Lukaku sends out a warning to the Premier League - The Warm-Up

The fee for Romelu Lukaku breaks down roughly as follows. About £30m for the goals. Another £10m or so for the irresistible narrative: Big Rom's coming home. And the rest, the majority, was spent on his mysterious magical power. Whenever he controls the ball, every defender on the pitch is drawn to him, like iron filings to a magnet. Like moths to their fiery doom.

Even Kieran Tierney, in theory Arsenal's best defender — or, if you're feeling spicy, "only good defender" — was dragged miles out of position as Chelsea's no.9 approached the ball. This is why Reece James twice found himself alone out on the right flank, with time to control the ball, make a couple of phone calls, finish his sudoku, file his tax return, and then set up the first goal and score the second.

After Chelsea's first — into Lukaku, panic, out to James, double panic, back into Lukaku, why is Pablo Marí lying on the floor like that, goal — you feared for Arsenal. After Chelsea's second, you started to wonder how many more were coming. That the answer turned out to be none might seem, on the surface, like a minor success for the home side. Add in the penalty shout, you might even find one or two positives to take.

But in an odd sort of way, the fact that this didn't turn into one of those hammerings is itself a statement. It didn't need to. This wasn't one good team having a great day while another good team has a hilarious one. This was a good team being good enough, an ordinary team being ordinary. This was a title contender visiting mid-table to collect their three points. Get an early goal, get another for insurance, and done.

It wasn't a humiliation. It didn't need to be.

We should acknowledge that Arsenal were missing a £50m player from their backline, another from midfield, and neither of their senior strikers were fit to start the game. And Willian was missing too: you can put that in whichever column you like. Mikel Arteta called Arsenal's situation "unprecedented", as though we can't all remember the glory days of Sébastien Squillaci.

This is, of course, a good chunk of the point. Take half a starting line-up out of Chelsea's squad and you've still got a side good enough to qualify for the Champions League. But you would also, we're guessing, have a side that had some plan for getting the ball to the forwards, a side that could respond to the opposition's attacking patterns. Injuries are unfortunate. Arsenal's exciting brand of witless inertia … well, whatever it is, it's definitely not unprecedented.

Come the end of the season, our guess is that Chelsea will have repeated this victory, in more or less this fashion, against most of the teams in the middle reaches of Premier League. How Lukaku gets on against the very best defences is going to be interesting, but we know what's going to happen against the average ones: panic, panic, panic.

To put things crudely, you win a cup competition by beating the good teams on the big occasions, but you win a league by beating all of the ordinary teams, week after week after week. And that's what we got this weekend, two lessons in mediocrity: Arsenal have it, deep in their bones; Chelsea are now fully equipped to dismiss it.

There are many ways for a newly-appointed coach to get his fans onside. The best way is to build a team that wins lots of football matches, but that takes time and, honestly, seems like quite a lot of annoyingly hard work.

Another good way, and perhaps a more immediate one, is to bring a popular player back in from the fringes of the squad and see if they can contribute again. This is why being the guy after José Mourinho is a pretty good gig: you know there will always be somebody useful sitting on the naughty step, wondering what they ever did. Waiting for a chance to just play a bit of football again. So, is Dele Alli the new Luke Shaw?

We're going early. We're saying yes. He'll be back in the England squad by the end of the season. Admittedly, we're basing this on two performances and one penalty, but hey. It's August. It's a time for making big claims. And he did take the penalty nicely.

Alli is important to Spurs not just because he's good, but because he's interestingly good. He does a lot of things that nobody else in the squad does. He won the penalty against Wolves in part because he left his legs there to get wiped out, but more generally because he drifted through the lines from central midfield, past one defender and then another, into precisely the right position without ever needing to break into a sprint.

Somebody in yellow probably should have noticed him, given that Spurs are dressed as the vast and infinite universe. Or at least a sci-fi book over. Or at least one of those pictures you get at markets made from spray paint and paper plates. Or an oil puddle in a car park. But you take the point. They may all be dressed for it, but nobody else at Tottenham brings that little bit of space investigation.

First day at the new job. You want it to be a quiet one, right? Get your work done, set your IT up, learn a few names. Keep it simple. Try not to call your boss "Mum". Try not to burst into tears at your desk. Try not to set anything on fire.

This is not a luxury extended to footballers. Maybe Tammy Abraham could ease himself into his first day at Roma training, but when it comes to the games, line-leading strikers have to get out there and put themselves about. And while Abraham didn't score on his debut, he did almost everything else.

First, he got the opposition goalkeeper sent off. A perfectly judged run, a delicate clip, a perfect tuck and roll. He must have learned that in England. Then he set up two goals: one to take the lead, another goal to retake it. A jabbed through ball for Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and a perfectly weighted cross for Jordan Veretout. He hit the bar as well, with a big old towering header.

Despite our globalised world and despite the saturation coverage of all football everywhere, there remains something compelling about British players taking off to Mysterious Foreign Lands. This used to be a question of cultural introversion; now it's because the Premier League is where the money is. But either way, Abraham to Roma was already a good story, and now it looks like it might be a successful one as well.

If you missed Marseille's visit to Nice, then don't worry, you'll be hearing plenty more about it. Bottles chucked at Dmitri Payet, one bottle chucked back. Fans onto the pitch. Jorge Sampaoli steaming around looking for a scrap. And this perfect, perfectly surreal moment: Nice jogging into position to defend a corner against an opposition that have literally packed up and gone home.

Since Lukaku's back in the Premier League and having fun, let's enjoy that 5-5 again, shall we? Ten goals, and yet the very best moment comes right at the beginning, when West Brom's mascot sticks out a wing hoping for a high five from the retiring Alex Ferguson. Guess what happens next.

Off to the Guardian this morning. Over the weekend, Suzanne Wrack interviewed Khalida Popal, former captain of the Afghanistan national women's team, who is calling on the sporting community to step up and provide protection for athletes now that the Taliban have returned to power.

West Ham vs. Leicester completes the Premier League round, while AC Milan get their season going away to Sampdoria.