they’ve discovered too late, but it at least might make games like this more interesting/watchable.
- The Chaaaaaaaaaaaampions: Tuesday night’s second legs don’t look too promising, drama-wise: in three of the ties — Manchester City vs Real Madrid, Bodo/Glimt vs Sporting and Chelsea vs Paris Saint-Germain — one team leads by three goals, and while Arsenal vs Bayer Leverkusen is level, you’d expect the Gunners to win with relative ease. But you never know…
- Wednesday has a touch more intrigue, on paper, in particular with Liverpool vs Galatasaray (0-1 from the first leg) and Barcelona vs Newcastle (which stands at 1-1). Tottenham vs Atletico Madrid (2-5) and Bayern Munich vs Atalanta (6-1) look over, but again… you never know.
- Then let’s get on some Europa League action, where every tie is alive — the only one in which one team leads by more than one goal is Braga vs Ferencvaros (the Hungarians are 2-0 ahead), while English interest comes from Aston Villa (1-0 up over Lille) and Nottingham Forest (1-0 down to Midtjylland).
- There’s some piping hot Conference League on Thursday too, also with plenty of ties still in play. Crystal Palace’s return leg against AEK Larnaca is on, despite the drone strike which hit a British military base on the island.
- Some more Premier League to bookend your week: a bonus Friday night game sees Manchester United off to the south coast, where they’ll play Bournemouth.