Five Reasons to Watch the Football This Weekend

Illustration by Sam Taylor

To Find Out Just How Much More Alien Man United Can Get
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The phrase “worse than Moyes” may be wielded with significant caveats among United fans at the moment – isn’t a 5-3 implosion at least more entertaining than how Moyes would’ve lost, 1-0 with a goal off Gary Taylor-Fletcher’s arse? – but it’s still being said. Despite basically being given a bye for the first two months of the season, United have been a disaster.

Fortunately for Van Gaal, he now glimpses light on the horizon. No, not a new centre-half or even weaker opposition, but a raft of injuries leaving him with only one established central defender. Praise the lord for fresh excuses! United’s centre-back pairing against West Ham on Saturday is likely to consist of a kamikaze left-back in Marcos Rojo, and fuck-knows-what-else. Two kids who are presumably worse than Tyler Blackett, an injured Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher seem the potential options.

So, how are United going to rectify this problem in the long-term? Well, there’s plenty of noise in the papers about their upcoming transfer strategy. Alas, it doesn’t involve signing a defender in January, but rather Cristiano Ronaldo next summer. Presumably with him, United could’ve beaten Leicester 7-5. West Ham will probably be crushed beneath a weight of rabonas, backheels, flicks and pirouettes from Di Maria, Falcao, Mata, Herrera and van Persie, but if this iteration of Man U are troubled by Jamie Vardy like he's Fernando Redondo circa 2000, then West Ham surely have a shout.

Not even thinking about defeat today. Let's twat these trophy eluding, Heysel blaming, United loving, small club of bitter bastards.

— Not Bangon (@NotArlarse) September 27, 2014

To Rejoice As a Neutral in the Good-Natured Anfield Derby 
The idea of this fixture remaining the "friendly derby" while Heysel chants and bottles fly through the air is now widely regarded as laughably quaint. But a local grudge match that was rejuvenated last season by two teams playing at the height of their powers now looks a lot more desperate, as both sides struggle to escape irrelevance.

The problem with Everton was their heavy reliance on loanees, which – with Barry, Distin and Howard on the wane, Lukaku looking a bit lost and the teams around them strengthening significantly – means they've basically spent £28m on becoming a slightly worse team. Meanwhile, Liverpool have lost last season's best player. Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of Hodgson and, to a lesser extent, Moyes but there's something about both teams this season that is almost touchingly naive. It lends this game a “D’aww, bless ‘em” air, as the rest of the league awakes Saturday waiting for attacking riches to make mincemeat of two dross defences.

Still, that does sound like good fare for the neutral. Even when these two teams make a mutual decision to shut the game down and avoid defeat at all costs, it still ends up 3-3. And violence is probably inevitable, which means it will undoubtedly be better than last weekend's dour City-Chelsea clash, which was basically one long, drawn-out tactical foul compared to an Anfield derby that should be a violent assault of a tackle committed out of pure malice and frustration. Anybody who can’t enjoy that doesn’t deserve to be watching the sport.

To Witness the Full Weight of a North London Identity Crisis
In the last couple of years, the old clichés about the two North London clubs have been swept away in a sea of change. Arsenal have added two ostensibly world-class players at a high price to a side that had been lacking inspiration, leadership and spending. As a result, they’ve gone from a team with a good but flawed midfield and a flashy array of dainty, small, very similar attackers to the exact same thing minus £80m.

Tottenham, meanwhile, have replaced a parody of an English manager – the man with the largest self-awareness deficit in English football since Phil Brown, who alienated several key players, gave embarrassing emotional post-match interviews and picked silly teams every game – with Mauricio Pochettino. The latter could scarcely be more different – he’s a man with a reputation for modernising sides, playing in a progressive manner, motivating his players and getting a team to punch above their weight. As such, Spurs have gone from a team of good players that don’t fit together, hamstrung by a lack of goals and creativity, combined with disastrous defensive lapses to… well, yeah, you can probably guess.

It’s hard to figure out how these teams can escape their respective abysses. But aren't teams with a real identity what we all want from football?

To Spare a Thought for Asamoah Gyan
As you may have read this week, Al-Ain striker Asamoah Gyan has had to issue a statement denying being complicit in the ritual killing of a Ghanaian rapper. The rapper in question, Castro, disappeared while on a jet-ski and the press are alleging that Gyan "sacrificed" him in a bid to resurrect his career.

When you decide to make that move for oil money, even the most cold-hearted mercenary must still miss real football. It must be hard to prop up the fourth wall, the sense that it all means something, to be a real-life hero or villain to millions of people. I'm not saying Gyan did it. But I am saying I bet he wished he'd just stayed put in Sunderland.

To Revel in the Anti-Fairytale That Is Scottish Football
Yes, Scottish football might basically be on life-support. But much like the idea of any two English teams contesting a "heated rivalry", or a ground having a "phenomenal atmosphere" can still be rightly scoffed at by Scots as they cling to the burning hatred they have left, so can the idea of, say, Spurs being a depressing team to support. You simply don’t know you’re born. If you think Manchester United are suffering a decline, take a look at Rangers. And if you think Forest or Newcastle are a depressing team to support… you haven’t seen anything.

Let’s look at the recent track record of a club that is one of the country's biggest. Hibs produced a golden generation in the mid-2000s, then sold them and bought Liam Miller. They lost their last cup-final 5-1 to their biggest rivals. They held a relegation party to celebrate Hearts’ administration and then immediately went on one of the worst runs of form of all time and were relegated by a penalty shootout. It puts the travails of almost every other club in Britain into a new perspective.

Since then, they’ve watched Hearts fans take control of their own club, completely sort out their finances, and build a young, hungry team bolstered by excellent signings who are coasting above Rangers in the second tier. Hibs, meanwhile, are still awful. Indeed, they are so bad that it looks like they’re getting in Leigh Griffiths – great goalscorer, Hibs fan, racist, arsehole – despite having five other strikers available. They have unprecedentedly managed to negotiate an emergency loan not on the grounds of injuries, but solely because they’re so fuck-awful.

So, while Rangers are always going to be the bigger story – and even more badly-run – spare a thought for Hibs as we see what new low they can plumb this weekend. Sure, they have the greatest song in football, but “you only have one song” is usually just a criticism of the number of chants a club has. In Hibs’ case, one song literally is all they have.

@Callum_TH

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