The four biggest surprises of the past football weekend

In the European top leagues, there were some exciting duels and surprising game results last weekend. We summarize four games, the results of which very few would have expected before the games.

Arsenal: Strong in Europe, weak in the Premier League

Arsenal FC definitely play a strange season. Just last Thursday, Mikel Arteta’s team won 4-0 in the Europa League away at Slavia Prague and advanced to the semi-finals without any problems.

Back to the Premier League, at home against Fulham, however, the Gunners showed the face that they have been with for the entire season. As the live statistics and pressure trends from Overlyzer show, Arsenal had 70% possession and the blue line, which represents the pressure from the home team, hit high at times. For example in the early stages and immediately after the unexpected 1-0 for Fulham after 59 minutes from Josh Maja’s penalty.

Arsenal were clearly the dominant team until well into stoppage time. The hosts collected 5 shots on goal, 13 shots off target and 11 corner kicks, but the equalizer was scored after 96 burdensome minutes.

Eddie Nketiah saved the Gunners a point, which is of course far too few against the relegation candidate from Fulham. And it won’t get any easier for Arsenal in the upcoming weeks: First, they’ll face Everton at home next weekend, then Villarreal away in the Europa League.

Three points behind Atlético: Real’s next slip

Real Madrid also suffered a completely unexpected loss of points. After Zinedine Zidane’s side knocked Liverpool out of the UEFA Champions League and won prestigious Clásico against FC Barcelona, the Getafe away game ended up with a disappointing 0-0. It was particularly surprising that Real Madrid were not the better team and Getafe was on par over the entire duration of the game.

Most of the statistics were even and Real Madrid only had a significant plus in possession. With the goalless draw, the star ensemble is losing ground again to Atlético Madrid, which clearly defeated Eibar 5-0. The gap to the leader is now three points again.

Torino dominates Roma

With a weak phase in the last few weeks, AS Roma is currently making life difficult for itself. Similar to Arsenal, Paulo Fonseca’s team was able to prevail against Ajax in the Europa League, but the team is very capricious in the league. Everything started according to plan against FC Torino and Borja Mayoral scored the opening goal after just three minutes.

Surprisingly, only the relegation candidate from Turin then played and now put the Romans under practically permanent pressure. Roma could be happy to go into halftime with the 1-0 lead, but the team never stabilized in the second half and Torino continued to put pressure on them.

The seventeenth in the table collected a total of 25 attempts on the Roma goal – but also with success in the second half! Goals from Sanabria, Zaza and Rincón turned the game around. It was only the second home win for FC Torino in their 15th home game and now it looks like they have nothing more to do with the relegation battle.

Adi Hütter loses against his future team

Eintracht Frankfurt under coach Adi Hütter is one of the biggest surprises of the current Bundesliga season. The team is currently in fourth place and is therefore on course for a spot in the Champions League.

It has already been decided that Hütter will move to Borussia Mönchengladbach in the summer. And against this very opponent, the Frankfurt team clearly lost 4-0last weekend. The game was more even than the result suggests, but Gladbach scored the goals at good times. Ginter scored after just ten minutes and the hosts used a period of higher pressure in the second half to score twice –  Hofmann and Bensebaini were on the scoresheet.

That it was simply not Frankfurt’s day also showed that Gladbach even made it 4-0 through Hannes Wolf in stoppage time – of all things, at a time when Frankfurt was building up a lot of pressure and go for their first goal.