Five Things We Learned from the Premier League This Weekend

$73 million dollars-worth of new Manchester United talent (and Chris Smalling) nutmegged in ten seconds by Leicester City players

Louis van Gaal's New United Are Currently Just a Different Brand of Shit
It’s an impressive feat, but after the bizarre 5-3 capitulation to a brilliant Leicester City—the first time Manchester United had lost a match in the Premier League after being two goals ahead, and surely the first time a player has scored against both Manchester United and FC United—Van Gaal’s new team was there for all to be seen.

They might still be shit, but at least it's a slightly different brand of shit. In LvG's brave new world, Chris Smalling will replace Tom Cleverley as the team’s scapegoat-in-chief, while Di Maria rather than van Persie will now be put forward in dull arguments about the league's best player. Daley Blind comes in for Michael Carrick as the one whose weaknesses everyone will ignore, and Marcos Rojo is just a like-for-like replacement for whatever Alex Buttner was bringing to the party. The names on the back of the shirts have changed, but currently it's all weirdly familiar for a side with six unfamiliar faces in Sunday's starting XI.

And what of Wayne Rooney? Well, he’s still exactly the same as he has been for the past few years, having lost his touch, speed, vision and basic decency, but the perception is growing that he may not actually belong to United's A-list. Indeed, it’s quite an achievement for a striker to be the worst player on the field in a game that finishes 5-3.

In one moment for Esteban Cambiasso’s equalizer, Rooney summed up everything that's wrong with him. A botched clearance as he stormed back to save the day gave away the goal, before he turned round to embarrassingly yell at all of his teammates. It was the kind of leadership that impresses Territorial Army office workers; a men’s rights activist’s idea of an alpha male. That Rooney has remained undroppable for three very different managers is baffling.

Roy Keane Could Have Found His Niche as a #2 
Being named the manager of the month is as much a curse as it is a blessing. This weekend, Aston Villa found that an equally powerful poison exists for any manager doing well: the big broadsheet interview. Paul Lambert won a new contract off the back of his ludicrous start to the season, talked about it in The Telegraph on Friday and watched his squad get pumped on Saturday by Arsenal. It must have been particularly gutting for assistant manager Roy Keane, who hates Arsenal like ISIS hate the West.

That said, it’s possible that Keane is the man who's responsible for the upturn in Villa's fortune. He’s the only real variable, and if his playing and managerial career prove anything so far it’s that he’s a terrible leader but a born second-in-command. He’s the ultimate wartime consigliere to any godfather he's served under. The bad-cop-bad-cop dynamic doesn’t appear in many books on business management, but it has a long history in soccer. Walter Smith and Archie Knox; Jock Wallace and his drill sergeants; and, of course, Keane’s own period as underboss to Alex Ferguson.

Lambert looks too much like a cuddly little bear to fit the "bad cop" mold and will be sympathetic to a squad laid low by a virus in the build-up to Saturday's game. But with Keane looming over the manager's shoulder, his eyes burning into the players' souls like Mafia acid, they'll know that despite the sympathy this week, there's no room in the dressing room for piss-taking.

Never seen a player look that devasted after scoring, I actually feel bad for Lampard. pic.twitter.com/SBsthiwYKZ

— GM (@GoonerMind) September 21, 2014

You Definitely Could Make It Up
“You could not make it up!” was a strange way for literally thousands of people on Twitter to greet Large Frank’s late goal against Chelsea for Manchester City. Lampard is a goalscoring midfielder. Him scoring a goal from midfield is exactly the kind of thing you could make up.

Nonetheless, the way it happened, with Chelsea fans actually singing his name before the big moment—you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. It’s not exactly Denis Law relegating United, but what’s significant for City is that they had to rely on a geriatric legend to earn them a point against a title contender. With Chelsea now having put in a decent display against a team that won't be weighing up a deadline-day bid for Kenwyne Jones in January, the likelihood of a José Mourinho title win is growing.

I mentioned City’s lack of identity and genuine stardust in the weekend's preview piece, and it seems to be haunting them. Much as we may laugh at the Garry Cook days of trying and failing to buy Kaka about six different times, for the most part City have been depressingly sensible with their money. They've never really had that one player who single-handedly dominates a league, or a strike-partnership or back four that will make people misty-eyed for generations to come.

We live in strange times. The biggest surprise hasn’t been City overhauling United in terms of being a successful, effective soccer team. It’s that United have overtaken City in terms of embarrassing hubris, absurdly ambitious transfer moves and the pursuit of stars at the expense of people who know when to pull off a good tactical foul. Doesn’t seem to be doing Man U any good on the field at present, but there’s a balance to be struck, and at the moment it’s Chelsea who seem the closest to it.

It Takes More Than a Limp Protest to Get Rid of Men Like Pardew
Alan Pardew earned his stay of execution, thanks to a player who hasn’t scored in what seems like years. Cisse's second was almost an exact replica of the time Lee Clark scored a last-minute winner for Newcastle against Middlesbrough, and found himself on the receiving end of abuse from his own fans, their hopes of a defeat to finish off Graeme Souness's reign cruelly dashed.

The source of the goal is significant. It’s more evidence that while Pardew can do no right in the eyes of his own fans, in the eyes of the Dark Lord and the twisting wheel of fate, he can do no wrong. Something will always step out of the shadows to preserve his reign of terror. A dour 0-0 would’ve given the impression he was only clinging on by his fingertips, but the manner in which he rescued a point will be grim for the Pardew Out brigade—it will seem to confirm that he can never, ever be defeated, especially not in the face of what was, in the end, not nearly the all-out lynching that the press had trailed in the week.

Another man enjoying the warm after-buzz of a shot in the arm is Sam Allardyce, whose terrible rule over East London from his Tower of Babel in Canary Wharf looks set to continue. It’d be a major shock if Liverpool continued to be this dire for the whole season, so the only sensible point of view is that evil men like Allardyce and Pardew simply know how to get a result when they really need one. It’s already pretty obvious that Diafra Sakho will never score another Premier League goal again.

Felix Magath: fitness expert? Think again. Unbelievable Fulham anecdote from @DTguardian piece http://t.co/LxXE2UNjd4 pic.twitter.com/woolQYwMt8

— Archie Rhind-Tutt (@archiert1) September 20, 2014

Logic Is No Longer a Part of the Manager-Hiring Universe
The Championship usually takes a lot longer than most leagues to reveal its narratives, but already there’s some fascinating stuff going on. Nottingham Forest have a pretty long history of chokery, the obvious blip aside even providing the stat that they’re the only former European Cup winner to be relegated to the third tier. They also have Stuart Pearce as a manager, yet they’re looking genuinely dominant.

The real story, though, is probably going on at the bottom, Cardiff and Fulham bringing to an end the sad reigns of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Felix Magath. Both title-winners against the odds in their native lands, both having rotten times in a league below they one they were actually hired to manage in over here.

It’s strange, but there seems to be no logic as to how well a manager will do any more. Manuel Pellegrini pipping José Mourinho to the title. Garry Monk working out well at Swansea. Louis van Gaal’s side shipping about four goals a game. There’s been a sea change in English soccer, somewhere, and we’re just praying that Neil Warnock, the last of the brave, can continue to be a man for all seasons.

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