England

Liverpool crushed Bournemouth 4-0 on Sunday to get back to their winning ways and move up to fourth place in the EPL table. Three of those goals illustrated why Jurgen Klopp's team is one of the deadliest attacking units in the world.

First up: Coutinho. The little Brazilian received the ball from Andy Robertson, humiliated the whole right side of Bournemouth's defense and coolly finished at the near post.

Tottenham faced a league-leading Manchester City side on Saturday and tried to neutralize them with physical play. It did not go well. It especially did not go well when Dele Alli stomped on the ankle of Kevin De Bruyne. Like a midfield incarnation of Maximus Decimus Meridius, Kevin De Bruyne had his vengeance and it was oh so sweet.

Back in August of 2017, The18 staff writer Connor Fleming predicted that Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva would be the signing of the season. What a prat that guy is, but hey, that guy is me.

It’s official — Pep Guardiola is the most consistent manager in football. With Manchester City’s cruise-control 4-0 win over Swansea on Wendesday, Guardiola owns one of the most impressive records in each of Europe’s top three leagues. 

Manchester City has now won 15 straight Premier League matches, setting the record for consecutive victories for the English league. Guardiola also owns the same record in La Liga and the Bundesliga. It doesn’t get any more consistent than that.

Liverpool winger Mohamed Salah has been named the 2017 African Player of the Year by the BBC. Salah, who arrived on Merseyside this summer from Roma, is Liverpool's most expensive signing ever and also probably the buy of the summer.

For all the attacking talent on display in the Manchester Derby, defensive blunders decided the outcome between Manchester United and Manchester City at Old Trafford on Sunday. And when the snow settled, City defeated United 2-1 to set the English Premier League record for consecutive wins at 14.

We here at The18 do not like goal GIFs. OK, maybe we like some of them. But mostly, we don’t like them. We, like you, have been burned too many times on Twitter, expecting to see a great replay of a goal only to get a stupid GIF merely telling us what we already knew, that soandso scored for suchandsuch team.

It was one of those matches where you wondered if the manager would get away with resting some of his big stars on the bench. It was one of those matches where you always felt the team in the lead would regret not adding a second or third. It was one of those matches where you weren’t shocked at all to see the road underdog score an equalizer to steal a point. 

For the neutral, there’s no better scoreline in football than 3-2. Goals, end-to-end action and drama are all promised in such an outcome, and Leicester City’s thrilling 3-2 victory over Newcastle United delivered Saturday.

On the 125th anniversary of Newcastle’s founding, Joselu brought the 52,000-strong audience to its feet by opening the scoring following some great work by Dwight Gayle.