Jose Mourinho cautious but expectations hurt Man United; Arsenal's striker dilemma; Liverpool hit their stride

Six things we learnt from this weekend's Premier League: Champions League gives Leicester confidence, Swansea substitutions cause friction and the Patrick van Aanholt mystery

Jose Mourinho reacts during Manchester United's 3-1 defeat by Watford (Getty)

Mourinho right to urge caution – but spending will demand more

All but Jose Mourinho expect Manchester United to fight for the Premier League title this season, and starting the season with four wins in a row looked to strengthen that belief no end. Yet Mourinho has insisted that the 2016/17 season is all about returning to the Champions League, even though Mourinho saw over £145m spent on strengthening his squad in the summer.

After two years of Louis van Gaal saw the club spend £250m in the transfer window, the huge outlays continued with Paul Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly all arriving in big-money transfers. The return off that outlay will be a Premier League title challenge at the least, but United are now in danger of drifting out of the title race before it gets going.

Three straight defeats – one of which came in the Europa League – leaves United six points behind rivals Manchester City, while the likes of Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool have all overtaken Mourinho’s side. Things don’t get much easier for United either, with next weekend’s visit of Leicester followed by matches against Stoke, Liverpool and Chelsea. If they don’t get back to winning ways soon, the top four will suddenly become all they can hope for by the end of October.

Liverpool finding their stride more often than not

Three wins from five in the Premier League is hardly title-winning form, but there’s something about Liverpool this season that suggests you should write them off at your peril. It seemed that Liverpool would again prove too inconsistent this season to challenge for top honours when they followed up the season-opening victory over Arsenal with a 2-0 loss to Burnley, but their last three matches suggest otherwise.

A dogged draw with Spurs was followed by the 4-1 demolition of Leicester City before Friday night’s 2-1 victory over Chelsea, which saw Jürgen Klopp’s side play the Blues off the park. Klopp has been on Merseyside for less than a year, but the squad are showing clear signs of buying into his philosophy and they are beginning to click more often than not. Rival clubs should take this as a warning sign, given that they have already taken seven points from facing last season’s top three.

Sanchez gives Wenger plenty to ponder

Arsene Wenger refused to launch a move for a world class striker in the summer because he believed in the abilities of Olivier Giroud, yet the Frenchman has featured for just 40 minutes in the Premier League so far this season. Giroud was given extra time off to recover from Euro 2016, but his return to the squad has been slow and a toe injury kept him out of the weekend victory over Hull.

With Alexis Sanchez scoring four goals in as many matches – including two at the weekend – it’s highly likely that Wenger will persist with playing the Chile international through the middle rather than on the left. When Giroud returns to fitness, Wenger faces a big decision over who to play as the lead striker, and whoever he chooses will carry the burden of Arsenal’s title hopes this season.

Leicester take confidence from Champions League debut

After enduring a poor start to the season in the form of one victory from their first five matches, the question of had Leicester’s bubble finally burst appeared to have only one possible answer. But a brilliant 3-0 victory on their travels to Bruges on the Champions League bow has lifted the squad and given them a much-needed injection of confidence that they held in abundance last season. The result was an impressive 3-0 victory over Burnley in which new striker Islam Slimani delivered on Claudio Ranieri's promise that he will come good, with the Algerian scoring twice in the space of three minutes to put the game out of Burnley’s reach.

Leicester will need all the confidence they can muster for a testing run of fixtures in which they play Chelsea in the EFL Cup and Premier League along with Manchester United, Southampton and Champions League matches against Porto and FC Copenhagen at the King Power Stadium. Emerge from that run unscathed, and who knows what Leicester could achieve this season.

Problems at Swansea as substitute spat returns

For last week’s dispute between Francesco Guidolin and Neil Taylor, this week read Ki Sung-yueng. The South Korean was substituted in the 66th minute of Sunday’s 1-0 defeat by Southampton just minutes after Charlie Austin had scored the winning goal, and his reaction was not one that will have pleased Guidolin.

With Taylor left out of the squad after he responded in a similar manner following his first-half substitution in the 2-2 draw with Chelsea, Ki could face the same fate for the Swans’ next match, with Guidolin confirming that he will speak with the midfielder about his behaviour this week. With two matches against league leaders Manchester City up next for Swansea before games against Liverpool and Arsenal, Swansea’s squad need to be pulling in the same direction if they are to stay clear of the relegation zone.

What next for Patrick van Aanholt?

The incident involving Sunderland defender Patrick van Aanholt remains clouded in mystery after manager David Moyes refused to clarify why the Netherlands left-back was withdrawn from the matchday squad on Sunday. Van Aanholt was named in the Sunderland starting line-up an hour before kick-off against Tottenham, only to be immediately removed from the squad and replaced by Jason Denayer.

It was Denayer who informed Van Aanholt that he was no longer in the squad, while Moyes said that the decision had been taken for “medical reasons”. Van Aanholt certainly didn’t look injured while he warmed up out on the White Hart Lane pitch, and the news was broken to him by Denayer which suggested he was unaware of any “medical reason” that was affecting him.

Expect the club to clarify the situation this week.