There's always something special about the gameweeks before an international break. Whatever results your team produces cannot be quickly forgotten, you have to sit with them for two weeks before league actions resumes. This gameweek served up drama aplenty and the talking points generated will certainly be enough to keep us going for the next two weeks. With that in mind, here are some winners and losers from last weekend's action.

Estêvão is having a charmed start to life in the Premier League. Frequent readers of this column will remember that he already featured once under "winners" for his performance against West Ham on his debut in gameweek two. He's back here again for a sensational last minute goal that helped Chelsea beat Liverpool 2-1 and gave Stamford Bridge a sense of calm going into the international break after a few weeks of red card drama. With Chelsea missing several key players due to injuries and suspensions, the young Brazilian may have just bought himself a starting spot in the Chelsea team for the next few weeks.

Liverpool are walking alone at the moment. On Saturday, for the first time in my life, I saw Arsenal fans cheering a Chelsea goal like Saka had just scored to clinch the title. Manchester City striker Erling Haaland posted a picture of Estêvão's winner, it seems like everyone is against Liverpool at the moment. And that's not even the biggest problem they have at the moment. Defeat at the Bridge means that Liverpool have now lost their last three games in all competitions. Perhaps even more troubling is that the back-to-back Premier League defeats have come at the hands of late goals from their opponents. They've gone from scoring late winners to conceding them — the hunters have become the hunted. The team looks disjointed, the dynamics are off, father time seems to be catching up with Salah, the new signings (except Ekitike) have not hit the ground running, and Arne Slot is becoming short and ill tempered in his pressers. Something needs to change at Anfield and perhaps this break is just what they needed to go back to the drawing board and reassess things.

Victory over Burnley on Saturday means that Aston Villa are now on a four game win streak in all competitions. They're unbeaten in the last five, having drawn with Sunderland before embarking on their win streak. It looks like normalcy has returned to Villa Park after a shaky start to the season that saw them go on their worst Premier League start under Unai Emery, finishing in relegation places on some gameweeks. Emery must be delighted to see Donyell Malen get off the mark in his first full Premier League campaign. The Dutchman will be crucial to Villa's failure or success this season as they've really struggled with getting good performances out of their wide forwards. Indeed the reason they were so effective in the second half of last season was that they solved that issue through the loans of Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio. However, with both men gone, the mantle falls on the likes of Malen and Guessand to provide wide threat. Hopefully, Malen's brace against Burnley represents a turning point on that front for Villa.

Fulham lost out on European football last season due to one reason alone: consistency. They produced the odd good result against teams far better than them, but it was the games against the teams around them that really defined their season. Their record against the teams that finished above them in the table excluding the top four (so fifth to tenth) last season is 6 wins, 5 defeats, and 1 draw. In other words, there is no middle ground for Fulham, when they win they really win, and when they lose they really lose, and you never know which Fulham you're going to get. Marco Silva needs to solve the consistency issues if they're going to take the next step from midtable club to European challengers. It doesn't help that they are now building a reputation for letting leads slip. In their last two Premier League games they've scored first only to lose both games 3-1. No team has lost more points from winning positions than Fulham already this season. Perhaps Craven Cottage needs this international break more than any other team at the moment — they need a reset and they need it now.

Bournemouth lost a raft of players last season, but they must have been delighted to have kept hold of Antoine Semenyo for at least another season. And the Ghanaian is rewarding The Cherries with some brilliant performances. In seven games this season he has scored six goals and assisted a further three to bring his tally of goal involvements to nine. Against Fulham you could argue that he single-handedly dragged them back into the game and won the game after Fulham took the lead. Usually when a player doesn't get a big move one wonders if he will be able to replicate the level of performance that warranted that big move in the first place. Semenyo seems out to prove that his performances last season are no fluke and that he can improve even further. Should the big clubs come circling next summer, Bournemouth will be justified if they slap on an astronomical figure for those trying to prise away their black diamond.

Well, all good things have to come to an end. And it seems that lately, the way good things have been coming to an end in the Premier League is by late goals. Liverpool's unbeaten run was ended by a late Nketiah goal at Crystal Palace. And now Crystal Palace's unbeaten run has been ended by a late Jack Grealish goal for Everton. It's quite unfortunate as well because a sense of inevitability seemed to be building around this Crysta Palace team under Glasner, and now it's just dissipated. After the international break one question alone will need answering at Selhurst Park: Can they pick themselves up and move on from this defeat?