Five Things We Learned from This Weekend's Football

It's taken a while, but the Manchester United manager finally appears to have figured out what buttons to press to get his side operating like a functional professional football team. Much of this, it must be said, was fairly obvious stuff which had been long overdue – play players in their proper positions, stop fucking about with three at the back, build the team around Ander Herrera, move Wayne Rooney up front, and so on.

But not only has the emergence of something resembling football come with the surprising deployment of Chris Smalling and Phil Jones in defence (an enforced change, but the man still had to make it work), he also had to use his famed balls to drop Angel di Maria, replacing him with Juan Mata to devastating effect.

So, a toast to Van Gaal: a man lucky that standards at United have fallen so low that to get a team that should have finished in the top four to scrape it after spending nearly two hundred million pounds is considered a success. But you play the cards you're dealt, and you take the drinks that get bought for you.

We thought we'd seen the end of the old, dominant Barcelona and in their old guise, we have, with the dotage of Xavi and Andres Iniesta necessitating some form of rethink in the near future. But in consecutive matches against Manchester City and Real Madrid, they've shown that they are in a full-blown second wind, whether that be a new formula or a last hurrah. Either way, it's hard to see any team stopping them on their way to the Champions League or La Liga.

Their team, on paper, is far from being as far ahead of the pack as it has been in recent years, but it's Real Madrid's turn to be hamstrung by petty squabbles now, and the likes of Gerard Pique, once written off as short of world-class, are back in form. It's even more enjoyable for the neutral, as this time around it comes without all the tedious pontification and insistence that they'd somehow reinvented the game rather than just acquired a team of 11 very good footballers. This is probably Barcelona at their most optimum level of effectiveness vs. likeability, so drink it in.

Another terrible performance by Chelsea at the weekend, but it was against Steve Bruce on one of his lengthy comedowns, so the three points were always really a gimme. The team might have been more or less awful throughout 2015, but the incompetence of their rivals should see them coast to the title.

The question is, what next? This side is running on fumes, and it would be a brave and possibly stupid man who would automatically assume that the likes of Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa are going to snap back into their early-season form next time around. Even if they do, and even if Chelsea rediscover their form in their remaining games, a team that was initially painted as dominant is in a horrible rut of form that would've been fatal to their title chances in most other seasons.

Even more weirdly, they've shown an alarming knack of giving away 2-0 leads, something that is never, ever supposed to happen under José Mourinho. Based on that, our guess is that changes are afoot, particularly given their net spend last summer. Mourinho currently looks like a manager on the downturn, despite his imminent league victory, and that's one thing he's not gonna stand for.

Spurs have had many fine players over the past few years, but the lack of a genuinely brilliant striker has often cost them. And it's often cost them dear – creative midfielders toiling in vain, Gareth Bale seeming to score about 90 percent of their goals under Andres Villas-Boas.

Till now, that is. Harry Kane is in many ways the perfect striker for Spurs – he's good enough to transform their fortunes and provide one of the most dangerous presences in the league up front, but he's just very slightly short of the level that will see them struggle to hold onto him, for now at least. He might look like Peter Crouch before a long stint on a medieval torture rack, but he's one of the most exciting attacking players in the league and is playing at the perfect club for him. Were it not for his emergence, this season would be bleak indeed.

The identity of Tony Fernandes' "dream manager" may forever remain a mystery, but it looks like its certainly not his incumbent, with QPR failing to really look capable of getting anything from an Everton side in awful form at home. The defeat was one in which it becomes absolutely certain that relegation is inevitable for Chris Ramsey's side. There are no key players to return from injury, the new manager boost card has already been played and a team of good players played terrible, disjointed almost-football.

It's hard to really mourn the death of QPR. They're from West London, the worst part of the UK to possess a proper football team apart from possibly Reading, and are where they are on sheer weight of finances, throwing incredible amounts of money around just to achieve the bare minimum. They play badly, they have no exciting players, and they've turned the likes of Sandro and Esteban Granero into tragic figures who wouldn't look out of place rocking up at Stoke. Wigan, Blackburn and Sunderland used to pollute the lower reaches of the table with annoying regularity, but at least they were plucky underdogs. This is an underachieving, well-bankrolled set of mercenaries who aren't even bad enough to induce schadenfreude. Who will miss them?

@Callum_TH