Chelsea’s Depressing Dominance
Fabregas’ return to Arsenal wasn’t a typically explosive one, despite the efforts of Arsenal fans before kick-off. That’s perhaps to be expected – we were never going to get our Adebayor moment, because that’s not the man Cesc Fabregas is. And, in retrospect, the idea of there ever being a winning goal looks dumb – it was clear that Chelsea would win at a relative canter.

So it proved, with a mildly amusing subplot that summed up the folly of Wenger’s “we don’t need Fabregas, we have Ozil” logic, which had until recently seemed to make perfect sense. But that was the only amusing part. It was depressing fare otherwise, with Mourinho’s side needlessly bullying their way to a narrow victory over a worse team.

At this point, it looks like only a lengthy injury to Diego Costa can do for Chelsea. This is what it’s come to – already, we’re pinning our hopes on a serious injury to one man to make the season an entertaining one. José Mourinho is well and truly back. Hopefully it won’t take everybody else quite as long to catch up this time around.

Pardew Lives Another Day
It never ends. Pardew should have been a goner several times by now, but he’s still there, still clinging on and just about getting by. His position seems untenable, and while we may think it’s only a matter of time, this is a club that sacked professional nice guy Chris Hughton for basically no reason. If Pardew’s fate really were ultimately sealed, he’d be gone. Yet here he is. He was hated before, sure, but he had the backing of his pals in the boardroom, and his players still appeared to be playing for him.

Now, that’s changed. Ashley appears to have lost patience, his old heroes are either sold, frozen out or past it, and his new signings have taken to the Premier League like a brick to water. He is now all alone, one man raging against the establishment, a doomed pariah on a suicide mission. Well, almost alone. The weirdest buddy movie this year features a narcissistic Silver Fox, and a devout Senegalese Muslim – because while all his other friends in the world have deserted him, he still has Papiss Cissé.

Cissé’s remarkable debut season in the Premier League, where he was one of the most feared strikers in the country and scored a preposterous classic for the ages, seemed a million miles away. He’d been totally forgotten, just another butterfly Pardew had broken on the wheel. His renaissance is weird, and for Newcastle fans, probably deeply annoying.

He has not, however, been in such illustrious form that Newcastle have emerged as a credible force again. With Mike Ashley seemingly determined to bin Pardew at the next bad result, he’s done just enough to keep his boss in a job, turning cataclysmic defeats into slightly disappointing draws with late equalisers, the high-note of coming from behind making it just too difficult to use the result as justification for a sacking. Like a merciless jailer who has calculated the minimum number of calories needed to keep his prisoner alive, Cissé is drip-feeding Pardew on just enough goals to keep him, the club and the fans in purgatory.

Celtic Park (Photo by James Turner)

The Scottish Premiership Is Competitive Because Every Team Is Shit
Who would’ve predicted that the Premier League and Bundesliga would be looking won by October, but it was still all to play for in the Scottish Prem? The Premiership is currently topped by Hamilton Academical, after they pulled off a 1-0 win at Parkhead. The last time Hamilton beat Celtic was in 1938. Oh, and they’re also a promoted team, having come up through the playoffs at the end of last season.

Celtic are currently trailing in sixth – behind big teams like Dundee United and Aberdeen, but also behind Inverness, a town whose entire population is only slightly more than the capacity of Celtic Park. England has long prided itself on competitiveness in its top league, and claimed to maximise it by improving the standard and bringing in vast quantities of cash. But there’s another lesson being taught this year in Scotland. If you really want a competition, just take all of the money away so that every team consists of teenagers and the same ever-rotating cast of old pros. In short, make everybody a pile of wank – it’s the only true leveller.

It Looks Like Another Vintage Year for the Cult of Bielsa 
Another country that has thrown up a surprisingly tight race so far is France, a league that appeared to be reduced from a two-horse-race to showjumping after Monaco’s billionaire owner got fed up and went through the most expensive divorce in history. Yet Paris Saint-German are already seven points off the pace, behind Bordeaux and Marseille, the latter of whom are managed by Marcelo Bielsa.

Praising Bielsa should be done with caution – he’s the hipsters’ posterboy, due to his South American roots and fondness for bizarre formations. He’s a man who seems to be continually overhyped – has anyone else ever had a fucking stadium named after them just for winning one title at a pretty big club? He hasn’t generally been a model of consistency, but he’s working out well at Marseille.

So far, his gig there has consisted of welcoming his new signings by stating in a press conference that he didn’t want to sign them, and this weekend he celebrated his team’s late winner by getting into a fight with the man who scored it. It looks like being a great story. Hopefully we’ll get a proper title race once PSG wake up and it won’t be like almost every French season for the past 15 years where only one team turns up, but hey, it’s one in the eye for the Qataris. And who could disagree with that sentiment?

Harry Redknapp Is Finally Past It
In recent times, football has lost alcohol, hard-men, strike partnerships and proper wingers. The latest victim of its ongoing gentrification looks set to be Harry Redknapp, who currently resembles the last old greasy spoon on a street of horribly overpriced coffee shops.

It’s an open secret in football that Redknapp doesn’t really do tactics. Now, anyone who hasn’t played the game professionally might as well admit to having no idea how much of what happens on the pitch is rehearsed in advance. Only ex-pros really know if football is just a series of connected set-piece routines and thankfully, they’re not keen to reveal the truth. It’s football’s own kayfabe, and long may it continue.

But however much work is done on shape, formations, routines etc, it is generally acknowledged that Redknapp does a lot less of it than the average manager. And now it looks like that’s finally caught up with him. QPR look disjointed, clueless, an embodiment of Redknapp’s own obsolescence. Kind of like in the way we make up dream XIs from across the ages but know, deep down, that the developments in the game, its increased athletic demands, mean that Steve Sidwell is probably a better player than Billy Bremner ever was. Feel free to enjoy Redknapp’s demise, but don’t think about it too much. It’ll only make you upset.

@Callum_TH

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