Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

Racism might be a pretty severe transgression over the line of acceptable behaviour for pantomime villains, but a lot of people were sad to see Luis Suarez leave the league. For the first time, England had a real dearth of horrible twats. It could be a real sign of decline, too – with the old hatchet-men put out to pasture, England had, like the Roman Empire, become reliant on foreign bellends who didn't quite get the traditional brand of being an arsehole that had served England well in the past. Frankly, someone should've noticed this when Jody Morris had to rock up at St. Johnstone to get paid, but nonetheless, it was better than nothing.

Costa has finally replaced Suarez, however. Sunday was a perfect example of his talents, giving a masterclass of niggly fouls and wind-ups to steer Chelsea to a trophy, aided in part by John Terry, the last of the great British arseholes. And yet still, all is not right. Is this really the kind of prick we want as a figure of hatred?

Costa's obviously a very good footballer, but it's hard to imagine uncles waxing lyrical about him in the future in the same way they would've done with Suarez. Instead of having some enfant terrible who completely loses the plot once in a while in between scoring goals of the month, we've got something resembling a world-class Kevin Davies. The past is full of stories about flying kicks on fans, shoving referees, biting, outrageous handballs and career-ending tackles. That's what this proud sporting tradition is all about. It is not about repeatedly elbowing Jan Vertonghen for 90 minutes, however effective it may be. The search goes on.

It's not uncommon for one player to entirely sum up his club. Robert Huth took the odd German pastime of being more English than the English to embody the town and club of Stoke, with his Keele Uni Lad Society banter, well-worn clichés and artless tackles. Mark Noble's constant 6.5/10, plodding, forgettable, competent performances make him the perfect homegrown hero for West Ham. It's happened plenty for Arsenal too – Tony Adams and Thierry Henry summed up the and spirit of their side perfectly, just as Charlie George did in the past.

Those days are back again. All of the horrors of late-Wenger Arsenal have resulted in the club birthing its own player out of that raw DNA of European disasters and tame defeats to Sam Allardyce: Olivier Giroud. Look at the Frenchman's week: a shocking performance and an open goal miss in a crucial European game, then scoring against a bottom-half team at home at the weekend followed by praise from his manager for 'bouncing back' and a litany of 'maybe Giroud can be a great goalscorer after all' articles. Arsenal.

It's harsh to blame the man himself, however, when almost no other human being in recorded history can be better said to be 'a product of his environment.' We all want a player who embodies the spirit of the club, don't we? How could you not love that?

A funny thing happened a few weeks ago. For the first time since back beyond the mists of pre-Ferguson football, the top flight in England contained no Scottish managers. It's only a few years back that half the league seemed to be taken up with them, of all shapes and sizes. You had your all-time legends in Fergie and Dalglish, your dependable good guys in Moyes and Clarke, your dour authority figures in McLeish and Lambert, and your comic relief in Steve Kean.

Those were great days. But now they're all gone, and the Premier League is suffering from a problem in having phenomenal amounts of money but very few teams spending it to any degree of success. Is it a coincidence? Well, the highest-placed Scottish manager is Alex Neil, who has 7 wins in 9 from taking over at Norwich.

You'll also notice that every single one of these comes from Glasgow or one of it's suburbs, with the exception of Clarke, who is half an hour down the road in Saltcoats. Don't fuck about with Pepe Mel – if you want a manager, just get any Weegie off the street and stick him in the job. That's pretty much what Norwich did, and it's paying off.

So, that's that for another year, then. It's hard to imagine a more wearily-resigned team selection than just picking a flat 4-4-2 again after it was such a disaster in midweek, but that's exactly what Pellegrini did against Liverpool, and saw the title race end as well as his own employment in the process. The Chilean's P45 isn't confirmed yet, but he won't be around for much longer.

As Diego Simeone proved, there's nothing wrong with a 4-4-2, even against Barcelona, but there is plenty wrong with having billions of pounds and spending it on a Brazilian midfielder who has fewer caps than Fabio da Silva and expecting him to dominate a game effortlessly. Fernando vs. Coutinho was only going to produce one winner, and it's pretty much symbolic of everything City have fucked up since the Aguero moment that they even faced each other at all. When Pellegrini is inevitably axed, City should appoint a maverick – but we're probably going to get Carlo Ancelotti, shrugging his way to a predictable title win. Everything you've read about Gulf state playboys is apparently wrong.

Between anti-football, tracksuits, baseball caps, and headbutting James Beattie in the nip, Tony Pulis is a man of more schticks than Louis van Gaal on a woodland walk. Loyalty to Stoke City used to be the jewel in the crown of those, confirming him as the throwback's throwback, to a time before even the 90s and 80s that remained fresh in our mind. He harked back instead to a mythical past, and you can imagine at one time he would've been manager for 30 years, won two FA Cups and have his name used for a fans' group that wanted to get rid of the board.

When he left, it plunged both him and Stoke into an identity crisis, but they've both survived it remarkably intact. In fact, Pulis has now taken things to the next level – he's gone on tour, flitting around a selection of hopelessly mid-table clubs to keep them up just because he can. And that's all.

Folk often complain about the TV millions ushering in a mentality of staying in the league at all costs and having no ambitions beyond that, but in Pulis, that existence has attached itself not to a football team but to an individual. It's become a party trick, the only thing he's known for. Appointing Pulis now is an act of sensible desperation, a sure-fire guarantee of avoiding relegation and having him depart by mutual consent a year or so down the line.

Some people might view that as a depressing existence, but as talents go, it's a useful one to have. Whether he still has ideas above that or is happy to be buried beneath a headstone that reads "Tony Pulis – he'll keep you up" remains to be seen, but the days when he might be given a shot at Spurs or even Newcastle seem a long way away. So the next time you're worrying about your career prospects, imagine devoting your life to Victor Anichebe, Glenn Whelan and Brede Hangeland, and pour one out for Tony.

@Callum_TH