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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 Premier League football. This was the weekend when Tottenham bolstered their reputation as the most unpredictable team around with their brilliant 4-0 win over Manchester City, when Arsenal returned to winning ways, when Liverpool extended their lead at the top of the table to eight points, and when Wolves produced their best performance of the season. Here, we will ask if Manchester City’s age profile is a problem, whether we really understand how long it could take Ruben Amorim to make sense of Manchester United, and whether anyone comes out of the brief Leicester City-Steve Cooper situation with any credit. There’s a particular look of panicked despair on Pep Guardiola’s face when things are going wrong for his team. There aren’t many managers who look serene while losing, but Guardiola seems to find it especially difficult to hide what’s going on in his head. Which perhaps isn’t surprising given things don’t go wrong very often. Advertisement Things are going very wrong right now, though. You could pin Manchester City’s dreadful run of form, having become the first reigning champions to lose five games in a row since Chelsea in 1956, on a number of things. There’s Rodri’s injury, most obviously; other injuries, particularly in defence, have been an issue, too; fairly limp form from players who were previously bankers, like Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gundogan, John Stones or Phil Foden; even Erling Haaland’s slightly odd up and down form, where he looks like a killer some weeks and wayward in others (he’s scored two goals in the last seven Premier League games from 36 shots); you also can’t rule out an element of ‘Pep fatigue’ — remember the famously intense Catalan had never coached anyone for longer than four seasons before City and some of these players are into their eighth or ninth under him. Here’s another possibility though: could it be the composition of the squad? As this chart shows, there aren’t many players in the City squad that are in their ‘peak’ years, which for these purposes is defined as 24 to 29. In fact, there are only three players in the middle of this sweet spot: Rodri, Ruben Dias and Matheus Nunes, the former two of whom are injured and the latter Guardiola clearly believes isn’t good enough, despite City spending north of £50million ($63m) on him 18 months ago. Of the 120 starting spots for outfield players that Guardiola has selected so far this season, 76 of them have gone to players either 22 and under or 30 and over. Clearly, there are caveats to this: nobody is calling Haaland or Foden callow, naive youths because they’re 24, nor are we writing off Jack Grealish, Nathan Ake or Manuel Akanji as creaking old geezers because they are 29. Neither is it the case that any player outside that zone is automatically useless and to be airily dismissed. Advertisement But could that be a factor? Does a team need a core of players who have a good blend of the skills that both youth and experience bring? The usual warnings apply here. Beat Liverpool next weekend and this will look like over-analysis. City could very easily click into gear and become City again soon. Nobody is writing them off. But it is possible that the composition of their squad is contributing to their bad run. If you drew firm and long-reaching conclusions about Manchester United from Ruben Amorim’s first game in charge, then your certainty is to be admired. After one game and a handful of training sessions with most of his players, obviously we are not going to see anything close to what Amorim wants. After the game, he outlined a number of problems with the performance, most of which came back to his team’s lack of understanding of how he wants to play. “We will need a lot of time to figure out these problems, ” Amorim told Sky Sports after Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Ipswich Town. “My players were thinking too much. Not just about the ball, but where they were supposed to be. ” It’s difficult to say whether Amorim seemed surprised at how his team performed. Perhaps he was surprised at how good Ipswich were: not to get all ‘anyone can beat anyone in the Premier League, the best league ever’, but if he thought this would be a gentle introduction against a newly promoted team in the bottom three, then he might have been shocked. So while it’s tricky to draw those firm conclusions and while it is tempting to focus too much on the 3-4-2-1 system (Amorim encouraged us not to think too much about it), one thing that did stand out was just how many players were out of position, or at least playing roles that they hadn’t for a long time. In the starting XI, full-back Noussair Mazraoui played right centre-back; full-back Diogo Dalot played left wing-back; winger Amad played right wing-back; winger Alejandro Garnacho played as a No 10; Bruno Fernandes is used to playing as a No 10, but not usually with another No 10 next to him; wide forward Marcus Rashford played as a No 9. Substitutes Luke Shaw and Joshua Zirkzee also played unfamiliar roles after coming on. So that’s exactly half of the 16 outfielders used that are not only having to figure out a new manager and a new