Ken Early: Quite a few big Premier League clubs are looking pretty dumb right now

Nobody is surprised to see that Manchester City and Arsenal are the top two teams in the Premier League after five games. Most of us probably are surprised to see Brighton and Hove Albion and Brentford in third and fourth respectively, which goes to show that in football, public perception is a lagging indicator. It is no exaggeration to say that the two small clubs owned by professional gamblers who systematically use analytics to gain an edge on the competition are currently two of the best teams in the world. On Friday night Brentford ran Chelsea ragged in a 3-0 win at home at the G-Tech. The image of the night came at the end, as the celebrating Keith Andrews turned his face ecstatically to the sky before the television directors picked out his disconsolate opposite number, Xabi Alonso. Andrews faced Alonso three times when they were players and Alonso’s teams won those matches by an aggregate score of 10-1. On Friday Andrews’ team again started the game as the underdog, but in football a smart little one often beats a dumb big one. READ MOREAnd quite a few of the big Premier League clubs are looking pretty dumb right now as they negotiate various states of transition with thinking that looks confused and inconsistent. Brentford manager Keith Andrews celebrates victory over Chelsea on Friday. Photograph: Harvey Murphy/Getty This gives one of Brighton or Brentford a great chance to beat them into next season’s Champions League. Arsenal are not one of the big clubs who are currently being dumb. Throughout the first few weeks of the season they have been basking in what feels a kind of unipolar moment, winning their first seven matches while hardly giving away a shot on their goal. Which makes it all the more dramatic that on Saturday afternoon, Brighton inflicted the worst beating Arsenal have suffered in more than three years. Arsenal’s heaviest defeat last season was the 2-0 they suffered against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final. City’s approach that day was interesting: standing back and refusing to press Arsenal’s press-baiting defenders in build-up. A desperately boring game ensued, in which hardly anything happened until Kepa Arrizabalaga’s mistake midway through the second half gave City the crucial opening goal. On Saturday, Fabian Hürzeler’s team showed a radically different way to beat Arsenal, attacking them from the first minute with the most intense press imaginable. Bukayo Saka of Arsenal under pressure from Brighton players Maxim De Cuyper and Olivier Boscagli. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/Getty From the opening minute Arsenal were rocked back on their heels, knocked off balance, a quarter-second behind the rhythm of the game. It was astonishing to see the powerful champion team bullied and harried and knocked out of their stride in the manner they have done to so many other teams.Especially notable was the marked reluctance of Arsenal to counter the furious Brighton press by going over it with long balls to their front players. They kept trying to play out with short passes and Brighton kept winning it in their third and launching dangerous attacks. The few times Arsenal did go long, you immediately saw why they preferred to run the gauntlet of the press. Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Christos Tzolis and Martin Odegaard had hardly any chance of winning any ball in the air against a Brighton defence that included Luka Vuskovic, statistically the most aerially dominant young central defender in Europe. (Tottenham’s decision to sign Brighton’s Jan Paul van Hecke for €60 million while selling them Vuskovic for €54 million already looks one of the dumbest deals of the summer.)Chema Andrés celebrates scoring Brighton's third goal against the Premier League champions. Photograph: Silvina Brodersohn/Getty Brighton’s defensive unit also included Chema Andrés, the young Spanish defensive midfielder who stands 6ft 3in. Chema won five aerial challenges on the day, a total only Riccardo Calafiori could match. So Brighton’s attackers could press forward with the confidence that their defence would win everything in the air. But – and this is the part that will most concern Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta – they also had the security of knowing that the Gunners were not likely to run in behind them either. By making sure most of the game happened in Arsenal’s half, Brighton became the first opponent to expose the Premier League champions’ lack of pace in attack. The one time in the first half that Tzolis got free in behind Brighton, he simply didn’t have the speed to make the chance count. He cut across the path of the first chasing defender, hoping to draw a foul, and was dispossessed by the second. Gabriel Martinelli had his faults, but you would have expected him at least to make it into the Brighton box from that situation.This was Arsenal’s biggest league defeat since a similar 3-0 against Brighton in May 2023, but at that point, the season was already pretty much over. The last really meaningful game Arsenal lost by three goals was the 4-1 at the Etihad in March 2023 that confirmed City, and not Arsenal, were going to win the title that year. Mikel Arteta, right, applauds fans after Saturday's 3-0 away defeat to Brighton. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA Arteta is not the kind of manager to brush off such defeats as just a bad day at the office. His response to the City defeat was profound and far-reaching. Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko had arrived the previous summer and both had initially made a big impact – but Arteta decided that he had taken a wrong turn. Having seen his team overrun by the athleticism of Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne, he concluded that Arsenal were not going to surpass City with small technical players. Zinchenko and Jesus were phased out and from that day forth all Arsenal’s new signings were big and powerful. The title-winning Arsenal team was, in a sense, forged by the experience of that defeat. The team they are this time next season will be conditioned by this one. There could be no more lucid illustration of their pressing need for speed.