The Warm-Up: Title-race rollercoaster takes twist but Mourinho must watch from afar

Chelsea’s first-half showing against Tottenham last weekend was perhaps the first glimpse of Antonio Conte’s hitherto impregnable, unstoppable 3-4-3 system being truly decrypted. A 15-minute dressing-room diagnostic was run at half-time, though, and his Chelsea emerged emphatically transformed.

Pep Guardiola was next to have a go at cracking the code and, for an hour at the Etihad on Saturday, his Manchester City looked like they would finally blow it apart. Already boosted by an injury to a resurgent Nemanja Matic – forcing Conte to change his side for the first time in seven matches – City became the first team to rigorously stress-test the most experimental aspect of Chelsea’s system.

Bypassing the almost omnipresent N’Golo Kante in the middle, Kevin De Bruyne and Jesus Navas set about the wide areas with gusto, whipping in cross after cross for Sergio Aguero and the late-arriving Ilkay Gundogan. Chelsea were unsettled, hanging on and – crucially – had no immediate answer. Cahill’s own-goal reflected the growing pressure on his back three.

What Conte did have, however, was an A-grade alternative on the bench. Pedro made way for Willian – a player well equipped for the job at hand – and Chelsea’s deluxe smash-and-grab job was under way. Cesc Fabregas – the polar opposite of greased lightning – let the ball do the work with a 40-yard pass for Diego Costa’s authoritative equaliser, before both Willian and then Eden Hazard blitzed beyond Aleksandr Kolarov with stunning ease to complete a 30-minute turnaround.

If this adaptability wasn’t worrying enough for their title rivals, Chelsea’s remaining 2016 fixture list looks truly ominous – unless West Brom, Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Stoke start practising some whipped crosses from deep.

Jurgen Klopp remains good post-match value, even in the adversity of unfathomable defeat, but even his public goodwill must have its limits. Liverpool were so utterly in control against Bournemouth – at 1-0, 2-0 and when instantly restoring their lead to 3-1 – that not even the most optimistic Cherries fan could have anticipated what would come next.

What did come next owed much to Eddie Howe’s introduction of young Ryan Fraser. The 22-year-old, who spent last season on loan at Ipswich, wasted little time in adding some thrust to Bournemouth’s previously neat but impotent approach play. Within 23 minutes, they had gone from two goals down to stealing a share of the points. But, with the Vitality Stadium now rocking, they weren’t done yet.

Ninety-two-and-a-half minutes had elapsed when Bournemouth won a corner. Rather than pump into the mixer with a dose of adrenaline, they took it short and Steve Cook – emboldened by his equaliser of which a striker would have been proud – thumped a low shot for Loris Karius to put in his pipe and smoke. From the inevitable rebound, Nathan Ake – on loan from Chelsea, no less – was the first in to smuggle it home.

Liverpool – still a promising project rather than a finished article – have no right to be so complacent. Bournemouth’s momentum didn’t come from nowhere. Klopp didn’t need this, but he could have prevented it.

While Klopp could at least muster an exasperated smile in defeat, Jose Mourinho was utterly seething after Manchester United rendered yet another promising midweek performance as yet another false dawn. Anthony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan – having helped eviscerate West Ham on Wednesday – were retained in Mourinho’s starting lineup for the trip to Goodison Park. Pre-match, Mourinho recognised his previously tricky visits there, but Everton had won once in nine and looked like welcoming hosts for once.

A lively, but shot-shy, first half looked to be meandering to a mutually disagreeable conclusion until Zlatan Ibrahimovic took advantage of Maarten Stekelenburg’s rush of blood and lobbed in via the crossbar, post, goalline and the referee’s wristwatch.

Everton gradually gathered some steam in the second half, but this never really looked like being one of those Goodison grandstand finishes. Mourinho looked to his bench for human final whistles and selected Marouane Fellaini for the job. We’ll leave it to the United social media department to take it from here:

Leighton Baines kept his nerve from the spot and Manchester United were leaving Merseyside with a fourth draw in five Premier League matches. Mourinho made a tense exit, too – his press-conference patience running out almost instantly.

The end of his tether has been there for all to see for a while now and, while there are certainly signs that this United side are gelling, the top four already seems a mountainous task. How seriously do they take the Europa League now?

After a while, goals from the halfway line start to leave you a bit cold. Maybe it’s the speculative nature of them, maybe it’s the hapless goalkeeping that lies at their very core, maybe it’s just Charlie Adam but they’re a bit… y’know, whatever.

What the genre needed, clearly, was a bold reboot. Not an old-fashioned, unchallenged hoof, but a big, brutish FIRST-TIME CHILEAN VOLLEY:

Alejandro Maximiliano Camargo, of Primera Division strugglers Universidad de Concepcion, you are cordially invited to take a bow.

A force of nature, an example to pretty much everybody, a credit to his profession and, ultimately, just a lot better than West Ham. What a man Alexis Sanchez is.

There are plenty of ways to ice the cake in football, but none seem quite so delicious as the chip over a stranded goalkeeper. Philippe Albert nailed it back in 1996, but Sanchez’s 2016 version was something else entirely. Some give the goalkeeper the eyes – Sanchez completed his hat-trick by giving Darren Randolph the eyes, the body and the legs before scooping the ball tidily into the corner. It won’t be goal of the season, but it might be the cheekiest.

Plenty of the build-up to Manchester City v Chelsea inevitably centred around the Premier League’s joint-top scorers. The tale of the tape between Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa told a story of two crucial line-leaders, but the numbers alone couldn’t express the chalk-and-cheese comparison. Aguero, the justifiably selfish, shot-happy pocket dynamo and Costa, the tireless pantomime-villain-slash-battering-ram.

By the end of a ding-dong battle at the Etihad, Aguero had been sent down the tunnel for a brutal airborne assault on David Luiz – ruling him out of the next four matches, including the visit of Arsenal – while Diego Costa had his feet up on the bench for the ensuing umpteen-man melee.

Aguero’s ability to, ahem, look after himself is one of his less vaunted qualities, but – and Winston Reid’s neck can testify to this – it may be that his temperament is now open to question while Costa sits proudly on top of the scoring charts. Funny how things turn out.

The Guardian’sBarney Ronay notices John Terry sitting quietly in the corner of Chelsea’s revolution, and – despite the inevitable “love him or loathe him” poser – finds a refreshing angle on the captain/leader/legend’s gently fading Premier League career.

With the stuttering Manchester United continuing to indulge in some self-defeating nonsense – and we don’t just mean Marouane Fellaini – here’s a welcome reminder of the resolutely nonsense-averse Roy Keane, c.1999:

Go on, try and remember the two teams who still haven’t played in this round of Premier League fixtures. Go on, we’ll wait. No? Well, it’s “Middlesbrough” and “Hull”, apparently, whoever they are.

Yes, we’d forgotten they were lying around too. Still, might as well. It finishes 0-0 by the way. Attendance 27,105. Some nice touches from Adama Traore. Robert Snodgrass hits the top of the bar with a free-kick, but Victor Valdes has watched it all the way. Mike Phelan thinks his side might have had a penalty late on, but he doesn’t like to talk about referees too much… hello? Anyone there?