There is a reason eight of the most expensive 10 transfers between English clubs this summer involved central midfielders.

Of all the factors that go into valuing a footballer – age, length of contract, performance metrics, injury record, Tottenham’s desperation – the starting point for any negotiation is to benchmark a player against the market. Once Spurs bought Mateus Fernandes for a club record £85m from West Ham in June, and then broke that record buying Sandro Tonali from Newcastle for £100m four days later, the reference points were set for Bruno Guimaraes, Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson, Carlos Baleba and Enzo Fernandez later in the window.

Three minutes: is that all it takes to kickstart a career? For all the pre-match talk and excitement surrounding Liverpool’s star signing of the summer in Bradley Barcola, Friday night under the Suffolk lights was finally time for the joint-most expensive purchase in English football history to make his first significant mark in Merseyside red. It’s only taken him 12 months.

What a morale-boosting evening this was for Alexander Isak at Portman Road. Loitering tantalisingly on the shoulder of a beleaguered Ipswich defence, the Sweden international notched two goals in three first-half minutes here – his first brace for Liverpool and just his fifth and sixth Premier League goals since that £125m move from Newcastle – to set Andoni Iraola on his way to a comfortable first Premier League victory in the Reds dugout. “With Alex, if he is fit, if he is available, if he is in good shape, I think he will produce the numbers,” Iraola said. We shall see.

The previous time Enzo Fernandez had started a match, he exited in disgrace. A few weeks and £125m later, some Manchester City fans stood to applaud their most expensive debutant ever.

From being sent off in the World Cup final to being parachuted in for an unexpected start, it has been an eventful few weeks for the Argentinian. Relatively speaking, this was the calm after the storm.

The taunts from the Coventry fans as he was substituted are a sign of a growing notoriety, even if Fernandez was on his best behaviour as he turned in a performance that was more encouraging than astounding. Yet if City could thank one deadline-day signing for victory, it was not him but Gianluigi Donnarumma, who arrived at the end of the window last summer and who made three terrific saves.

Forget, for a minute, the signing Everton did not make and concentrate on ones they did. Their deadline day ended in shambolic fashion, but the last buy they made conjured a spectacular, sensational end to his debut.

The consensus was that they lost the transfer window. Yet when they were losing against Manchester United, two newcomers delivered a draw in glorious fashion.

First to equalise was Tyrique George, proof that, while Everton left some of their business too late in the summer, they got much of it done early. Then it was Ainsley Maitland-Niles, whose arrival was only announced 45 minutes before the deadline.

Here’s the full set of results from this weekend then!

Ipswich 0-2 Liverpool

Newcastle 2-2 Bournemouth

Man City 1-0 Coventry

Brentford 1-1 Sunderland

Nottingham Forest 0-0 Tottenham

Fulham 2-3 Crystal Palace

Brighton 1-1 Leeds

Hull City 0-0 Aston Villa

Everton 2-2 Man Utd

Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea

With the first game of the Champions League campaign coming up, here’s a look at Arsenal’s fixtures...

Arsenal are set to play the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the Champions League’s first phase this season, as the Gunners aim to bounce back from their final heartbreak.

In May, Arsenal lost the Champions League final to Paris Saint-Germain after coming up short in a penalty shootout, meaning their wait for a first trophy in the competition goes on.

As they bid to reach a second consecutive final – and third overall – the reigning Premier League winners will this season take on Real Madrid and their Spanish colleagues Real Betis, as well as German duo Bayern and Borussia Dortmund.

Hang on. We’d seen that goal before, hadn’t we? We’d seen Martin Odegaard just there, lurking undetected in a pocket of space between defence and midfield.

We’d seen Christos Tzolis drive inside and fire that exact pass into the centre. We’d seen Riccardo Calafiori’s decoy run and Kai Havertz intelligently leave it. We’d seen Odegaard’s little dart, the velcro control, the poise as he waited just a beat before pulling the trigger.

If Odegaard’s winning goal against Chelsea felt familiar, that’s because he’d scored a carbon copy against Manchester City in the Community Shield four weeks earlier. The same players, the same movements, the same outcome, with a world-class goalkeeper – then Gianluigi Donnarumma, now Emiliano Martinez – left beaten on the ground as the ball hit the net.

The football fixture calendar is relentless, and the news cycle feels nonstop – spanning everything from results and matches to tactics, competitions, transfers, politics, global expansion, and even the geopolitics and greater forces now reshaping how the very sport is played.

In short, there’s a lot to keep up with – and to make sense of. That’s where my award-winning newsletter Inside Football comes in.

Landing in your inbox every Friday, Inside Football delivers insight, opinion, and the under-the-radar details you love.

Think of my newsletter as the game’s answer to Popbitch: a space to go deeper and share what I’m seeing and hearing as I cover the game around the world.

Here’s more from Chelsea boss Xabi Alonso, who was speaking to Match of the Day:

“The assessment and the feeling [is that] it hurts. It hurts to lose. It hurts to suffer our first defeat. It has been a very intense game, a great fight between two sides who have given everything.

“They have played with the top level of concentration, of intensity. We have tried, we score early, after that Arsenal push us hard and we were struggling a little bit to get control of the ball,” he explained.

“After the equaliser, it has been quite balanced. We had a couple of chances. It's about details. Once you concede, you need to know it's just one goal. Disappointed that we couldn't take anything from here.

“It was never going to be a game to create 12 opportunities. They are hard to beat, they are hard to create chances [against], but we had 3,4, chances to score more than one goal.

“This is a process. It's still early days for us. We want to start having clean sheets, they will come. The players are committed to working hard, to knowing that we're on the way to compete in each game. Not happy that we couldn't get anything but we need to keep calm and carry on."

“We want to keep improving in certain areas, we want to keep doing as well as we are doing. Each game is really hard battle and we have fought really hard up to the last minute in the game. It's very important we have this spirit and the team is feeling this spirit. It gives you the strength to win games,” he added as he finished.

“I was very disappointed with the way that we conceded the first goal, and we talked about it, but it’s as well a credit to them and the finish from Morgan (Rogers),” said Mikel Arteta on Sky.

“But the way that we reacted and the way that we played – it was a fascinating game.

“I think from start to finish, it was an absolute joy to watch our team play, compete, the composure, the personality, the threat that we generated, some huge individual performances.

“And the atmosphere in the stadium as well, it was just something great to witness.

“It was another layer (from us). Another layer of dynamism, of threat, of intent, of aggression in the attacking phase and you have certainly seen that today,” he added.