formation, but also new positions. Advertisement This is not to say these players will be unable to adapt. The positions, for the most part, are not completely alien and aren’t so far removed from the norm that they should be flummoxed in the long term, but when Amorim says it will need a long time, believe him. “We (could) try to just win games and don’t risk anything, ” Amorim continued, “but I guarantee that at this stage next season, we will have the same problems. From the first moment, we will have problems and the players will be confused sometimes, but we have to address the new ideas. ” The news of Cooper’s dismissal by Leicester on Sunday afternoon was simultaneously surprising and not at all surprising. The surprising part was the timing. If Leicester were convinced that Cooper, who they appointed in the summer, was not their man, then why was this decision not made at the start of the international break? Were they really so perturbed by a 2-1 defeat by one of the season’s best teams, Chelsea, that it tipped the balance? Perhaps their preferred replacement has suddenly become available and they needed to act with haste, but at the time of writing, it isn’t immediately clear who that will be. It was also perhaps surprising on a pure surface level: Leicester are 16th with 10 points from 12 games, which given the instability they have dealt with since last season is about what you would reasonably expect from a promoted side. The unsurprising part was it happening at all. From the start, it felt like a bad fit from both sides. Cooper was joining a team with a very defined style of play, who had sold probably their best player in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who at the time were operating under the assumption that they would be given a points deduction for PSR breaches. Keeping a promoted side up is tough at the best of times, but these were clearly not the best of times. Leicester were replacing Enzo Maresca, dogmatic in his passing style, with a manager who doesn’t have a defined ‘philosophy’ or strict system that he always adheres to. At Nottingham Forest, he won games by figuring it out, sometimes game-to-game. Asking the players to adapt to not only a higher league but also a significant shift in coaching style was always going to be difficult. He’s also a hero at Forest, Leicester’s local rivals: the significance of that was probably overblown and few sensible Leicester fans would have held it against him too much, but it must have been at least a minor factor in them being cautious about his arrival. Advertisement Cooper clearly hasn’t helped himself. There were some curious selection decisions, not least persisting with the ticking time bomb that is Wout Faes and broadly ignoring Ricardo Pereira. His style of play isn’t the most thrilling to watch and he is often conservative. His consistent complaints about referees have verged on the embarrassing, too, not least after the Chelsea game when he insinuated referee Andrew Madley had something against Leicester when they could easily have had at least one player sent off in the first half alone. It all adds up to a sense that this has felt doomed from the start. Maybe both Cooper and Leicester simply didn’t have any better options in the summer, but ultimately, this has left a club changing managers at an incredibly awkward time and a manager with a five-month tenure on his CV, which never looks good. It all feels like a colossal waste of time for everyone involved. Had enough Premier League? No, of course not: you want MORE. Luckily, gluttons like us are covered by the Monday night fixture, which promises to be a lively one: Newcastle host West Ham. That said, if you have had enough Premier League, the Champions League is here to help. Tuesday’s games are mostly more ‘hmmm, that could be interesting’, rather than knock-your-socks off, although Bayern Munich vs Paris Saint-Germain is meaty. Arsenal travel to Lisbon to play Sporting CP, while Manchester City look for their first victory in an actual month by hosting Feyenoord. Similar vibe on Wednesday, which has a very ‘top billing/undercard’ vibe: Liverpool vs Real Madrid is the clear, neon-signed standout, but Aston Villa vs Juventus and Celtic vs Club Brugge deserve your attention, too. Then we have secondary competitions on Thursday: Tottenham and Roma convene for a meeting of the Jose Mourinho Survivors Club and Manchester United host Bodo/Glimt in the Europa League, while Chelsea are in Heidenheim for the Europa Conference League and second-placed Legia Warsaw travel to Omonia Nicosia. You’ve got a big fat slice of Championship, too: Sunderland vs West Brom looks like the standout game on Tuesday, while leaders Leeds face beleaguered Luton and Middlesbrough vs Blackburn could be good fun on Wednesday. Rounding off the week is ANOTHER Premier League fixture. Ambassador, you are spoiling us with this bonus Brighton vs Southampton on a Friday night. (Top photo: Getty Images) Get all-access to exclusive stories. Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us. Nick Miller is a football writer for the Athletic and the Totally Football Show. He previously worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, ESPN and Eurosport, plus anyone else who would have him.