Troy Deeney’s first Premier League team of the week of the 2026-27 season contains three Chelsea players, two from Brentford, a promoted centre-back who scored on his top-flight debut at Old Trafford — and a £20m centre-half picked in midfield. After a weekend that produced Hull City 2-0 Manchester United, Brighton 4-0 Aston Villa and Brentford 3-0 Tottenham, the surprise is not that Deeney’s XI looks unconventional. It is that the football did.
The full side, in a 4-3-3: James Trafford (Leeds); Keane Lewis-Potter (Brentford), Nobel Mendy (Hull), Maxence Lacroix (Chelsea), Maxim de Cuyper (Brighton); Marc Guehi (Man City), Vitaly Janelt (Brentford), Cole Palmer (Chelsea); Christos Tzolis (Arsenal), Joao Pedro (Chelsea), Anthony Elanga (Newcastle). Manager of the week: Sergej Jakirovic of Hull City.
The promoted clubs gatecrash the party
Nobel Mendy had never played a Premier League minute before Saturday. By half-time at Old Trafford he had headed home Slater’s free-kick to double the lead Semi Ajayi gave Hull on 17 minutes, and Michael Carrick’s Manchester United had no answer to either goal.
“He was so good and powerful,” Deeney said. “A real powerhouse — one of those defenders where you think, ‘I don’t want to play against him’.”
That Jakirovic takes manager of the week is the more pointed selection. Hull came up through the play-offs and were written off by essentially every pundit before a ball was kicked; Deeney’s verdict was that the Bosnian was “tactically brilliant and had a gameplan”, and that he will “take a few by surprise”. Set-piece efficiency and sheer work rate beat a United side that has now made a wretched start to a fourth consecutive campaign.
James Trafford’s inclusion carries a similar flavour. His move to Leeds was framed as a pressure signing, and he answered it with a clean sheet at the City Ground as Leeds won 1-0 at Nottingham Forest — one of very few goalkeepers to keep one at all across the round.
Guehi in midfield is the pick that matters
The genuinely provocative choice is Marc Guehi, a centre-back, listed as Deeney’s holding midfielder after Manchester City’s 2-1 win over Bournemouth. That was not a pundit’s whim. Enzo Maresca actually started Guehi there, in his first competitive home fixture since replacing Pep Guardiola, and Deeney noted that the England defender “offered a lot more of a calming presence” than Elliot Anderson — the club’s record signing, brought in from Forest for a reported £116m precisely to solve that position.
Read it as a warning rather than a compliment. City needed Rayan Cherki off the bench to manufacture both late goals against a Bournemouth side under Marco Rose, and Erling Haaland was subdued. A manager improvising a defender into the base of midfield in week one, with the most expensive player in the club’s history available, is a manager telling you his squad is not yet balanced. Guardiola’s successor has inherited a rebuild, not a finished team.
Alongside him, Vitaly Janelt is rewarded for the unglamorous work — “breaking up play and doing the horrible things really well” — in a Brentford performance that dismantled Roberto De Zerbi’s Tottenham. Keane Lewis-Potter opened the scoring after 12 minutes, Janelt profited from Antonin Kinsky’s spilled save, and Michael Kayode punished the same weakness after the break. Spurs spent heavily again this summer and offered nothing back.
Chelsea’s three and what the XI predicts
Xabi Alonso’s first league match ended 3-2 at Craven Cottage and produced three selections. Maxence Lacroix gets in for composure — “the maturity that will add so much to Chelsea going forward” — which reads as a direct comment on the goalkeeping behind him, given Robert Sanchez’s role in both Fulham goals. Cole Palmer is in for a display Deeney called relentlessly positive: “Ran forward with pace, looked like he could move… now he’s chopping and turning.”
Joao Pedro leads the line, and Deeney’s line on him is the closest thing here to a season-long prediction: “Someone who will make everyone question when they said he wasn’t good enough. He’s going to have a breakout year.”
Around him, Christos Tzolis marked his Arsenal debut in the 3-0 win over Coventry with enough to convince Deeney he will be “a beast this year” — no small claim for a £34m arrival replacing Leandro Trossard. Maxim de Cuyper scored and assisted in Brighton’s rout of ten-man Villa. Anthony Elanga, after a difficult first season at Newcastle, produced what Deeney called an unbelievable finish in the 2-2 draw with Liverpool and, more tellingly, “looked happy”.
One round in, the XI contains no Liverpool, United or Tottenham player, and three from promoted or mid-table sides. Deeney’s team of the week has form for being early rather than wrong.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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