The EPL weekend's winners and losers

picks the winners and losers from the weekend, with Chelsea upending Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, Burnley continuing their very fine start, and Manchester City cruising past Arsenal.

He didn’t create Chelsea’s goal and he didn’t score it, but Stamford Bridge still bore witness to another quintessential Hazard performance on Sunday - one as notable for its bravery as for its quality.

He may have decorated the game with his light feet, but he also took a mighty beating on his teammates' behalf. He was fouled six times during the game, but every time he touched the ball he was niggled and jostled and pressured. And he stood up to it all. It’s an established Jose Mourinho tactic in the fixture and Hazard would have known what to expect, but he didn’t shy from the contact or ever stop demanding the ball - and, after the week Chelsea have had and the questions which have been asked of their character, that was especially valuable.

He was occasionally brilliant on the ball, but this was a true blue-collared response to some fairly blatant rough-housing.

A statistic which bears repeating: since January 2015, Mourinho teams (Manchester United and Chelsea) playing away from home against top-six opposition have a record of six losses, five draws, and only four goals scored.

He gets results, he knows how to win and is utterly determined to convince everyone that he isn’t bothered by public perception - or by the ‘Einsteins’ in the press - but given the attacking power of those respective sides and the money spent to build them, that is an extremely underwhelming run of results.

Manchester United weren’t overly negative on Sunday, particularly in the first half; they just didn’t play very well. Key to the problem was the midfielders, who were consistently overrun. How many times, for instance, did Tiemoue Bakayoko glide beyond Ander Herrera and Nemanja Matic? How is it that Romelu Lukaku wasn’t able to record a single touch in the Chelsea penalty box? Responsibility has to be shared between the manager and the players, but Mourinho was the architect of a gameplan which looked seriously flawed – and a record which his threatening his legacy.

Most previews had Fabregas dropping out of the midfield to make way for something sturdier, but Conte kept faith in his ageing playmaker.

While probably designed as a means of keeping Manchester United from focusing their entire defensive attention on Eden Hazard, Fabregas would ultimately prove the game’s primary creative force. His front-foot passing was particularly delightful and the regularity with which he pushed the ball between the lines was partly responsible for the game’s attacking flow.

The odd man out at Stamford Bridge. In retrospect, Luiz has probably received too much praise for his performances since returning to Chelsea. He didn’t mature as a defender at Paris Saint-Germain, Antonio Conte was just smart enough to build him a role which minimised his exposure.

Four days on from the chaos in the Stadio Olimpico as Roma hammered Chelsea 3-0, Luiz paid the price: he was replaced by Andreas Christensen for the game with Manchester United - and the ends justified the means. Chelsea dealt relatively comfortably with Manchester United and the tone of the defending was calmer than at any other point this season.

Further bad news for the flamboyant Brazilian is Conte’s preference for stability. Unlike some previous Italian managers at Chelsea, Conte is not known for squad rotation and when players drift outside his starting XI they tend to stay there for some time – as he seemed to imply when asked post-match about Luiz’s future: “I don't know. Christensen is the present and the future for Chelsea." Ouch.

Unless Everton's old romantic of a chairman Bill Kenwright manages to persuade the harder-headed major shareholder Farhad Moshiri, David Unsworth is not going to be the next manager at Goodison Park. The four games he has presided over haven’t made a strong enough case and even those batting for him in the media would concede that his claim to the job now looks tenuous.

However, his interim spell ended on a high note. Unsworth deserves it, too, because he made the changes Everton supporters have long demanded: he dropped Ashley Williams, he reconfigured that horribly negative midfield, and he gave Ademola Lookman a sustained opportunity to make an impression. His other substitutions were also bold: young Dominic Calvert-Lewin for the legendary Wayne Rooney and the speedy Aaron Lennon for the £50m signing Gylfi Sigurdsson.

Make no mistake, Watford threw that game away. The goalkeeping change clearly threw them and Tom Cleverley charitably missed a stoppage time penalty which would have made this another Everton failure. But Unsworth's boldness means that whoever is appointed as Ronald Koeman’s successor will begin life outside the relegation zone and with some semblance of momentum.

No, there’s no disgrace in losing to Manchester City and actually Arsenal played quite well at points. However, the 3-1 defeat in Manchester demonstrated how much distance now lies between Arsene Wenger’s side and the title favourites.

City were wasteful. Some of their football may have been beautiful to watch and, at times, their thrusts from midfield were particularly eye-catching, but - as a complete performance - they never really left third gear. Because they didn't to. There was never a suggestion that Arsenal were going to punish their profligacy or that they even possessed the weight of punch to challenge their self-belief.

The supporters will reference a couple of botched refereeing decisions in mitigation and point to the scything move which created Alexandre Lacazette’s goal as proof of potency, but everything they did still reeked of futility. These days they look increasingly like an also-ran in this type of game. Cannon fodder.

After Brighton’s win over Swansea, Chris Hughton was asked about Gareth Southgate’s decision to omit Dunk from the England squad. Ever the diplomat, Hughton played a straight bat, declaring himself pleased with the player’s season-on-season improvement and delighted with his Premier League contribution so far.

On Saturday, Dunk was excellent. He and Shane Duffy took a long-ball shelling from Swansea’s aimless attack, but they coped extremely well with the diverse threat of Tammy Abraham and threw a net over Jordan Ayew too. England might be a stretch, but Dunk’s role in Brighton’s rapid Premier League adjustment means that it’s far from ridiculous.

You know you've had a bad weekend when your bosses are considering replacing you with David Moyes. Bilic is not entirely to blame for the mess at West Ham and there’s an argument for saying that almost any manager would struggle under those working conditions, but two Premier League wins since the start of September is a meagre return and the frequently chaotic performances make him extremely vulnerable. 

The Liverpool game was West Ham's season condensed down to 90 minutes: some awful defending, a couple of isolated moments of promise from talented individuals, and a defeat framed by an overwhelming hopelessness. There might well be deeper questions to ask than just who the manager is, but that's likely to the be the first one addressed. 

A caveat: yes, Bournemouth were very luck to win at St James’ Park, not least because Dwight Gayle’s goal should have stood, but it was still vindication for a growing team and a manager who has successfully recalibrated his defence.

This was Bournemouth’s first clean sheet since the end of September, but that statistic hides just how improved they’ve been without the ball. Chelsea and Tottenham both struggled to break them down and were restricted to few clear chances, and Stoke were made to look similarly blunt at the Bet365 a few weeks ago.

From being under pressure two months ago, Howe has now added another layer to his reputation. He's a coach held in a certain regard for what he's already achieved, but this latest improvement has shown a depth to his training ground acumen. 

When a crowd turns on a team, it turns. Swansea were abject in defeat to Brighton and the fans at the Liberty Stadium were on their players’ back inside 10 minutes. It sounds harsh, but those supporters have had to tolerate insipid football from a poorly constructed team for a long time now.

That acrimony seemed to weigh particularly heavily on a couple of players. Tom Carroll spent 58 minutes tying himself into a psychological knot before being substituted to ironic cheers and Sam Clucas also melted under the heat, producing a dreadful collection of set-pieces before also being jeered off. The good news is that the second-bottom Swans don't have a deep enough squad to warrant either player worrying about their place. The bad, obviously, is the potential damage done to the two players' morale.